Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

bull — When I tell people that data showed students improve math scores 30% after playing our games, I expect more questions than I get. I have concluded either: They think I am full of bull%^& (I promised Maria not to swear on this blog, but you can always read my personal […]

How much math can you learn from a game?

August 25, 2015 in Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars

Aunt Jean — I’ve spent the last two days working on just one concept – greatest common factor. I’ve written several pages of explanation and examples, a math activity where you drag numbers that are factors to the correct spot, added <abbr> tags that you can hover over to get words defined. In […]

You Don’t Get Smarter By Accident

August 21, 2015 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

players dead under the night sky — One of those things that is actually FAR more interesting than it sounds is “standards for mathematical practice”. These are things that everyone at every grade should be learning. My favorite (yes, I have a favorite, don’t judge me), is to persevere in solving problems. I am totally convinced that […]

Giving Up Is Not An Option

August 17, 2015 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

pink mouse — One of my favorite cartoons is Pinky and the Brain, which begins every episode with the question, What are we going to do, today, Brain? answered by, “The same thing we do every day, Pinky, take over the world.” So, that is what Maria (also known on twitter as @burnsortiz […]

Taking Over the World

August 11, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

flying chicken — I had a grandchild home from camp with a fever, so she was at my house. If you were in our house that morning, you would have heard this shouted from the downstairs office to the upstairs office. Grandpa! Grandma needs that sound you get when catch a chicken! […]

The Flying Chicken of Failure

August 5, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

audience at pitch session — I just returned from South by Southwest’s V2Venture conference where I attended the pitch contest, and I left the event thinking — like I do every time I attend a pitch event – how completely subjective pitching is. It depends 100 percent on who you’re pitching to and […]

The Perfect Pitch: (Spoiler! There’s No Such Thing)

August 3, 2015 in 7GenGames / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

We have data to show that kids who play our games improve their math skills substantially. We have anecdotal data (that sounds so much more scientific than “email from players”! ) that tells us adults who play our games improve their math skills. Seriously, if you are over 13 years […]

Podcasts that make you smarter

July 13, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

AnnMaria and her daughter as crabs — In case you missed it, here is what I was thinking about a couple of years ago …. There have been days, especially when I started my first two businesses, when I was seriously stressed. What if I could not make the payroll? What about cash flow when the business […]

TBT: Advice to Entrepreneurs – Chill. Seriously, chill.

July 9, 2015 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday by AnnMaria De Mars

Teacher with students — I often feel as if people have forgotten the social part of social media. When I see people who are following some ridiculous number of people on twitter, like 200,000 I know it is impossible that they are reading what all those people have to say. I asked someone about […]

My Day of Blog Reading

July 6, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Mayan codex — I was going to title this “How not to be stupid in game design” but then I realized the points apply to just about everything. Hello, people in industry, non-profits, government – in short, just about everybody – if you are going to design something for a group of people, […]

How NOT to Be Stupid

July 5, 2015 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

In his autobiography, Lee Iacocca said something along the lines of: ‘Is not a people person’ is the kiss of death on a performance evaluation, because people is all we have working here at Chrysler. I have known some brilliant programmers who never achieved their potential because they could not […]

Works Well With Others: Key to Start-up Success

July 1, 2015 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

characters on map — Elements can have data. What the heck good is that? Why would your <div> tag need data? I’m always trying to learn new things, even if I have no particular use for them at the moment, because you never know. I had an idea that the sounds that play when you […]

Better HTML5 Game Development: Data Attribute

June 30, 2015 in AnnMaria / Code Talk / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars