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borkabrak
I feel like I've missed something. What, exactly, are they teaching?

I don't mean to be confrontational -- this is a genuine question.

neilparikh
From the site (http://www.teachwithportals.com/):

Welcome to the new, free educational collection of puzzles and teacher-created content from Valve’s best-selling game, Portal 2, an engaging 3D puzzle-solving game. Based on Valve’s technology, the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker takes place in an environment with realistic physics – a playground rich with opportunities for educational fun.

Seems to be physics or problem-solving.

leetrout
It's good to see them giving back.

They ran a similar program back 2005 for universities where you could buy a perpetual cyber cafe license for $10 / seat. I think they realized it wasn't such a great deal for them and it is annual now (Source U). I bought some licenses for our computer club and Valve gave us contact info for one of their engineers who ended up sharing their Maya export tools.

More and more companies are opening up to this sort of stuff but us students were flabbergasted to get "real" tools from a studio that we could learn and use in the lab.

Keep it up, Valve!

danso
Ah, this is a bitter reminder that I purchased Portal 2 when it came out (for the Mac) but do not yet have a computer fast enough to run it...one of my few regrets about getting an Air.
cmelbye
Your Air can't run Portal 2? Which model is it? (I'm not doubting you, I'm genuinely surprised. Glad I opted to get the Retina MBP, I'd hate to lose my games.)
icebraining
Well, the requirements specify at least a 2.0 GHz dual-core, which most Airs don't have (even this year's edition only has an 1.8 GHz i5).
nitrogen
A 1.8GHz Core i5 should be faster than a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo. If a computer with an i5 struggles with Portal 2, it's probably the GPU.