Is there a good alternative to flash for teaching game development to beginners? [closed]

Question

I have been asked to research teaching a module in game development to beginners (no programming skills) of the age group 18-30, at a secondary school level. The course will run for roughly 8-10 months and each student would probably get 3 hours of teaching time per week.

My initial thoughts were to propose using Flash, since the student could make a simple but functioning game with little knowledge of programming. The budget is tight though, and I thought it wise to look into some alternatives in case the budget doesn't stretch far enough.

I know there are FOSS flash builder applications out there such as AJAX Animator but having never used them I am worried that they won't be able to deal with variables and such, even at a simple level, to handle scores, lives etc.

Does anyone have any thoughts on some good alternatives or different approaches? Students must develop some kind of playable game by the end of the course.

Answer 1

I'm a primary (elementary / middle school) school teacher - so the things we've done are pretty basic, but here's what we've played with:

• Alice (as per @orbit) - I found it a bit cumbersome for our kids, but it's certainly got potential. (Free!)
• Kodu for looking at game logic and focusing on playability and processes (not programming / variable stuff, but certainly logic). (Free - at least for us on the beta - you've got to buy an xbox controller tho).
• Game Salad looks like it has a lot potential too, but I've only had a brief look. (Free).
• Scratch is a pretty neat starter for variables / logic. I've used it with 8 year olds up to 13 year olds. (Free!)

Sounds like a fun course to teach! I hope it goes well. I'd probably have a good look at GameSalad for that age group - particularly since the iPod Touch / iPhone is pretty trendy / exciting at the moment.