Instructor Guide

GameSalad adapts to diverse learning needs and students’ prior programming experience.

4th-5th: Advanced students, who have already completed other coding programs, may do well in the GameSalad platform. Please contact us about a trial to see if GameSalad fits your young learners.

6th-8th: Perfect for middle school learners, open-ended programming and a visual interface move students forward, beyond simple coding exercises.

9th-10th and Beyond: A great introduction to programming for older students, GameSalad engages students in building their own projects without the frustration of traditional coding syntax.

The best way for an instructor to learn the Creator interface is the same way the students do

– jump right in!

You can join one of your own classes. Assign yourself the CS.1 Wizard Run and CS.2 Monster Maze student tutorials through the Teacher Dashboard, and complete the steps just as a student would in the Creator platform.

Or, review this fast-paced teacher-facing recording. In it, our wonderful trainer Braydon builds the first game just as the students would. Pause, rewind, and repeat to fit your learning style.

GameSalad is an open-ended game design platform used by professional game developers. Students access a world of possibility where their own ideas can come to life, by writing instructions in order to achieve the desired game effects. In other words, the platform allows rules, actors and behaviors to be added into the program freely.

The game-building tutorials show students exactly how to create the specified project. Often, there could be several ways to achieve the desired programming result, some more complex than others.

The GameSalad platform adapts to learners at different levels of proficiency and programming ability. All students can be successful, engaged, motivated, and challenged.

Students are invited to build the games as specified, no additional programming is required. Even when following the tutorial, there is room to customize the look and function of your game and make it your own.

Students are also welcome to go beyond the scope of the tutorial, creating additional levels, increasing the complexity of the rules, adding actors and behaviors, etc. Some students may even be ready to create their own original capstone game (LINK) from scratch.

In addition, students are welcome to try adding additional elements to the games they are building. This is where GameSalad shines, because students are not limited to the exact programming in the tutorial.

Students can easily import their own graphics and sounds, though images and sounds are already provided within the templates for each game. You can help them find free assets online that are appropriate for classroom use.

Review the Lesson Plans and Tutorials to determine where you want to focus your students’ time. Below is a suggested sequence for approaching the curriculum. Also consider the following:

Are State Standards part of your focus?

Our curriculum is standards aligned to CSTA and TEKS.

Is Interactive teaching valuable to your students?

The Lesson Plans are full of classroom activities.

Is Game Design your primary learning objective?

The Tutorials will give your students a foundation on which to spend time creating original games or components within the provided games. Image and sound assets are easily imported into the platform. Customization of the tutorials, extra levels, and completely original games are all ways to utilize the editor.

Digital Citizenship:

The Digital Citizenship units contain essential information on how to navigate the internet safely and responsibly, but they do not contain a tutorial game. GameSalad includes two versions of the unit, one for younger students (CS.A) and one for older students (CS.B). Choose which is most appropriate for your class.

Why Computer Science?:

The “Why Computer Science?” Unit is another unit which contains in-class lessons only. Students will explore components of computer and technology use. You can choose where to place this lesson in the curriculum.

Wizard Run or Monster Maze:

Both Wizard Run (CS.1) and Monster Maze (CS.2) are good starting points after Digital Citizenship.

Wizard Run: is a shorter unit that introduces the students to the GameSalad interface. It comes with a completed game, and the students lay out a new level for the game. You can choose whether to complete this unit together as a class. This may be a good option for younger learners, with the teacher reading the tutorial and explaining the platform components to the class.

Monster Maze: jumps right in to students building their own games and is more engaging, while also covering the basics of the Creator interface. Generally students excel when completing units at their own pace. Monster Maze and most of the other tutorials include videos, as well as written instructions, that allow different types of learners to absorb the material.

After Wizard Run / Monster Maze:

The curriculum is designed to be very flexible and modular. We list the units in order of increasing complexity, but the units you do after the students have been introduced to the platform can vary based on many factors (i.e the amount of time you have the students each week).

A student that has completed Monster Maze (CS.2) would be able to complete a more complex game like the platformer game (Space Runner) in CS.6, so the main limiting factor is time. If you can only complete 3 units during your class time, something like the following would be a valid option:

Digital Citizenship -> CS.2 (Monster Maze) -> CS.4 (Good Tank, Bad Tank) -> CS.6 (Space Runner)

Capstone Game:

The last CS unit, Capstone Game (CS.8), is for students to break off into groups and create a game from scratch using the things they’ve learned throughout the class. Refer to the lesson plan for this unit for more details.

Previewing

Previewing the game is the best way to stay on track while coding. It’s easy and fun because you get to briefly play the game you are building in order to check its functions!

Previewing often will limit debugging to the last section of code written. In other words, if your game works correctly as intended when you Preview and play it to test its functions, you can move on to the next piece of code.

Beginning students should Preview very often. For example, students should attempt to walk through the walls they have just built in Monster Maze, move their actors as intended and test other elements of the scene, in order to try and “break” the game.

If the platform is having trouble loading the preview, there is likely an issue with the logic that has been written. When this happens, students need to debug their project to find the issue.

Debugging

Help students “think like a programmer”.

Game development is an iterative process, which means that after every change you make, you should test your changes, then modify the game again until it looks and acts the way you want.

Students need to use the iterative process as they build, even when following the tutorials. With GameSalad, students can easily debug with the use of On/Off buttons to pinpoint problematic rules without having to delete and recreate them.

The On/Off buttons are located in the top left corner of every behavior.

When a rule is toggled “off” the platform behaves as if it is not there. When a rule toggled “On”, the platform reads and tries to execute the rule when the specific conditions are met.

If your game is not behaving properly, try previewing with a certain rule toggled “Off”. Start by turning Off the most recent rule you added, then preview. If the game is then working correctly, the problem is located in the rule you just turned Off. If it’s still not working, continue turning rules Off one at a time and previewing in-between to narrow down where the problem is located.

Contact us! If you have tried to determine where the trouble is with the program and cannot find it, then email support@gamesalad.com with the URL of the game and some details of what’s not working correctly.

Students can collaborate on the same project at the same time. Because the platform auto-saves, this becomes quite easy to do.

To collaborate on a project follow these steps.

1. Choose one student to create the project in their account. The project will always live in that students GameSalad account.

2. Rename the project to something unique that all the students in the group will remember. Have the student who created the project share the project link with the other students. 

3. All students navigate to this link on their own computers and begin working.

The project will auto-save in the original students GameSalad account.

Have the students practice great communication skills in order to work on separate parts of the project, as to not step on each others toes/overwrite things another students are doing. For example they can each work on different actors, different levels, or whatever works best for that collaboration.