AnnMaria De Mars

I know a lot of people who want to work with the big accounts. Whether it’s a financial advisor who wants to start off by advising the latest athlete to sign a multi-million dollar contract or the sales person who is only interested in selling to General Electric or the […]

What Microsoft Gets Right and Other People Don’t

19 May, 2018 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

mural of indigenous art — Recently, I was asked to answer three questions related to Common Core standards. Since I thought these were of general interest, I’ve posted the answers below. We currently develop and market our games in the U.S., Chile and Trinidad. Therefore, we make every effort to teach content that is essential […]

What do you think about Common Core?

15 May, 2018 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Math by AnnMaria De Mars

Girl in boat. Math problem: What is the average number of miles rowed — Teaching math is a challenge and teaching it to English language learners can be twice as challenging. You might think the solution is to give the student textbooks in Spanish but not all Spanish-speaking children are Spanish-reading children. Often, their education has been in English, in which their fluency is […]

Six videos for teaching math to English Learners

13 May, 2018 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

me sitting on a bench in the mountains — So, Tuesday was a holiday in Chile (Labor Day) which meant most people took Monday off, too, for a four-day weekend . Interesting that in both North and South America Labor Day comes at the end of summer, even though the seasons are reversed- but I digress – even more […]

Start-up Diaries: Welcome to Concepción

4 May, 2018 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

mountain trail — I now work in places that used to be my screensaver. Years ago, I had a nice office and a good salary, working for one big company after another. Before that, I had a nice, secure job as an Associate Professor at a university. What all those jobs had in […]

I’m writing this post on top of a mountain

2 May, 2018 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Church in Plaza de Las Armas — I’d honestly never given much thought to immigrants. I mean, sure, I realized that it must be hard to move away from your family, friends and everything familiar. I assumed doing business in your second language was hard. But I never realized how hard it really was until being thrown […]

Ex-patriate Experience: It’s twice as hard in your second language

30 Apr, 2018 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Did you know that in Latin America, our games are marketed under the brand Strong Mind Studios ? There is a long story behind that, but one reason is that we do so much more than just games. Here are a few ‘extras’ that come with every game: * Pretest to […]

So much more than just a pretty game …

24 Apr, 2018 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

drag and drop answer — In my last post, I talked about how good educational games aren’t that easy to make because education isn’t that simple. Today, I want to revisit the same math concept, that division is multiplication in reverse, but from a programming standpoint. First, the setup. The first part sets the number […]

A simple little math problem isn’t so simple

23 Apr, 2018 in AnnMaria / Code Talk / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Something known by all good teachers – but not all software developers – is that good education is complicated and difficult. Let’s talk about a simple concept in math. Division is multiplication in reverse. If 4 x 7 = 28 then 28 /4 = 7. Also, 28/7 = 4. Easy, […]