Valve cares about education, and their latest initiative to turn Portal 2 into an educational tool is the company putting its money where its mouth is.
At the Games for Change conference, the Seattle-based studio talked about its Steam for Schools initiative. Teachers who sign up for a beta will gain free access to Portal 2 and allow their students to participate creatively in the game by designing and sharing their levels with the game's built-in Perpetual Testing Initiative level designer. It's all a part of a program they're calling Teach with Portals.
More than just providing schools with the basic version of Portal 2, Valve has created an educational version of the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker that allows educators and students to craft unique puzzles and share custom lesson plans.
You can sign up for the program on this site.
Did I mention that Valve is really freaking cool for doing this? Because they are, and that needs to be said.