Valve turning on the tap when it comes to education

Here’s one I bet you wouldn’t have seen coming but it appears that Valve, best known as the creator of such video games as Half-Life and Portal, is joining the Digital Promise education initiative from the President and Congress.

To be honest I’m just as confused as to how a video game company is going to get its hands dirty when it comes to education but thankfully we have this bit of an explanation from the Digital Promise press release on the Whitehouse.gov site:

Leading Video Game Company Establishes Education Prize: Valve, creator of best-selling video game franchises and leading technologies, is stepping into the educational arena due to interest from teachers, students, researchers, and fans after the release of Portal 2, a brain-challenging puzzle game. Valve will run a competition next year where middle- and high-school students and teachers can create levels of Portal 2 to be used in the home and classroom while competing for prizes worth $250,000. As a start, Valve will be giving out free copies of Portal, the first in the series, which is rated for teens. For more information, go to:www.learnwithportals.com.

Wow, Portal in the classroom. Sure could give a whole new meaning to cutting class.