The game takes place in the Enrichment Center for Aperture Laboratories—also known as Aperture Science—which is the fictional corporation responsible for creating the portal device. The Portal games were created using a physics engine, which is computer software that simulates real world physics. |
Portal and Portal 2 are non-violent, cleverly written games that challenge players to solve puzzles within a three-dimensional world. Student players must maneuver objects and themselves through the world in order to solve the puzzles and progress from one level to the next.
The game features Chell, the player-controlled female protagonist, and GLaDOS (short for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), a computer artificial intelligence that monitors and directs the player. Players primarily interact with the world by using a hand-held portal device to place interconnected portals on walls, floors, or ceilings. Once a pair of portals is positioned any object entering through one portal will exit though the other. |
puzzle design
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Left : 7th graders visitng the company Valve who created Portal 2 (on their field trip).
Above: STEM teacher Don LaBonte used the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker to engage his students in demonstrating math and science problems through game design. The Puzzle Maker is a powerful toolset that allows students to produce their own content from within Portal's game world. |
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Learning Physics with Portal 2:
Belmont University. The Portal 2 level editor provides a sandbox environment for students to build their own portal 2 levels. Students will learn how the puzzle elements work by playing through select test chambers as the provided test chambers demonstrate a number of the puzzle maker tools in isolation. |
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Ideal Gas Law demo using Portal 2.
Students will design, create, troubleshoot, and improve upon their own puzzle levels as they engage in the process of iterative design by collaborating through a number of phases of peer evaluation and feedback. |
Science
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Technology
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Engineering
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Mathematics
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Empowerment
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