Monthly Archives: October 2016

Last year, I missed my daughter’s Halloween costume contest. I wouldn’t say it seemed like a “big” thing, but it was a thing. Halloween at her school features a class-by-class parade and all the kids march around in their costumes, with a costume contest where they select winners from each […]

Why It’s Not Worth Feeling Guilty

October 31, 2016 in Uncategorized by Maria Burns Ortiz

It’s Friday, so that means that it’s time for another Freebie Friday. Welcome! Today’s freebie is associated with our game Spirit Lake and it’s an authentic and copyright-free Native American photo. To be more specific, the photo is of Sioux reservation life in South Dakota. This photo shows the Sioux […]

Freebie Friday – Sioux Reservation Life in South Dakota

October 28, 2016 in 7GenGames / Freebie Friday tagged 7 Generation Games / Freebie Friday by Diana Sanchez

Interacting with experts in educational technology, I sometimes wonder if they inhabit a different world from me. In this world, installing software is not an issue, Internet speed is no problem and every child has a computer or iPad. I hope I get to visit there some day. I spent […]

The EdTech Problem No one Talks About

October 27, 2016 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post by Dr. AnnMaria De Mars from August 20, 2013 “Women in Tech: Why am I here?” that we wanted to share in case you missed it the first time around. Dave Winer set off a firestorm with his blog post asking […]

Throwback Thursday – Women in Tech: Why am I ...

October 27, 2016 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday tagged 7 Generation Games / AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday by Diana Sanchez

by Kelly Barnes To help understand families of children playing 7 Generation Games, AnnMaria asked me to weigh in on 7 Generation Games as a parent, PTA volunteer and front-line in the efforts to improve our schools and society for the next generations. So, here you go, your first missive […]

Notes from the Parental Front

October 25, 2016 in 7GenGames / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

I have wanted for a long time to revisit Fish Lake and make all of the improvements our wonderful users have suggested but other responsibilities (prototypes we had a grant to develop) took priority. We have been working on this revision as we could scrape away time, and lately we’ve […]

Game progress: The graphics

October 22, 2016 in Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

It’s almost midnight and I put the last two changes into Fish Lake so Dennis can do a new build and Devon can test it in the morning. The page for learning more about fractions on a number line looked like this: Now it looks like this: Our old […]

Making Better Games: Part 1,679

October 22, 2016 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

bull — “I’m not Tom Cruise.” When a middle school math teacher said this, my initial response was, “No, duh.” He was irate, though, because this extremely qualified, knowledgable teacher had been told by his principal that he would not have any students failing in his class if he “made class more […]

Do what you love and never work a day in ...

October 21, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Welcome, once again, to another Freebie Friday! It’s Friday and that means that it’s time for your weekly freebie dose. Today’s freebie comes to you from our game Fish Lake. The freebie is a video on visualizing the exact fish problem. This video helps you through a fraction problem […]

Freebie Friday: Visualizing the exact fish problem

October 21, 2016 in 7GenGames / Freebie Friday tagged 7 Generation Games / Freebie Friday by Diana Sanchez

Going through our archives, we came across this great post by Dr. AnnMaria De Mars from July 22, 2013 “It’s Mr. Right, Not Mr. Perfect” that we wanted to share in case you missed it the first time around. Because it’s not tomorrow until I go to bed and get up […]

Throwback Thursday: It’s Mr. Right, Not Mr. Perfect

October 20, 2016 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday tagged AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday by Diana Sanchez

planet earth — Nothing over the past few years has changed my mind about “educational games”. Most of these are either bad games or bad education. I don’t – completely – blame the makers of those games, though. That’s like blaming television executives for all of the stupid programs on TV. If 13 million […]

The crazy economics of educational technology expectations

October 20, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

With the release of Making Camp (download it here!), we were recently reflecting on how far we’ve come as a company in the last three-and-a-half years. Startup life is filled with ups and downs and – as Maria and AnnMaria tackle here – some interesting characters to say the least. This […]

7 Things to Never Say to Your Boss

October 19, 2016 in 7GenGames / Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

Games That Make You Smarter