Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

planet earth — Nothing over the past few years has changed my mind about “educational games”. Most of these are either bad games or bad education. I don’t – completely – blame the makers of those games, though. That’s like blaming television executives for all of the stupid programs on TV. If 13 million […]

The crazy economics of educational technology expectations

October 20, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

wand — My brilliant niece, Samantha, has a term for it: yes-butter. Read to the end for why yes-butter is the death of so much new technology. I’m sure you’ve had yes-butter spread thickly on you as well. You know what I’m talking about – the people who, when they have a […]

Kid bad at math? Here’s your magic wand

October 17, 2016 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

frog and lily pad — I really do like teachers. You know I do. I used to be a teacher, my brother is a teacher and my daughter is a teacher – all at the middle school level. Currently, in our spare time of which we have none, my brother, sister and I all teach […]

Teachers need to quit hating on business

October 17, 2016 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Muskrat — You would think as a company creating software for education, both in school and at home, that we would be discouraged by an article with the title “Why For-Profit Education Fails”. You would be wrong. In fact, I agree with pretty much all of the Atlantic article but I found […]

Why we won’t fail

October 14, 2016 in Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Accent Mark shown correctly — Since we just had our Latino tech meet up, this seems like the perfect time to give a tech tip on getting those Spanish-language accent marks right in your HTML. Look closely at this image below. It’s part of what was in one of our pretests that assess our game. […]

Tech tip: accent marks for Spanish text

October 13, 2016 in Start-up Diaries / Tech Tips by AnnMaria De Mars

Topiary dinosaur — We appreciate everyone who reads our blogs, listens to our podcast and plays games. That doesn’t mean we are friends, though. So, let’s get to know each other a little better! I’ll tell you five things you probably don’t know about us you can add comments anything interesting about you. […]

Five things you probably don’t know about 7 Generation Games

October 11, 2016 in 7GenGames by AnnMaria De Mars

Cranky old teacher with a stick — Have you seen the sign carried by a 90-year-old woman at a civil rights event that says, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit?” I was feeling like that today when I had forwarded to me by people who, correctly, thought I would find interesting […]

Dancing on the way to the pencil sharpener

October 1, 2016 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

buffalo — In my last post, I mentioned that follow-up was one of the keys to getting the most possible out of a conference. The South Dakota Indian Education Summit was no exception. I always try to go to some sessions on topics I know absolutely nothing about. If you know me […]

Art, literacy and the South Dakota Indian Education Summit

September 27, 2016 in 7GenGames by AnnMaria De Mars

Plane — Conferences are expensive. Even if you aren’t at one with a five – or six – figure registration fee, you still are taking days away from work. Probably, you are flying to another state, staying at a hotel and eating in restaurants. Why on earth would you spend all of […]

Four ways to waste your time at a conference

September 27, 2016 in Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

New page with field, trees, deer and a wigwam in the background — Often, people have told us that we should integrate the educational content more tightly with the games. However, that’s prohibitively expensive. The idea that we would have all of our educational content for example spoken by 3D characters in the games, or act it out by, say, catching 125 fish, […]

Making games better – Thanks to you!

September 20, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Aunt Jean from forgotten trail looking at map — It’s that time again when my cofounder and I travel far and wide to tell the world what we are doing with 7 Generation Games. Tuesday through Thursday of this week we are in San Jose, as part of the Innovate and Celebrate Conference sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association and […]

Maria and AnnMaria: the traveling gnomes

September 20, 2016 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Eva eats a Lollipop — A better person than me probably would not feel a certain sense of self-satisfaction when an organization closes down. Good for them! Maria and I have been told many times over the years that “There is no money in education” or “All of the money comes from yuppie parents of […]

Why I’m not giving up on middle school kids

September 13, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars