Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Study Purpose: Design and test an app to help people with mental health issues get services. In this study, participants will: Participate in a 60-minute focus group with four other people and an interviewer. Participants will be asked questions about: Your feedback on proposed characters, design and features for a […]

Join a focus group: Mobile Application for Tribal Mental Health ...

July 31, 2024 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Woman farmer in front of a field — You might wonder what the heck this title has to do with our latest game updates. I'll tell you. Both do maintenance in the off-season.

How is an educational game developer like a grain farmer?

July 25, 2024 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

dancers at Veterans week powwow — Co-design Games to Teach with Primary Sources from Indigenous and Rural History, starting with a game about Native American Veterans

Educators – Make Games about Native American Veterans with Us

July 14, 2024 in 7GenGames / Cultural content / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Two kids walking in the rain, one reading a book and one pointing at a fence. — Since we began 7 Generation Games nine years ago, I swear, half of the people I have met, when they hear I make games, say to me, "Hey, I have an idea for a video game." That's why we started working on 7 Gen Blocks ...

How 7 Gen Blocks is WordPress for Educational Games

June 6, 2024 in 7Gen Blocks / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

At 7 Generation Games, we always like sharing resources that we love. This week we’d like to share a site we love, which is the Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom site. At first glance, it may not appear there is much here, but appearances are deceiving. Virtual Field Trips Plus […]

Minnesota Ag in the Classroom: Hidden Gems

May 14, 2024 in Educational Games / Educational Resources tagged Educational Resources by AnnMaria De Mars

You may not know that, before I founded or co-founded four companies and a non-profit foundation, I was the first American to win the world judo championships. I also taught Entrepreneurship at California Indian Nations College. At first glance, it might appear that judo and entrepreneurship don’t have all that […]

Entrepreneurship Advice from a World Judo Champion

May 8, 2024 in Educational Games / Founders Corner / Women in Tech tagged 7 Generation Games by AnnMaria De Mars

New Mexico desert — TL; DR - in the Making Camp Navajo update, we made it a lot less likely that students would need to call over the teacher for help.

Thinking of teachers (& students): Making Camp Navajo Out of ...

March 27, 2024 in Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

games we've made — Algebra allows you to go past memorizing answers to specific problems to solve TYPES of problems. 7 Gen Blocks lets you create types of problems, games or instruction with minimal coding.

7 Gen Blocks : Coding as Arithmetic is to Algebra

March 19, 2024 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

TL;DR – Being specific is a necessary but not sufficient condition for prompts for AI. Including examples in your prompts can work wonders. Now, read on. Let me tell you about one of the worst math games I ever saw. It was used in an alternative high school program for […]

What AI Can Do: Writing Useful Math Word Problems

March 6, 2024 in Educational Games tagged 7 Generation Games / AI / Artificial Intelligence / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Man playing saxophone with notes swirling around — Over the past few years, we have interviewed hundreds of teachers, principals, after-school staff and other experts in education – 100% cited maintaining student attention as a challenge. Across the classes we observed and teachers we interviewed, from Title I schools, from 15-50% of students were not turning in their […]

Warm-up Games and a Math-in-Music Lesson

February 7, 2024 in Educational Games / Educational Resources / Teachers tagged Educational Games / Educational Resources by AnnMaria De Mars

student tester — Recently, I was on the Professor Game podcast and was asked if I had one piece of advice for someone who was going to make educational games. I said, Test your game early and often with actual students and teachers. None of us are nearly as good as we think we are at guessing what students will find engaging to play or difficult to learn.

Change the game ! Co-Design with Teachers and Students

January 3, 2024 in Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Catching fish — If you know even a little bit about coding, you can make educational games with 7 Gen Blocks. Get in on our private beta now

Making Educational Games with 7 Gen Blocks – Who, what, ...

November 26, 2023 in 7Gen Blocks / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars