Games That Make You Smarter

Monthly Archives: January 2020

AnnMaria at the edge of a cliff — I’ve written about the challenges of finding a mentor previously, Why the cool kids won’t hang out with you. Let’s be frank, if you are old and pumping gas, not too many people are interested in you as a mentor, but the last few years have been good here at The […]

The Social Politics of Mentoring

January 20, 2020 in Educational Games tagged mentoring by AnnMaria De Mars

I know that each individual change is minor, but we are making thousands of little changes like this to Spirit Lake to make the game and math problems more integrated, so players don’t feel as if they are stepping out of the game to do the math. Get our free […]

Spirit Lake: Pictures worth 1,000 words

January 20, 2020 in 7GenGames / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

We'll canoe another 2/5 tomorrow - example from like denominators (common denominator) lesson — To add fractions there are three simple steps: Step 1: Make sure the bottom numbers (the denominators) are the same. Step 2: Add the top numbers (the numerators), put that answer over the denominator. Step 3: Simplify the fraction (if needed) We believe that children learn from multiple examples in multiple situations. I’m sure you, oh […]

Math Lesson – Adding like fractions (with a common denominator)

January 19, 2020 in Educational Resources / Fifth Grade / fractions / Sixth Grade tagged Common denominator / equivalent fractions / like denominators by AnnMaria De Mars

One thing I gained from judo was the importance of persistence. There are no doubt a lot of people who have better technique than me. They had better instructors who came from famous clubs, maybe even the Kodokan. I started at the Alton YMCA. There are probably lots of people […]

How judo taught me to avoid Startup Burnout

January 17, 2020 in AnnMaria / Bilingual Education / Start-up Diaries / Women in Tech tagged startup / startup advice by AnnMaria De Mars

12 flowers together and 3 groups of 4 flowers, illustrating multiplication — You’ll never convince me that multiplication tables are unnecessary If it hasn’t happened after over 30 years of teaching math, it’s probably not going to happen. Yes, we all have calculators on our phones. Before that we had calculators on our watches (anyone remember that?). You know what is faster […]

Learning multiplication tables with Spirit Lake

January 13, 2020 in Educational Games / Math / Mathematics / multiplication tagged Spirit Lake:The Game by AnnMaria De Mars

child asleep on the back of a chair — It's hard to get excited about multiplication when you're just coming back from a break. We have a free Windows game that will help you do just that.

Multiplication with Spirit Lake

January 6, 2020 in multiplication / Third Grade by AnnMaria De Mars

Maria Burns Ortiz — Our CEO, Maria Burns Ortiz, never stops! She'll be on a fireside chat at the ED Games Expo January 9 in DC, doing game demos and then heading for a school site visit.

Meet our Traveling CEO in DC : ED Games Expo

January 5, 2020 in 7GenGames / Start-up Diaries tagged business travelers by AnnMaria De Mars

Credit where credit is due, I owe this epiphany to two people — comedian Kevin Hart, whose autobiography, I can’t make this up, I highly recommend, and two-time judo Olympian, Pat Burris. TL, DR; Since schools are still on vacation and even great teachers are not on “teacher mode” until Monday, […]

Who pretends to hate successful people? (and why I seldom ...

January 3, 2020 in Educational Games by Daniel Mondaca

Software to teach, test and track with great graphics like these images of Ojibwe fishermen leaving and canoeing down the river — What’s a fraction? Let’s start there. A fraction is composed of two numbers, one stacked upon the other with a dash separating them. The bottom number is called the DENOMINATOR. It’s the number of equal parts a whole is divided into. In one half the denominator is 2, the whole […]

Math Lesson – Fractions: What’s half?

January 1, 2020 in Educational Games tagged fractions by Daniel Mondaca