Gabe Newell explains Portal 2 Authoring Tools for schools

Gabe Newell speaking at the Games for Change festival today, explains some of his visionary ideas to utilize Portal 2 as an educational tool, with the development of Authoring Tools specifically designed for schools.

Newell has mentioned that the company has begun working with schools to build a curriculum based on Portal 2 and will continue to turn the game into a more direct learning experience. “If you give us a lesson plan, we can give you a tool that allows kids to build content to lock down those lessons,” Newell detailed. “The number of times I solved problems about how fast will this be going at this time — how about if it’s on the moon?” In his words, “It’s a lot easier to get people excited about it [education] if they’re on the moon and they get to throw the rock at the piece of glass that breaks the glass that lets all the robots fly out.”

No release date was given on the educational tools but has confirmed Valve is currently building the application. “The layering on top of it of the framework for giving people a direct physical experience of physics is there, but you have to tell me exactly how you want to measure whether or not your students are successful or not.”

Now why wasn’t this type of education when I was still in school?

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