Which 2012 Valve education initiative offered Portal 2 for classrooms?

The 2012 Valve education initiative that offered Portal 2 for classrooms was Teach with Portals. Valve introduced it alongside Steam for Schools to help educators use Portal 2 and its Puzzle Maker tools in lessons.

The program grew from teachers who were already using Portal to discuss physics, mathematics, problem-solving, and the logic of cause and effect. Valve’s developers worked with educators and students while creating Puzzle Maker, a more approachable level editor based on the professional tools used to build Portal 2. Teachers could create puzzles, design activities, and share lesson plans rather than relying only on Valve-authored curricula.

The school-oriented version provided Portal 2’s single-player content and Puzzle Maker through a restricted Steam client intended for educational use. This was different from simply giving every student the full commercial release and was designed to let instructors manage installations and classroom materials.

The initiative is often confused with Steam for Schools, but the names refer to related parts of the same effort: Steam for Schools was the education-focused distribution platform, while Teach with Portals was the Portal-centered program and resource community.