Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Cover of The New Warriors — The book, The New Warriors, Native American leaders since 1900, was recommended to me by my friend, Dr. Erich Longie, who is the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation. Unlike most of Erich’s recommendations (sorry, Erich) I actually read this one. While Erich is, naturally, intensely […]

Book Review: The New Warriors Gives a Lesson in Perseverance

May 7, 2017 in AnnMaria / Cultural content by AnnMaria De Mars

Me, Diana & Trennell at BOOST — Really, I get it. I used to teach middle school and I still teach graduate students. It’s hard work and people are always trying to get me to switch to a new textbook, content management system, computer application. Some of it is godawful, really overpriced and makes you wonder if […]

Letter to Teachers, from a Startup Founder: Where’s the Love?

May 1, 2017 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

AnnMaria, our president, is going on a road trip across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Missouri in a couple of weeks to visit schools, after-school programs and other social service providers on and off the reservations. Her granddaughter, Eva, is lobbying to go as her sidekick. Below is the […]

Be Team Julia!

April 26, 2017 in Reality Show / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Kids sharing computer — Did you ever have someone point out what was in front of your face all along and, metaphorically, kick yourself for being so stupid? Or, is that just me? Last week I was at the Best of Out of School Time (BOOST) conference and went to a session by Sam […]

Games as a tutoring experience

April 24, 2017 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

3 daughters — My lovely children, especially the three younger ones, often tell me that email is for old people. While I do use email a lot for work, I am now wondering whether it is outliving its usefulness. I was at the BOOST conference for 3 days last week and then spent […]

Is email for old people?

April 23, 2017 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

random mountain lion sculpture — There is a reason that I’m excited to go to Palm Springs and it is not the fact that you can be outside without a parka, although that is a benefit in selecting conference sites (North Dakota and Minnesota, I’m looking at YOU) . It’s not that Palm Springs seems […]

Why I’m Excited to Go to Palm Springs

April 18, 2017 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars

Woman on rocks in the river — There is only one reason any company stays in business, and that is that they have money in the bank. No matter what you do or make, no matter how good or important it is, you run out of money and that’s the end. Some days, I feel pretty good […]

The Vicious Circle of Start-ups and How We’ve Beaten It ...

April 14, 2017 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

river in Belize — Lately, I’m giving a lot of thought to working from Belize. If you know me even a little bit, you are probably skeptical, because I don’t believe I have taken a full week off work in over 30 years. Nope, not even when I had a total knee replacement, not […]

Working from Belize?

April 12, 2017 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

death — This is the fifth, and last in a series of posts on how to make a simple maze game. The first four posts can be found below. Initialized all of the variables and called a few functions. Described keyDownHandler function that executes based on where the player goes. Explained the […]

How to make a simple maze game: Part 5, the ...

April 12, 2017 in AnnMaria / Code Talk by AnnMaria De Mars

road in North Dakota — Since I have been working non-stop lately, I decided to take a page from my earlier years of blogging and on the weekends just write about whatever was on my mind today, which was … Did you ever read a science fiction book or watch a movie where there is […]

My Alternate Universes

April 9, 2017 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

I have hired exactly one developer who was self-taught who did an adequate job. I don’t mean that I am biased against developers who taught themselves a particular language, because, really, after you’ve learned one programming language it’s pretty easy to pick up another one. Once you’ve got down the […]

My prejudice against “self-taught” devs

April 5, 2017 in AnnMaria / Code Talk / DevDiary tagged Code Talk / devdiary by AnnMaria De Mars

scab Vendor: confessions of a tattoo artist — I can be really stupid sometimes. Yes, hard to believe, I know. A few years ago, on my blog for The Julia Group, I did a series of posts on 55 things I had learned in 55 years. Last night, I wrote one on the biggest thing I had learned […]

What I Learned by Listening: Backstories

April 3, 2017 in AnnMaria / podcast by AnnMaria De Mars