I have been searching for a Middle School an off-the-shelf, Computer Software Programming Club. I would have thought through Google, Microsoft or School Districts that such an already developed Club would exist. None appear to exist so I will need to dust off my old limited knowledge of Assembler, BASIC and "C" to try and learn some basics for curriculum. The Lego activity appears to be for younger children. Reading through several of the gaming books, e.g. GameDevelopment with Action Scriipt, Beginning Game Programming, Beginning C# Game Programming, etc. There appear to be a multitude of languages and methods to use. Ideally the games I would teach Middle School children would: * run on the Internet; * maximum flexibility as to platforms, e.g. PC, Mac, Internet hosted; * easy to comprehend; * quickly obtain working, impressive game(s), capturing the youngsters attention, stimulating them to learn more; Therefore for the above types of gaming, which building blocks do you recommend (i.e. C or C++ would be too demanding): C#, Direct3D, ActionScript, DirectX.net, etc?

The only language I know of that fits all of your requrements is Macromedia's Flash, which I believe is ActionScript.

I suggest going with a gamemaking utility, like The Game Factory or klik & play. If you wanted something more powerful, you could also go with a high level game language, like Blitz Basic or Dark basic. There are many more to choose from as well. :-/

I would also suggest a purchase of some generic artwork to let your kids incorportate it into their game. Artwork is almost always the biggest hurdle in game making.

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And Direct3D and DirectX.net are not languages, they're APIs. You use them with a language, you don't directly program in them.

enjoy your life while you still can, don't spend all your time on the computer because you will later regret it

i personally suggest C/C++ along with assembler, after that almost every language will look like crap, except C# since I like C# for its productivity and efficiency, plus it looks ALOT cleaner, but the former should give you a very good low level knowledge that will help you later on alot but its up to you there are other languages if you dont want to learn those, ie java, python, visual basic, J# although i know no one who programs with it :P, Lisp, ASP, ASP.NET, D, D++, PERL and other, google "programming languages" up

Python meets at least three of your requirments:
* maximum flexibility as to platforms, e.g. PC, Mac, Internet hosted;
* easy to comprehend;
* quickly obtain working, impressive game(s), capturing the youngsters attention, stimulating them to learn more;

I think it also meets your other requirment that it runs on the net, but I've never used it for that personally.

Check out Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner. By the end of the book, you make an asteriods clone.

Also, here's a paper written by teachers at a school that decided to teach Python and their results.