Develop Gaming skills of Middle Years students: Gamemaker 7.0 for beginners

Be prepared for 2010.

This day is designed for you as a beginner. It is assumed you have no prior knowledge of this application. This is an exciting day where you will appreciate the scope of this software to enhance the thinking skills of your students, as well as providing a high level of motivation. This full day workshop is an introduction to the software Gamemaker and is for both primary and secondary teachers. You will have some teaching notes and good strategies to assist you.

The day will be led by Tony Forster who is very well known for his enthusiasm of Gamemaker in the teaching and learning enviroment and has been a regular presenter at conferences and workshops.

Games within today’s society
Increasingly, educationalists are considering games as an avenue to enhance teaching and learning within the classroom. However, integrating a form of entertainment within a ‘serious’ learning context can be not trivial. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop an awareness of the relationship between games and learning to legitimate their inclusion within the curriculum.
This presentation examines games within today’s society, and in particular the role of games as a popular choice among the young. Further, the relationship between games and learning is explored, in addition to how it relates to various pedagogical approaches, with a view to assisting those who wish to legitimate and include games within their classroom teaching practice.
Game Maker was written by Mark Overmars, a professor of the University of Utrecht, partly as a teaching aid for his students. It is gaining recognition as a useful teaching tool in primary and secondary schools because of its easy entry and sophisticated scripting language.

Why Gamemaker?
Gamemaker's simple drag and drop interface is suitable down to Year 3, but through its powerful scripting language, it is suitable to Year 12 and beyond. With Gamemaker you can easily create games such as top view, platform games, first person shooters, 3D and networked multiplayer games. It is a fully fledged programming language capable of non game applications such as physics simulations and databases.

You will be introduced to a range of support material including:
a teachers' forum
online tutorials
game templates
graphics and sound resources
lesson plans
sample programs.

Technical requirements
Windows Platform only: ( A Mac running windows is most welcome!)
You will need to bring your own laptop for this full day workshop.
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 DirectX 8 or later
DirectX 8 compatible graphics card with at least 32MB of video memory
Pentium or equivalent processor
DirectX 8 compatible sound card 128 MB of memory or greater (noted only in official Game Maker help file documentation)
800×600 or greater screen resolution with 16-bit or 32-bit colors

The Lite Edition is meant for those taking their first steps on the path of developing games. It can be used for free but is limited in its functionality. When you are using Game Maker regularly you may want to upgrade it to the Pro Edition.

Please ensure that you have downloaded and installed this software before attending this workshop, and ensure that your laptop is running correctly so to avoid any disappointment on the day. Download: http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/try

Gamemaker freeware programming language free download available