Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Picture of statue of Sacajawea from 1905 — Thanks to funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, we have developed two games in the past year that focus specifically on primary sources, a third game that mentions primary sources, a fourth game in development and will be starting on a fifth game in July.

Games for Teaching STEM with Primary Sources

June 9, 2025 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Aunt Jean from forgotten trail looking at map — You can meet our president, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars at the Game Developers Conference, happening this week in San Francisco. She'll also be at ASU-GSV in San Diego, April 6-10, in Minot doing a workshop and attending the MSU powwow April 25-26, and in Fargo for TedX from July 23-25th.

GDC, ASU-GSV, MSU and TED-X – Meet AnnMaria at all ...

March 19, 2025 in 7Gen Blocks / Educational Games / Women in Tech by AnnMaria De Mars

Two kids in kitchen with chocolate cake in front of them — To help catch student attention, either at the beginning of a lesson, or to apply a concept as attention starts to wane, we’re building a series of “Warm-up Games” that can be played on a Chromebook or any other computer with a browser.

Bell Ringer Games to wake up your middle school students

February 13, 2025 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Old-fashioned shop with books, food, papers and clothes scattered around. Dialog box says, "You have 120 seconds to find all the items." — We've finished a code library that enables millions of possible game designs, built out 10 games and even included a little AI in the process.

The Massive Progress of 7 Gen Blocks

February 2, 2025 in 7Gen Blocks / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Hotel room with bed, two tables, two chairs and soap bubbles floating in the air — Presenting Follow the Bubbles - a fourth-grade math and social studies game with a twist.

Making it up to elementary teachers: Fourth-grade math & history ...

January 27, 2025 in Educational Games / Special Education by AnnMaria De Mars

woolly mammoth — We all have our biases, whether we want to admit it or not. Having worked with Native nations for over thirty years, when the current cohort of teachers in our Teaching with Primary Sources project (yes, you can still join) wanted to do a game centered around the Lewis and Clark expedition, I had some mixed feelings about that.

Questioning Lewis and Clark: Why did they matter?

January 17, 2025 in 7GenGames / Educational Games / Game Design by AnnMaria De Mars

screen used to select an image when creating a visual novel — I keep reading that AI enables developers to work 30% ! 50%! 100%! faster. AI can replace junior developers! So far, I have found none of this to be true -until this weekend.

Finally! A use for AI: 15,000 images in a day

January 14, 2025 in 7Gen Blocks / AnnMaria / Code Talk / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Map of US with bird, buffalo, plant, boat and map icons superimposed — How do we cover seven different topics in one game? We've started co-designing our next game with teachers and the challenge has been to combine multiple interests and perspectives.

Discovering STEM on the Lewis and Clark Trail

December 31, 2024 in Educational Games / Game Design by AnnMaria De Mars

Starting with the number 1 question we get most often Although most participants are classroom teachers you do NOT have to be a teacher to participate. We welcome museum staff, culture teachers, paraprofessionals, students, community educators. If you teach or are wanting to teach, you do not have to be […]

Design Learning Games with 114 students, 18 teachers & me!

November 29, 2024 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Co-designing Games to Teach Indigenous History with Primary Sources If you can't make it to NCSS or you did make it but we ran out of handouts, here are the links to all of the things.

Did you meet 7 Generation Games at NCSS?

November 19, 2024 in Conferences / Cultural content / Educational Resources by AnnMaria De Mars

What we have for elementary and social studies teachers, coming up and ready right now

Here’s some love for elementary and social studies teachers

November 19, 2024 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Money Smart Games for Middle/ High School are bad games - here's why I recommend them

Financial Literacy for middle and high school students

October 16, 2024 in Bilingual Education / Educational Games / Educational Resources by AnnMaria De Mars