Great product for coding!!!
Community Review for GameMaker
My Take
I love how you do not necessarily need to know "coding language" to use this program, but instead can first rely on the drag and drop options for your coding. This helps eliminate minor detail errors that students might not realize they are making when they first begin to learn code. The program also made it very easy to upload your own images and use them in your games. I would recommend this product to others who teach computer science.
How I Use It
I used this program for an AP Computer Science Principles course I taught last year. It was very user friendly for students who are just learning to code for the first time. I used this in unison with a program called Zulama, which guided the students through lessons on how to code games, and the Zulama lessons took the training wheels off bit by bit as you went through the content. With the exception of initial setup, this program worked great for me and the students really seemed to enjoy the idea of making 2-dimensional games as opposed to something boring , such as, programming a clock to tick.