We all know how good GLaDOS is at articulating physics concepts in simple words – “Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman’s terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.” Now that Portal 2 is headed to classrooms complete with lesson plans, she’s going to be so good with children!
Teach With Portals is an awesome addition to Valve‘s efforts to provide game-related teaching tools. It features teacher-created lesson plans that use the educational versions of Portal 2 and Puzzle Maker. The software is available to educators for free via Steam for Schools after signing up for the Education Beta. And yes, you have to be a legit educator to get them freebies.
Lucky teachers! Now teachers have no reason not to have at least one Portal 2 lesson. No reason whatsoever. Lucky kids!
So far, the site only has 11 lesson plans for Physics and Math, but the greyed-out tabs for Chemistry, Game Design, Language Arts and Other is a sign of more to come. I really liked the Introduction to Parabolas with the Puzzle Maker lesson plan by Lisa Castaneda. She uses aerial faith plates to illustrate parabolas, because, you know, trajectory. Who needs catapults when you can have aerial faith plates? The test will be on bouncing a Companion Cube onto a Pressure Button across the test chamber.
Proctor GLaDOS says:
Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death.
On second thought, it’s Portal 2 they’ll be working with, so maybe it’ll be Wheatley. Oh god.
(Teach With Portals via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
