Torque X 3D for Education Boot Camp
Torque X is an extremely powerful game development tool (built on Microsoft's XNA) from GarageGames. Garage Games is running a special edition of their Torque X Boot Camps specifically designed for educators. It's coming in January and will be hosted by the Guildhall at SMU (one of the premier university game development programs in the world).
The full announcement is here but I have included some of the announcement below:
January 17-19th, 2008
The Guildhall at SMU, Plano, TXTorque X has just gotten one dimension better, and GarageGames will be rolling out a brand new Torque Boot Camp curriculum specifically for Educators to celebrate!
XNA is a great place to teach game development, and Torque X adds a rich feature set and core systems that let you focus on making a game-but there is more to teaching with game development than simply knowing how to use a game engine, and this boot camp will cover the spectrum of not only Torque X 2D and 3D technology and tools, but the process of making games within a classroom environment. From Rapid Prototyping to Iterative Spiral methodology discussions, all the way to tips and techniques for amazing 3D worlds within Torque X, we'll provide what you need to motivate your students to learn!
The course is designed for teachers (university, community college or even high school) who are teaching or planning on teaching computer science in a game development framework. If you have a particularly bright student or three you can bring them along at a specially discounted price. That's something I would conceder if I had a junior who I could get to help next school year or if I had a student who really and truly had a future in game development.
They have other boot camps for commercial developers or would be independent game developers. Check out their training site here.