Games That Make You Smarter

Yearly Archives: 2020

Flight 1 of 13 in NSF Innovation Corps Program — What exactly is the Innovation Corps? Why is AnnMaria not returning my calls/ emails / meeting requests? Will Maria, AnnMaria and Juliana ever sleep again? Which of them lives at LAX Terminal 7 and which in the Delta terminal at MSP? Read on to have all of these questions answered. […]

We’ll never sleep again. NSF I-Corps Begins

January 26, 2020 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

We think bilingual educational games are great (that’s why we make them), but it can’t be all fun and games. Just as we’ve done with our other games, we have supplemental teaching resources for our bilingual games – in both English and Spanish. If you’re on a budget, and who isn’t […]

Teaching bilingual kids? We can help

January 24, 2020 in 7GenGames / Educational Resources tagged 7 Generation Games / Teacher Resources by Diana Sanchez

One of our first investors told me, “The one guarantee I can make about a startup is that the company you end up with is not going to be what you envisioned when you started out.” Wise man, as evidenced by the fact that he invested in two of our […]

The Winding History of 7 Generation Games

January 23, 2020 in Educational Games by Daniel Mondaca

Spanish video on timeline — You have one student – or fifteen students – in your classroom who have Spanish as a first language. Maybe you don’t speak Spanish. Maybe you do but those 15 students are at 10 different levels, from proficient in English to only knowing how to say, “May I go to […]

Bilingual Resources for Any Teacher

January 23, 2020 in 7GenGames / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Resources by AnnMaria De Mars

Almost four year ago, we released our initial beta of our very first game, Spirit Lake. And we got a lot of positive feedback. The 3D virtual world looked great. Kids were engaged. Math scores went up. But we knew it could be even better. It was good – but […]

The Perfect Time to Get “Spirit Lake: The Game” Has ...

January 22, 2020 in 7GenGames / Educational Games by Maria Burns Ortiz

Here’s one thing you will never hear someone say: “I wish I knew fewer languages.” You know why? Because knowing another language is a key to unlocking parts of the world you couldn’t otherwise access, from conversations to literature to music to more. OK, so you might never become Ziad Fazah, […]

The Benefits of Bilingualism

January 22, 2020 in 7GenGames / Cultural content by Victoria Moll-Ramírez

That’s right! We will be demoing our educational video games this January 30th in Anaheim, California. The California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) is a non-profit organization incorporated in 1976 to promote bilingual education and quality educational experiences for all students in California. CABE has chapters, members and affiliates, along […]

Meet us at the California Association for Bilingual Education regional ...

January 21, 2020 in Educational Games by Daniel Mondaca

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