Make it easier for schools to use games for teaching.

[Tryggvi]

I am a teacher at a secondary school and I want to use games more in my teaching. There are many fantastic games for educational purposes available on steam, but the problem is that it is very difficult to provide all my students with access to them. I need to open a game for them and let them play in small groups, which is slow and bothersome in big groups, and impossible in distance education.

I´d like to be able to use games in a similar way as books. One way I see of accomplishing this is if my school could create a special account on steam where it can lend out to its students a limited access to its game library (for a limited amount of time for example). That way I can simply give a student access to a game I want him to play and assign him both gameplay and related assignments.

Not only could Steam gain a host of institutions as big customers, the games being lent out would require the lenders to create their own Steam accounts, creating many new potential customers.

[Spawn of Totoro]

A better idea would be to contact the developer and see if they are willing to provide a DRM free version and/or modified version of the game. Then you wouldn't have to worry about accounts or log-ins at all.

[UNCLEWOKIAN DANEBOT MIND-VIRUS]

>Teacher who also has steam
>Cool teacher

Judging by your games, you must be a Geography/Social Studies teacher, right?

[Tryggvi]

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

A better idea would be to contact the developer and see if they are willing to provide a DRM free version and/or modified version of the game. Then you wouldn't have to worry about accounts or log-ins at all.

This could work for a limited amount of games, but it is time consuming and a bit of a hassle. For this to work, and indeed become a general practice in schools in general as I want it to be, it needs to be simple and easy. Steam has made accessing games for the general gamer easy, why not schools too...

[Tryggvi]

Originally posted by The Dinkle Burger:

>Teacher who also has steam
>Cool teacher

Judging by your games, you must be a Geography/Social Studies teacher, right?

I mostly teach English actually (as a foreign language), but also a bit of history and philosophy. I even teach an elective course on computer games :)

[UNCLEWOKIAN DANEBOT MIND-VIRUS]

Originally posted by Tryggvi:

Originally posted by The Dinkle Burger:

>Teacher who also has steam
>Cool teacher

Judging by your games, you must be a Geography/Social Studies teacher, right?

I mostly teach English actually (as a foreign language), but also a bit of history and philosophy. I even teach an elective course on computer games :)

Ah

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Tryggvi:

This could work for a limited amount of games, but it is time consuming and a bit of a hassle. For this to work, and indeed become a general practice in schools in general as I want it to be, it needs to be simple and easy. Steam has made accessing games for the general gamer easy, why not schools too...

It is the better option then creating many "school" accounts that could get hacked and/or abused.

A game with a bulk license for school computers is a far easier and better option. Such systems already exist for many other programs so there is something to base it on.

Going to the developer also causes less confusion when it comes to taxes and other legal issues that may arise. For example, if the game is sold at a discount due to it being for education, then who would be able to claim the difference with their taxes?

The developer would also be the quickest route. If it was done by Valve, they would have to negotiate and modify/create a system to allow for educational accounts. Those accounts would also have to be restricted in some ways, such as only select games that were deemed educational and who's developers even agreed to be included in it.

You already made the suggestion here and I'm sure Valve will see it. Contacting developers would also be a good idea, with what I had suggested before. At least if one doesn't happen/work out, you would already have the other in motion.

[leftSideJ]

You all bring some really good points here.

[UNCLEWOKIAN DANEBOT MIND-VIRUS]

You should make a program or influence Valve to make a program that blocks games that aren't categorized as 'Education'

[Hi-Torque]

This snippet is part of Valves Wiki entry:

Pipeline

In July 2013, Valve officially announced Pipeline, an intern project consisting of ten high school students working together to learn how to create video game content.[43] Pipeline serves a dual purpose:

to discuss and answer questions that teenagers often ask about the video game industry[44]
to see if it is possible to train a group of teenagers with minimal work experience to work for a company like Valve[44]

The latter purpose breaks Valve's tradition of employing experienced developers, as the company is not very good at "teaching people straight out of school".[44][45]

[76561198001062896]

Originally posted by The Dinkle Burger:

You should make a program or influence Valve to make a program that blocks games that aren't categorized as 'Education'

Technically speaking "all games" can be categorised as educational
For example counter strike teaches us how to fight against evil terrorist, helpful knowledge in life xD jk

[naddy554]

Afternoon,

Appreciate seeing this on the forum, since I recently opened a support ticket with Steam on a very similar question. Instead of in a school environment I was asking on behalf of the public library district that I work for. We often have free classes for a wide range of things, and one of the librarians wanted to do a creative writing course using a Steam distributed game on the public lab computers.

Unfortunately after waiting 2 weeks for a reply from Steam Support I was told that only one game for one account, and we would have create a different Steam account for every lab computer. Considering the configuration, that's just not feasible in that situation. The silver lining was that I contacted the developer of the game and they were able to supply me a non-Steam DRM free version and so the creative writing class was on! Not to name names or the developer, but they did admit to me that they were dropping the Steam platform since they were geared specifically for classrooms and teachers were running into the same issue.

So long story short and in my humble opinion, Steam should really re-evaluate this policy since I believe this is and will take away business and education opportunities from ValvE. And what you don't supply, someone else will.

Anywho, maybe if enough people key in about it, maybe things will change? Perhaps overly optimistic but you never know till you try.

[Rogue Jedi]

Valve did something like this a while ago:

http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-rolls-out-steam-for-schools-to-teach-math-and-physics-lessons-with-portal-2/

It appears it never really went anywhere. I suppose you would proabably have to get permission from the school and each individual child's parent(s). I think it would work well if you could do it, though, I have learned quite a lot from video games. The Civilization series is great for learning about history and other countries, for example.

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by Rogue Jedi:

Valve did something like this a while ago:

http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-rolls-out-steam-for-schools-to-teach-math-and-physics-lessons-with-portal-2/

It appears it never really went anywhere. I suppose you would proabably have to get permission from the school and each individual child's parent(s). I think it would work well if you could do it, though, I have learned quite a lot from video games. The Civilization series is great for learning about history and other countries, for example.

From what i remember, i heard they cancel/closed it

Will have been really cool and useful if they did make it all the way to the end i think