Features for education

I would love to see microStudio used in schools. I don't have a precise idea yet of what is needed to make that easier, but I have started working on this with education workers to better understand their needs and requirements.

Hi, As a teacher using microStudio, I'd welcome the option to share projects "privately".

Thanks for this feedback, I see what you mean, that would be an interesting feature to have.

I have no precise idea of what kind of features would make microStudio great for studying in classrooms. What I just have in mind is a feature allowing to create classrooms, each one of these having a list of students working as sub-accounts of the teacher's account ; the teacher would be able to access and interact with the projects created by the students. The teacher could also expose some of his private projects to the classroom (like templates, tutorials etc.)

I am interested in hearing back from you teachers, what features would you need to use microStudio more effectively in classrooms? Please comment in this thread!

Hi, I'm french mathematics teacher and i am using microstudio to learn the basics of videogames programmation. To feedback, my students are very happy to use Microstudio, the best is the reactivity between programming and the effect in the game. I don't have any optimization for this moment but i just begin. So thanks for Microstudio, i will share my feedback in the near future (maybe with french community) !

I am using microStudio in my game design class (CS 325) at George Mason University this semester. They are just beginning their first projects now. In previous years we used Phaser.

Some things that have come up:

• The ability to see students' projects is important. I am asking them to upload links. Currently, it seems the only way to make something public but unlisted is to first make it public, with all the scary checkboxes (this is not a test, not a barely modified clone, it has an icon, etc). Only then the "unlisted" checkbox appears. Your classroom idea is nice. Allowing students to create unlisted projects directly would address 80% of our needs.
• The ability for the grader to see when the work was done. This could be in the form of an automatic revision history. When we used Phaser, students hosted their games on their GitHub accounts. We could easily see changes after the deadline.

Microstudio is awesome. I just introduced my students to it and they love it. I plan on showing them the basics of the system using your video tutorials but any ideas for projects afterward? Should they be given free reign to create whatever they like or more guided for example lets make a platform game etc? Sorry for the questions but this is my first time teaching a game design class.

Thanks for any advice you can share!

I introduced microStudio this year to my students in my after school computer club. They like the platform and its ease of use. We used Pygame before migrating to microStudio and it was hard to share the student's projects with family and friends (installing a python interpreter or compiling the project was a bit too much to ask). Hence, microStudio was the perfect alternative.

I know that we have the tutorials, which are great (they could be translated to other programming languages though), but simple beginner projects integrated with the tutorials would be awesome and really help teachers in middle school or high school (secondaire here in Quebec). I think MrLman and gilles had good ideas about creating basic templates of different types of games. Community templates for some 2d games and applications with an emphasis on "modding" so that beginners can quickly make it their own without understanding fully some more advanced programming concepts would be the way to go for my computer club.

Thanks gilles for this wonderful program and MrLman for some very helpful tutorials.

At the moment it seems like we can invite people to join a project only if they have a microStudio account.

I think it would be extremely useful to be able to share invite links and allow anyone with the link to join a project, no account required. I would like to host live online sessions to teach programming and game development to individuals but I prefer not to force students to create an online account or to download and install any software.

There are video streaming platforms out there I can use to share private links to my sessions to allow people to join, comment without registration. Now I am on the lookout for a live code editing environment that offer the same and allow students to code with me in real time. There are a few options but many of them support only 1 language or not even that, just a plain text editor, or has no compiler or does not support libraries and graphics.

I think microStudio could be a perfect fit as it support multiple languages, libraries and 2D, 3D graphics but I prefer not to force anyone to register.

Features I need:

1. We can set the date and time from which the invite link is valid so we can share invite links in advance
2. We can set the date and time when the invite link expire and people have no longer access to the project with the link.
3. Creating account is optional.
4. If account is created, people can clone the project and store a local copy for them selfs.
5. If no account is created, people can make changes and edit the project in realtime as long the link is valid and the host is online.
6. In case this system require any additional bandwith, storage, resources, the host who share the invite links cover the costs.

I think this is all I need. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thank you.