Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

book — 2015 is going to be a great year, I can feel it. One post isn’t going to be enough to get in all of my resolutions for the new year. Staff at the Ferguson Library tweeted the question, “What are your literary resolutions?” My literary resolution is to read a programming […]

My Literary Resolutions

December 31, 2014 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Girl about to set off on path — Five hundred years ago, the Ojibwe people picked up everything they owned and walked half-way across the continent. No one really knows why. There is no written history of this event. I remember the precise moment I first heard about it. I was talking to Debbie Gourneau, from Turtle Mountain, […]

It starts with a good story ….

December 29, 2014 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

coding — In my early twenties, I was working at Fortune 50 company and happened to be on the same flight with one of the senior vice-presidents. They had over-booked first class, so he got bumped and ended up sitting next to me. Never one to miss an opportunity, I asked him […]

My Every Day of Code

December 18, 2014 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

I’m a fan of the “hour of code” that many schools are doing. I’m trying very hard to limit my day to an hour of non-code. Today isn’t working out as well. I may have three hours of non-code, between opening the bank account and two meetings today. Maria explains […]

We’re a real grown-up company now

December 17, 2014 in 7GenGames by AnnMaria De Mars

woods — If you have never experienced the pleasure of having an idea that won’t leave you alone turn into reality, well, you have my sympathy. Today was the first day of working on our newest game. It’s so new it doesn’t have a name yet. We are going with a working […]

Every project has a first minute

December 17, 2014 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

As my final day in the office is coming to an end, I would like to reflect on the amazing work that is being done by the 7 Generation Games team. From the constant updates to Spirit Lake and Fish Lake to the development of a new iPad game, there […]

My Favorite 7 Generation Games’ Math Videos

December 10, 2014 in 7GenGames tagged 7 Generation Games / blog / Common Core / education / Fish Lake / Intern / Math / Math Game / Spirit Lake / videos by AnnMaria De Mars

Unicorn — Making math awesome is harder than it looks. Before anyone jumps in to tell me that I have a charmed life, let me admit that I know that. I get to work with brilliant developers and designers, gifted and dedicated teachers and bright, fun kids. I get to do it all […]

It’s not all unicorns in start-up world

December 4, 2014 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

girl picking flowers in meadow — They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. So, I thought today I would show you how Fish Lake is progressing from the alpha version to a soon-to-be-released beta version. This is what our Fish Lake start page was. And this is what it will be after I finish […]

Two pictures are worth 2,000 words: Progress on Fish ...

November 29, 2014 in AnnMaria / Dog food / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

I spent half of Thanksgiving and a good bit of the rest of the week working on improvements in our free demo. Why? Why would someone do all that work just to give it away? Erich Longie, our lead cultural consultant, would say it’s because he has had a good […]

Why Freebie Friday instead of Black Friday?

November 28, 2014 in 7GenGames / Freebie Friday by AnnMaria De Mars

Here at my internship I have been assigned quite a few tasks to help out the 7 Generation Games team. One of my assignments has been to go through various educational sites and rate them for other 7 Generation Game employees. While I have come across some great sites, I get […]

5 Other Math Games We Like

November 26, 2014 in 7GenGames by AnnMaria De Mars

7GenBanner — These are comments from actual educators. I’m a vegan. I could never buy a game that has shooting deer in it. Couldn’t you have the Indians make friends with the deer instead? We could never use your game in our school because it involves shooting animals. We could never […]

Don’t Know Much About History … (Or, why our games ...

November 25, 2014 in AnnMaria / Cultural content by AnnMaria De Mars

7 Generation Games Blog — “Why do you care about math so much?” As a volunteer, I spend a lot of time with middle school and high school students, and this is the question I get asked the second most often. (The most common question I get is “What is the hardest part about […]

Why Do You Care About Math So Much?

November 19, 2014 in AnnMaria / Math by AnnMaria De Mars