I have been into gaming for as long as I can remember, my first memory being the game Donkey Kong Country on the S.N.E.S. I remember being too young to truly understand and play games and I would constantly get stuck on a now easily passable part which I would have to hand to one of my older siblings to complete. This was how I played games for quite some time until one day, I was home alone without my siblings to help me. I remember sitting and staring at the screen in an almost hellish trance as I knew I could go no further. I was stuck there, and really I didn't understand why. I was simply too young to understand and from that day forward, I became obsessed with learning.
   I wanted to understand the world around me, but my genes had other plans. I went through school pretty well in elementary, and was well on my way to becoming the scholar everyone just knew I would become, but then came middle school, and my grades took an abrupt and unexplained nose dive and I was quickly ripped from my life of playing games for a large chunk of my life so as to make me "focus" more on my studies. It wasn't until 9th grade that I was finally diagnosed with A.S.D. (Autism Spectrum Disorder). The reason for the sharp decrease in my grades was the change in my environment, as well as the changes in the structuring style that I used to learn in. I quickly got back on track and maintained a 3.5, but I developed a deep bitterness towards education, which lead to a lot of missed opportunities as I began to reject the success school promised.
   I graduated and started going to college, which I struggled with, just not as much as with middle school. I am sorry to say I am no longer interested in learning as much as before, instead I am now obsessed  with how I learn. I noticed that I could memorize all 150 Pokémon in the original series, and I could play Zelda blindfolded if I really wanted to. I remembered every character from the fallout series, and the Elder scrolls as well. I could calculate how much space I needed to build a house in Mine craft to the exact specifications I desired, and I could create a fully functioning of Super Mario World  in Little Big Planet. Many of these things when I stand back and look at them require a vast understanding of literature, psychology, mathematics, and game theory and design. I would spend only a few minutes learning these systems and playing whilst simultaneously using the knowledge that is apparently only available through education. In fact just to drive the point home, I passed my history class without every opening a book. I literally played Call of Duty Black ops Zombies and remembered in class the bickering of the characters I played as.
   This felt unreal to me. I started listening to audio books on my classes as I played various games, and found that I learning and retaining the information without having to even slightly concentrate on it. I know these methods are probably already used by many others who love games like I do. But I to get to the point of this post, Little Big Planet could be used to very easily teach grade school children an entire coding language in under a year. Why? Microchips. No, do not place high performance graphics cards into your children's brains, just hear me out. Within LBP is a neat little feature called microchips which work much like visual coding systems like that of the one used in the unreal engine. Each microchip as I have noticed in my endeavors of learning game development and especially coding, can be translated into actual lines of code. In fact, most microchips behave in the exact same way and the tutorials teach how to use them identically to the real thing. To this end I am planning on using the level publishing feature to create a small crash course on coding languages using microchips as references. I imagine that the people who play LBP are not too far from wanting to become developers themselves, but just don't have to hardware or resources to learn this large medium themselves.
   How is it that a game can teach better than schools? Yet we are told that an indulgence of video games can make you dumb? I play games every day, and I am considered one of the most intelligent people in my family, yet schools are slow to allow children to learn through something that works better. I have a dream, that one day, nerds won't be bullied into doing a jocks homework, because the jock wants it all to himself. I have a dream, that your teacher will never give you homework, they will give you a home level. I have a dream! That finals are not a 10 page essay, or a 2 hour exam, but instead is a 10 stage boss battle, or a 2 hour dungeon! Because on that day, I believe humans will become the most intelligent they have ever been in recorded history. It won't happen fast, and it won't be easy. But to look in my child's face and know that his/her life won't be as difficult will be worth it. What are your thoughts on education, Game development, and games in school? Sorry for the long post but I had a lot to get off my chest. 

While I have limited knowledge on how conventional education works, having been homeshooled my entire life, I know from what I've been told by numerous people and what I've read in several articles that the current education system does more to stunt personal growth than it does prepare them for their future. Inefficient and ineffective. Education shouldn't be about training someones mind to function a certain way, it should be about personalizing the experience to help them achieve better understanding and helping them develop as a person so they can make better life decisions. If you can teach something as complex and time consuming as programming by having someone play a videogame, then you're doing the world a great service.

Also, I've never actually played Little Big Planet. Would this course be someone similar to learning Scratch?

I just started playing "Influent" today and WOW is it an amazing teaching tool. It's not perfect, but I've never seen anything like it. It's relaxing, it's fun, and the learning is quite interactive. It's in the Summer Steam Sale right now, and I bought the Korean DLC pack for my mother (and me!). Great game, and a great way for me and others to learn with.

   m0ssb3rg935: The course will be a bit more advanced than that, I'll be covering a lot more and at the same time using a bit of the basics that, for me at least, were very unclear when I was learning coding. Such as explaining what exactly the "float" command means and what it is meant to do in game development.
   LBP is very fun and has a definitive level of replay ability in my opinion. You should definitely try it out when you get the chance. I will be making another forum post when I have finished a few of the levels so that other players can coordinate and play together, but just in case you or others do not have a PS4 or a LBP3 copy, which I will be using, I will also be publishing a full play through of the levels on Youtube so you can still see the content, but if at all possible, play the game for the best experience, as the game is excellent at teaching the use of all the level building tools that allow you to make quite a bit of content to play with, and share. 

This.

You make a very good point here, and it's very true that games can teach us better than conventional methods of learning. I remember reading about a teacher that let her kids play Yoshi's Story in class and that was how they learned to read. It's a method that allows the student to learn without feeling like they're studying or without really trying, plus it's engaging. I mean think about it: how hard is it to make yourself study for two hours straight? Now how hard is it to make yourself play a game for two hours straight? Compare the two and you get my point.

I'm all for this approach to learning, as it's more efficient and all around better than sitting in a class room listening to a teacher talk about things (much higher retention rate as well). In fact, hands on learning always sticks much better than traditional methods.


So yeah, good luck on this project. You have a great idea here and I'm sure you can do a lot of good with this. Hopefully more people catch on to your idea here and maybe we can see it become more of the norm soon.