Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Julia and Austin, amused — I must have struck a chord with my previous post on helping (encouraging/ coercing) your adolescent to get a first job. I thought I provided some practical advice but received several emails asking for more. So, being the full service organization we are, here is my follow-up post with more suggestions […]

Parenting Productive Adolescents: Advice Needed

July 15, 2017 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Parenting Like I Know What I'm Doing by AnnMaria De Mars

This is one in a series of posts on building an Android app. You can read my previous post on expansion files and AndroidManifest.XML here When you create a new project Android studio will add default libraries to be able to build your application and wrap it as an .apk. […]

Libraries: A key part of building an Android app

July 12, 2017 in Code Talk by AnnMaria De Mars

Dr. Longie — By Dr. Erich Longie, Spirit Lake Dakota Nation As was stated in a previous post … The Dakota cultivated perseverance. Traditionally, rules were rules of survival and if they weren’t followed, the whole tribe was at risk. Those who enforced the rules persevered in their chastisements until individuals conformed to the law. […]

Fear is the greatest enemy of perseverance: Video games and ...

July 10, 2017 in 7GenGames / Cultural content by AnnMaria De Mars

sonogram of Julia — I have been teaching a very long time and in a wide swath of this country. I taught math to middle school students who were attending a special school due to severe behavioral and emotional problems. I taught developmental psychology, creating one of the first online courses ever offered at […]

What I learn from teaching while running a startup

July 9, 2017 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Women in Tech by AnnMaria De Mars

I posted this on LinkedIn a few months ago. I thought given the current news cycle, and some recent responses, I’d post it here. Recently, someone advised me not to mention that we are a woman-owned company or Latina-owned company. He said, “Your products are good enough to stand on […]

Should we hide that we’re a women-owned company ?

July 4, 2017 in AnnMaria / Women in Tech by AnnMaria De Mars

Julia holding shopping bag — It’s not easy being the parent of an adolescent under any circumstances. Parents want to protect and care for their children. Youth want to experience life, to become young adults. If you find the transition to adulthood easy, your family is the lucky exception. In the next few posts, I’ll offer […]

Parenting Adolescents: Get a Job, Kid

July 3, 2017 in AnnMaria / Parenting Like I Know What I'm Doing by AnnMaria De Mars

pi top laptop computer — Did you ever see those labs in the comic books or super hero movies? They’ve got these random parts and wires all over the place, a few minutes later, as the aliens are about to attack they’ve thrown together an Iron Man suit or programmed the planetary defense shield. You […]

You: A Real Scientist Super-Hero (sort of)

July 2, 2017 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars

Ojibwa woman — Does it even make sense to talk about “native culture” when there are over 500 tribes? In a previous post, I described the math and story line involved in our project making games customized for tribal youth. (This is from a paper Bruce Gillette and I presented at the National […]

Can you customize video games for tribal youth using “Native ...

June 29, 2017 in 7GenGames / Cultural content / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Gonzalo hard at work — Last post, I ended talking about the content of the Android app package. Let’s look at that a little more in-depth, Expansion files Expansion files are used if your app is larger than 100MB. Google supports expansion files up to 2GB, In our case we are using an expansion files that […]

Getting your app into Google Play: Basic Steps – continued

June 28, 2017 in Code Talk / Tech Tips by AnnMaria De Mars

Julia in soccer goal — SAS Curriculum Pathways – which I had heard about years ago, recommended to a few friends that teach middle school and, to be honest, not looked at since, has grown in every good way. First of all, I was not aware they had apps and the first thing I saw […]

Free Education Resources I Found at ISTE: 1. SAS Curriculum ...

June 27, 2017 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Resources by AnnMaria De Mars

ice cream cone — Well, maybe the word is “depressing” more than true, or a phrase, “true and depressing”. Lately, I’ve talked to four different people who had worked in educational technology start-ups that closed. All four of them were really smart, hard-working people who had the same problems: Getting enough people to know about their […]

True stories of start-up life

June 27, 2017 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Engineering is cleaning poop from water — It’s my first time at the International Society for Technology in Education conference and so far it’s great! One thing I have concluded from years of conference going in general is that you should always go to the poster sessions. I like posters a lot better than presentations because you […]

ISTE Advice: Always Go to the Poster Sessions

June 26, 2017 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars