Game Maker

Game maker is an innovation which allows users to create their own games.
It's aim is to make it relatively easy for anyone to make their own games.
I personally found it quite confusing to create a game, but I believe that if you use it several times one might grab a better grasp of creating a game.

The only benefit that would be obvious for use in the classroom is that it may motivate students to complete work and improve hand eye coordination.

It is free to download and use. There are not very many tutorials.

Game Maker 8.0 is soon being released which will have more helpful tutorials on it.

I would not use this in the classroom as I don't think that it would be easily applicable to many learning areas other than ICT, and it would take many lessons to introduce to the students.