ISB was lucky enough to be assigned 30 Portal 2 Steam accounts. For the past few weeks I have been running a Portal 2 ASA. (After School Activity)
Here is my feedback about using Steam in the classroom:
The account you install Steam with and then download the Portal game with, is the same account with which you must run Portal. If you thought that you could download and install Steam and Portal with an administrators account, and then let the students log in with their own account to access Portal, you’d be wrong.
On a MAC with Steam and Portal already installed on with an administrators account, when the student logs in, Steam will require the full Portal game to be downloaded from scratch. The download takes several hours. This needs fixing so the ICT Department can get the computers setup and then the students can come to class and get straight to work.
Each week there are Steam updates, which start when you launch Steam. This needs to be optional as it wastes classroom time. Often the update crashes and you need to force quit it to get through the update.
Other than these technical issues, the students are throughly enjoying exploring the Portal world.