Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

push-ups — Maria hates my push-ups analogy for our games but I think it is totally accurate. No one’s entire workout consists of push-ups. However, just about every athlete does push-ups at some time or another. Just about everyone can do push-ups. Maybe not equally well or an equal number, but I […]

Push-ups for your brain

August 6, 2017 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Math by AnnMaria De Mars

Angie — 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. This conflict is even greater when the child has a disability. Parents often see their child as vulnerable because of […]

Parenting Adolescents with Disabilities

August 1, 2017 in AnnMaria / Parenting Like I Know What I'm Doing by AnnMaria De Mars

Pyramids may have B.C.E. dates on a time line — Are you one of those people who just memorized the formula in math class and tried to get by? Did you memorize as much as you could of the math book and just hope that there were enough familiar problems on the test that you could at least pass the […]

Why you don’t understand math

July 29, 2017 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Math by AnnMaria De Mars

how many apples do Meg and Joe have — One book I highly recommend for anyone who teaches math above the the fourth grade level, all the way up to doctoral students, is Writing to Teach Mathematics and Science. Connolly and Vilardi give a TON of ideas, including drawing out the problem. Students were so engaged with (meaning they didn’t […]

To Solve a Math Problem (in Spanish or English): Visualize!

July 22, 2017 in Cultural content / Educational Resources by 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