I used to use ClickTeam's MultiMedia Fusion 2 (MMF2) to teach students aged 11-16 to develop games. MMF2 does not use blocks but, rather, one places check marks in a grid to (using Stencyl terminology) assign 'behaviors' to actors, etc.
In my view, programming skills are based on principles, rather than specific coding knowledge. Order, logic, planning, etc, are the skills that I was teaching. I wish that Stencyl had been available when I was teaching, not only because I could have used it for free, but because it is far more closely aligned to the coding that most people know.
As far as I am concerned, creating, for example, a repeat loop, or a while loop, requires exactly the same thought processes in Stencyl as it does in a 'traditional' programming language. Where Stencyl 'wins' (compared to 'traditional' coding) is that it relieves the student from the drudgery of technicalities such as how to make images appear on the screen. That differs for every programming language, which is why I think it's more important that they learn the 'logic' aspects of programming.
As far as the Learning Stencyl 3.x book is concerned, it shows how to develop a single game (a platformer), but in the process of doing so, it teaches a lot of the practicalities of creating any game with Stencyl such as creating actors, scoring, countdown timer bar, managing game over, etc. there is also a lot of detail about collision shapes for actors and tiles, etc.
It's definitely not a quick, point-and-click-here's-a-game kind of book. I have found that books which show how to create numerous different games tend to miss (or skim over) a lot of vital issues, which leaves the reader wondering what to do now that they know how to create game 'X' or game 'Y'.
I would recommend the book for teachers, so that they can achieve a good understanding of how to create games, and will be more able to answer the kind of questions that students will ask, or for anyone else who needs more in-depth knowledge of using Stencyl. You can download a free sample chapter from
www.TheStencylBook.com to get an idea of the style and detail.
There's a short review of the book by an educator called Clint Walters, at
http://mrwaltersdesk.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/a-review-learning-stencyl-3x-game.html. Note that the references to Stencyl 2.x in the review are no longer relevant, as Stencyl 3.x is now on public release.
If you have any further questions about the book, please do ask.
Have you had a look at the Stencyl beginner's course that I have created on Udemy? You can currently access it for free using the link in the first post of the following discussion:
http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,35743.msg203623.html
