Are you an educator? Introduce Yourself!

Due to its Scratch-like logic builder, Stencyl has captured the minds of many educators, who are viewing it as a next logical step beyond Scratch.

This forum serves to bring educators together to share ideas, stories, student projects and whatever else comes to mind.

We'd love to know more about you and how you've integrated Stencyl into your plans.

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Where are you from?
What school or institution do you work for?
What do you teach?
How did you find out about us?
If applicable, tell us a bit about how you've used Stencyl in the classroom.

Going to get my school to use stencyl now!

That's great! Can you share more about your school (privately by email is okay, too!)?

I'm probably not what was expected here, but I might as well introduce myself too.
From: Michigan
Institution: I am full-time tutor. Students come to me directly, but I primarily help with high school and college students in the area.
Teach: I help in almost every subject, except foreign languages.
Found: Originally through a link on Kongregate (I forget what/where; it was probably a forum... back with version 1.1 )
Use: While I have yet to directly tutor any IRL students for programming in Stencyl, I've suggested it to several different students, generally either for learning logic or for career counseling (to see if programming is something that they are actually interested in). I'm hoping to actually have some IRL students directly coming to me for Stencyl in the summer. Via livestream, I have done some one-on-one sessions with new Stencylers though.

Where are you from?
 Wagga Wagga, Austraila

What school or institution do you work for?
Riverina Institute of TAFE

What do you teach?
Cert III in Media
Diploma of Interactive Digital Media

How did you find out about us?
Google 'games design' etc and also Kongregrate tutorials

If applicable, tell us a bit about how you've used Stencyl in the classroom.
Previously taught Adobe Flash for games and have moved to Stencyl platform because of its multiplatform output, coding interface, ease of use, and the lack of support for Flash on iOS devices.  Great for those wishing to make indie games for mobile devices and also a good intro to 3D gaming.

Really looking forward to seeing what's in the Education Kit!

  My name is Jody Weissler.  I  currently teach from Elementary to University Levels and am on the part-time faculty at Cal State University, Northridge.  I am an avid user of Scratch and have hosted Scratch Days for several years at schools.  I also am actively involved in web development and am the founder of http://Teachtopia.com and http://Japanmath.com.   
I have downloaded Stencyl and watched tutorials, but unlike Scratch, I have yet to teach with it.   I am looking for more content already created about Stencyl for Teachers and I hope that this thread provides valuable information.

Where are you from? New York
What school or institution do you work for? Nobody, I am a student running a Stencyl club
What do you teach? Basics of mobile game making
How did you find out about us? Scratch
If applicable, tell us a bit about how you've used Stencyl in the classroom.
I haven't done much, we have only had 2 meetings so far. I plan to go through the basics of game design, marketing, graphics and music. My school got a $5000 grant so we could do this, so we were able to get 4 macs.

Where are you from?  San Luis Obispo, Ca

What school or institution do you work for? Delta Continuation High School in Santa Maria

What do you teach?  Mathematics (primarily), Debate, Women's Self-Defense, Chess and now... Game Creation with Stencyl!!!

How did you find out about us?  I had been teaching game creation as an elective with RPG Maker but was looking for something that would allow us to make mobile games.  After ALOT of research I started playing around with Stencyl.

If applicable, tell us a bit about how you've used Stencyl in the classroom: I switched to Stencyl because my students wanted to make mobile games.  Since switching to Stencyl I am now frequently visited by my Principal, Superintendent and even Board members trying to check out what exactly I am doing. 

I really want to get in touch with other educators and figure out what they are doing.  I am going to run a Stencyl camp this summer and have even made a website for my students to post their games (I don't know if I am allowed to post the site?).  While I am not an expert Stencyler, I am pretty bought in to the program.

Hello Fraser,
With how dead this thread is (and the rest of the Educator forums), I think I am one of the only educators active with Stencyl. As I noted in my introduction, I'm actually a tutor, so my experience is different, but still if there is anything you want to know, feel free to ask me (or stop by my livestream in my sig for live chat if I am on).

To the contrary, there are many, many educators actively using Stencyl, but close to none enjoy participating in a forum format, choosing instead to correspond periodically via e-mail. If this weren't the case, I wouldn't be investing time into an Educator's Kit or putting up a subsite for education.

The challenge, correctly posed, is to figure out how we can seed a community of educators here, so idea exchange can happen. After the kit goes out, that's something I'll be working on.

Aye Jon, I meant to say "active in the Stencyl forums" instead of "active with Stencyl".

The challenge, correctly posed, is to figure out how we can seed a community of educators here, so idea exchange can happen. After the kit goes out, that's something I'll be working on.

Well, I've been trying to help educators. The Interactive Stencyl Textbook is VPP Enabled... http://www.apple.com/education/it/vpp/ ...so there's a big discount for educational institutions.  (The site says 50% off for purchases of 20 or more.) I remember colleges / universities asking about my other book. It was a problem to manage those orders, so this new setup can help educators.

One of the big problems in a university is ordering stuff... especially now that many are struggling! Fortunately, VPP program takes purchase orders.

I've been thinking about hosting a Stencyl training session in the NYC area too. But instead of making it for students, maybe I should make it for educators. I could teach them how to teach with Stencyl.

Are any educators interested in this?
(Maybe that question will get them talking. HA HA!)

Hi!

I'm a teacher from Sweden and I currently teach programming to high school students. At the moment there is a big debate in our country about why our students have such poor reading and math skills (even their problem solving skills are bad). Educators look at other countries that have succeeded with their educational system; like England and (of course ) China.  At the same time, we have an industry which do very well when it comes to digital solutions, and especially game design (Dice, Candy Crush Saga etc.)

So, there are those that think we ought focus more on making programming an obligatory subject in our curriculum (like in England).  However, some teachers (like myself) already teach programming. Scratch is very common, Kojo, Kodu and Construct 2. When I saw Stencyl I immediately liked the feel of it and it reminded me of Scratch a lot. But, I do need help regarding tutorials, manuals for the first basic step; like lessons (a kit). And I think you would benefit a great deal from making a teaching material accessible to educators soon. Scratch is fun, but ugly. When my students were presented to Stencyl they thought it was more like a real game design tool. I hope you work on your teaching material and why not write a book similar to the "Scratch programming in easy steps". I would buy it!! And I can help you translate it to swedish for free 

Keep up the good work!
/Jens Laurell, Sweden

I hope you work on your teaching material and why not write a book similar to the "Scratch programming in easy steps". I would buy it!!

Have you looked at these: http://www.stencyl.com/affiliates/   ??

I just started a collection area for the FREE resources available to learn how to use Stencyl. Many of them are very detailed and definitely worth a look at before spending money on learning Stencyl. I hope the compilation helps .

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,32148.new.html

Hey guys and gals, I am a computer science student graduating in December 2014.  For my senior project and capstone, I have requested and been approved to create video tutorials from initial conception of an idea on paper, all the way to making money on it in the various application stores.  For this I did not want to specifically be making videos for computer science majors, but rather have an audience from kids to adults, computer science to agriculture, programmers to artist and everything in between.   For this reason, I am choosing to use stencyl.  It is easy to follow and understand, free to use, and helps people understand what goes on behind the scenes of a game without having to actually code anything.  I will be working on this all summer and part of my fall semester.  Ill be posting again when I start to get everything together!