Games That Make You Smarter

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

7GenBanner — University statistics courses – I’m not just an employee, I’m a customer! (I bet none of you remember that Hair Club for Men commercial and don’t get that reference. That’s okay, I amused myself.) In my spare time, of which I have none, I teach a statistics course once or […]

A Tale of Two Statistics Professors

November 18, 2014 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars

7GenBanner — When I was a kid, I absolutely loved the Wizard of Oz stories, but even at nine years old, I realized they were fantasy. Apparently, not everyone got the memo. Take Professor Wogglebug, who had invented education pills. All students needed to do was swallow his pills and they had […]

Professor Wogglebug’s math class

November 15, 2014 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Earlier this week, I talked about the difficulty of coming up with math problems and examples that interest students. There are, however, two sentences that I would bet most children have uttered at least once by the time they turn 11 years old: Are we there yet? and It’s not […]

Freebie Friday: Video and Powerpoint for fractions on a number ...

November 14, 2014 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Freebie Friday by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post from January 22, 2008 on “Tinkerbell visits The Julia Group” that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it the first time around. In the movie, Hook, there is a very sad part where Tinkerbelle turns herself into […]

Throwback Thursday: Tinkerbelle visits The Julia Group

November 13, 2014 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday tagged The Julia Group / Tinkerbelle by AnnMaria De Mars

7GenBanner — Since it has been about a month and a half into my internship here at 7 Generation Games, I have come across many interesting situations testing Spirit Lake and Fish Lake. One of my first testing concerns was when I needed to exit out of Spirit Lake during the […]

Questions and Answers – Building Blocks of Education

November 13, 2014 in 7GenGames tagged 7 Generation Games / AnnMaria / answers / blog / education / Intern / Math / questions by AnnMaria De Mars

7GenBanner — “We need someone to talk to the students about STEM. Quick, get that one Hispanic lady with a Ph.D. that runs a tech start-up and teaches statistics.” At least, that’s how I imagine that it goes when I keep getting invited to speak at schools – elementary schools, middle schools, […]

The Hardest Part of Educational Games

November 11, 2014 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post from April 15 2012 on, “Start-up truisms that are, well, true” that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it the first time around. The very first month I started this blog, four years ago, I wrote a short […]

Throwback Thursday: Start-up truisms that are, well, true

November 6, 2014 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries tagged entrepreneur / startup by AnnMaria De Mars

Tasina - 7 Generation Games — The problem with a start-up is you don’t have defined tasks, defined hours, defined anything really. For the past three days, I have been working on every single page of Spirit Lake: The Game, trying to improve every piece of the game, large and small. I added in the multiplication […]

How much is enough? When is a game ‘good enough’ ...

October 30, 2014 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post from February 17, 2014 on, “Whatever Happened to Graduate Research?” that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it the first time around. I read this recently in a powerpoint that came with a research methods textbook If answering […]

Throwback Thursday: Whatever happened to graduate research?

October 30, 2014 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday tagged Doctorate Degree / Graduate Research / Graduate Students by AnnMaria De Mars

Graph explaining Buffalo herd statistics — One exciting aspect of interning for 7 Generation Games is being able to collaborate with the members of the 7 Generation Games team. As a result of the guidance from AnnMaria, Maria, and Jessica, I have been able to work on informative, yet engaging resources for teachers and students. My […]

Applied Math – Using math in our daily lives

October 29, 2014 in 7GenGames tagged 7 Generation Games / 7GenerationGames / blog / Fish Lake / Intern / Math / Math Game / Native American History by AnnMaria De Mars