Play & Learn with Portal 2: Valve Makes a Portal for Commericial Games in Education

by Chris Jaech

Valve recently launched a website aimed at giving educators the tools to use Portal 2 as a teaching tool.  In addition to giving the game away for free, the site offers a knowledge base including a wiki, example lesson plans, and a forum to facilitate collaboration among teachers.  Having played and greatly enjoyed Portal 2 I can certainly see the potential for using it as an educational game in much the same way the WoWinSchool project uses World of Warcraft.  As we’ve covered in our blog, fun, cleverly written, family-friendly games can be great for providing motivation for students, teaching basic problem solving, and building teamwork.  With some creativity, it could be used to teach Language Arts in much the same way as WoWinSchool, as well as perhaps basic physics and mathematics principles.  Here are some links about the project: