Ever wonder what goes into making video games? Here’s your chance to find out. 7 Generation Games is opening up one of its game development meetings on December 16,2015 at 12:30 pm Pacific Standard Time, so that you can come check out what goes into creating virtual worlds, making ideas a […]
AnnMaria De Mars
4 I’ve been out and about a lot lately, from Minot to Fort Berthold to San Diego to Fort Totten, all within a few weeks, and now back home in Santa Monica. I spent a lot of time with the staff at Spirit Lake Vocational Rehabilitation Project, had dinner with teachers […]
Unexpected Lessons
Making a bilingual game is more than twice the work of making an English-only game. Not only do you need to have everything written in Spanish and English but you also need to create functions that make everything change from Spanish to English (and back again). To add a layer […]
Making Bilingual Games with Help from jQuery
In an interesting juxtaposition of events, I was teaching judo yesterday and then came home to finish up our final report on the Dakota Learning Project, which is the official name of the two-year grant we received from the USDA to create math games. Laying out the design of our […]
Why I teach math like I teach judo
Whether we’re talking about a certified in the largest school district in the country or a parent helping a child with homework, the best case scenario is individual attention from a competent, caring adult. So, what if that competent, caring adult has the flu and you have a substitute who […]
Education Still Happens When the Teacher Isn’t There
Having raised four teenagers and taught hundreds of others, I’m very familiar with their brand of honesty. You might think that I would not be thrilled to get a game review from one, but … It was 7 pm, a couple of hours before I normally knock off working, and […]
Drake Defeats Apathy
How much money do you need? Once you’ve reached a threshold where you can provide for the basics of food, clothing and shelter, extra dollars really don’t buy you much happiness. This is a finding that isn’t completely without its detractors but I have found it to be largely […]
How to Find Money to Run Your Startup
1. Don’t be a sole founder. When I was a sole founder, at the very beginning of establishing 7 Generation Games, I thought this was unreasonable prejudice on the part of investors. Now I see that they are 100% right. I cannot imagine how we could possibly make games and […]
5 Things I Learned from a Start-up Accelerator
1 We spent the weekend updating our website and one of the really useful pages you’ll find is this one http://www.7generationgames.com/resources/fish-lake/powerpoint/ It has 16 different mini-lessons for teaching fractions, for example, showing how to divide 2 doughnuts among 3 people. If you need one more five-minute example or explanation on like […]
Teaching Resources: Mini-lessons for Fractions
1 If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that we are part of the Boom Startup Ed Tech Accelerator . We have successfully closed our first round of funding, but we have gained more than money from the experience. Don’t get me wrong, though, we do like money. Speaking of […]
Watch Your Money Because You Never Know
1 When I tell people I make adventure games that teach math, social studies and English, too often people respond with, “But aren’t there already a million educational games on the market?” Or even worse with, “My 13-year-old nephew made an educational game over the weekend.” Anyone who has ever taught […]
PLEASE don’t tell me about your 13-year-old nephew who made ...
Drum Roll Please …. and the results of the Tourist Visa Week 2 missions are AMAZEBALLS Di is amazeballs for not just posting on social media but also testing the games on her laptop and working with us to identify hardware limits. She also noted that we meant to dam […]