The last post was hopefully a titillating introduction to Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, Dr. Yolanda Venegas, and Marisol Castillo’s research. More on their investigation of what makes a good game here! They found that there are certain features that make particular games more effective than others, a couple of which are proudly […]
7GenGames
What makes a game educational? Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, Dr. Yolanda Venegas, and Marisol Castillo got together to investigate whether popular games are actually helping children to learn and boost scholastic achievement, as well as what it is about these games that makes them either effective or ineffective. To start, […]
Are they really learning? How educational are educational games?
In my last post, I talked about making educational games that are educational. When game designers and programmers create math games, they often have little idea of what math children are learning in a given grade, in what order, nor what types of hints to provide. In short, unsurprisingly, the […]
Making Educational Games That Are Games
I’ll be speaking at the Serious Play conference next month on Making Educational Games That Add Up . My basic premise is that too often educational games are designed by gaming companies, in which case they are not very educational, or by educators , in which case, they are not […]
Making Educational Games That Are Educational
It is the end of June, which means that summer is here again and the weather in Los Angeles could not be any more beautiful! The markets are brimming with fresh, seasonal produce, the boutiques with the latest travel and swimwear styles, the beaches with Angeleans and vacationers alike working […]
Summer is Here Again!
It might seem odd that we have a tweet-up at mixed martial arts competitions. Seriously, what do arm bars and math have in common? More than you might think – I once did a survival analysis example with the dependent variable as how long an opponent lasts in a match […]
7 Generation Games Tweet-up: A family tradition
Last post was what we accomplished. We also learned a lot, I think. First of all, when we do this again, we will be clearer up front about how much time we expect to spend on the project. I think most of us did not realize how much this week was […]
Lessons learned from anti-hackathon
Wrapping up the anti-hackathon and it seemed a good idea to do a post-mortem. What happened? We accomplished A LOT. In a week, we: Drafted a skeleton of the game design, Drafted the story line for 2/7 of the game, Created characters for 2/7 of the game, Created three video clips, […]
Anti-hackathon report: Part 1- What Happened
THROW BACK THURSDAY This post is was written on July 6, 2011, by Dr. Erich Longie, Senior Cultural Consultant for 7 Generation Games. Erich is part of the founding team of 7 Generation Games and oversees our cultural staff to ensure all cultural content is vetted and historically and culturally accurate. […]
National Indian Education Study – more culture = lower math ...
Our cultural consultant, Dr. Longie, wrote: “My mother, a fluent Dakota language speaker, said this about her beloved Dakota language: “It’s very descriptive; you say what you mean and you mean what you say.” This inherent honesty in our Dakota/Lakota/Nakota language made it hard for a Dakota person to be […]
Dakota Values and Games
This weekend 7 Generation Games will be a part of the Summer Leadership Conference at the University of San Diego. If you live in the area and are interested in education you should definitely plan on stopping by the exhibits to see what new resources and tools are available for […]
7 Generation Games will be attending the Summer Leadership Conference ...
Every day, I get out of bed excited to start working. There is only one problem – with so much to be done, it’s always a question of what to do first. Take our game Spirit Lake- it’s playable. Almost no errors (I say almost because the second I declare […]