Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

two kids — These days, I can’t get away from user stories. They were brought up in classes at Boom Startup accelerator. Someone bought me a book on them. If you are at all into agile software development you are in LOVE with user stories. All the definitions sound something like this one […]

We Don’t Have User Stories. We Have Users

October 6, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Sam from Forgotten Trail — When I was in college, the point of business ethics was to feel superior to other people. Sometimes, I felt superior by dismissing older relatives who thought being expected to buy lunches for clients was extortion as ‘not understanding how businesses work’. Other times, I was contemptuous of companies that […]

Ethics: Where is YOUR line?

October 4, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Welcome to an adventure in gaming — By the way … this was from my article in our bi-weekly newsletter. If you aren’t on the list and would like to be, email info@7generationgames.com and we’ll sign you up. +++++++ I was asked to write on diversity in tech but I wanted to talk about our tourist visa […]

Are you crazy? Are you lazy? And other questions answered

October 2, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

I was asked to write an article on diversity in tech, but I wanted to talk about our tourist visa program instead, so I just ignored Maria and Jessica, and here you go. Kind of a crazy idea to get a visa to visit a virtual world, isn’t it? It’s […]

More on our 7 Generation Games Tourist Visa

October 1, 2015 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Dennis, me, Maria — What’s it like working with your family? I get that question a lot. The answer is: I guess it depends on your family. For me, it’s great! We are a real family business. Being a startup, everyone has four or five jobs. I’m the CEO. I’m also 1/3 of the […]

What’s it like working with your family?

September 30, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

I thought about this quote from Paul Lockhart for a long time today, trying to decide whether I agreed with it or not. “No mathematician in the world would bother making these senseless distinctions: 2 1/2 is a “mixed number ” while 5/2 is an “improper fraction.” […]

Is teaching “mixed numbers” a stupid idea?

September 25, 2015 in Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars

Jennifer looking sadly at the laptop — Here’s a real throwback Thursday for you, the first time anyone outside of our pilot testers at Tate Topa (in Fort Totten, North Dakota) played Spirit Lake. From Christmas, 2013 – Mom, can I help with something? (I think she meant making Christmas dinner.) Yes, you can go upstairs and […]

Throw Back Thursday: Alpha Testing Fish Lake

September 24, 2015 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday by AnnMaria De Mars

We’ve made a lot of progress on Forgotten Trail this week. I really wanted to be working on Aztech but thankfully, Gonzalo, Eric, Manny, Justin and Stephen have been on that. We’ve also gotten some feedback from our teacher-consultants, Jovi, José and Annie. Thank God because my time has been […]

Forgotten Trail, Accelerators and Other Random Thoughts

September 21, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

baby — My daughter, Jennifer, is a wonderful teacher. It’s not just me that says so – ask just about anybody. That’s her on the right, when she had her not-so-little sister come speak to her class on Career Day. Her Facebook profile is her dressed up as Amelia Earhart teaching history […]

Tourist Visa Results – From Double Suck to Amazeballs

September 19, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Welcome back to school everyone! We all know that students love to hear stories, but as the school year begins, I decided to share a story with all of you. It begins, like all good stories with … Long, long ago… I was part of a project that decided to […]

What Do The Best Teachers Do?

September 16, 2015 in 7GenGames / Education: Innovation and STEM by AnnMaria De Mars

bags of money — Did you ever see those commercials about how the government wants to give you free money? Government grants go unclaimed every year! The government wants to give you money! Yeah, that’s a lie. The government does not want to give you money. You have to knock the government down and […]

Show me the money! Grants vs Investor Funds

September 16, 2015 in Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Codex page with 2 warriors and a bunch of boxes — If you didn’t know, now you know, the Library of Congress is a wonderful resource for teaching any subject. Today, I was working on our newest game, Aztech, and writing “bonus level missions”. I had seen a lesson a teacher did where students were given several digital photos from a […]

Now Playing: Making History and English Awesome

September 13, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars