Games That Make You Smarter

Maria Burns Ortiz

100 elementary school kids with our posters — Let’s talk about the power of the U.S. Latino market. Wait, you might be asking yourself, a post about Latinos and its not even Hispanic Heritage Month? Yes, we’re crazy like that over here at 7 Generation Games. But seriously, we’re in the midst of completing our AzTech Games […]

Why Going Bilingual Not Only Makes Sense But Makes Money

August 31, 2017 in Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

When brainstorming our Kickstarter rewards, we wanted to come up with some really cool things that would be unique to what we’re doing here at 7 Generation Games and our team. The “textbook” (in this case, it’s a literal book of texts) was one of the first things that popped […]

Get a Look Behind-the-Scenes with Our Literal “Text-Book”

August 25, 2017 in 7GenGames / Reality Show / Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

Quality educational games have the ability to revolutionize learning. Of course, the key word is quality – and with so many games and apps on the market, quality can be hard to find. Did you know there are over 150,000 apps tagged “education” between the Apple App Store and Google […]

What to Look for in Good Educational Games

August 22, 2017 in Uncategorized by Maria Burns Ortiz

Game o — Maybe you’ve seen it as a meme or on a t-shirt on a random guy at the mall, it reads: Whenever I see that, I always want to say, “You probably did use algebra, it’s just that in real-life, no one says, ‘Oh, now this is the part of the […]

The Importance of Real-World Application in Education

August 21, 2017 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Parenting Like I Know What I'm Doing by Maria Burns Ortiz

Week 1 of our Kickstarter campaign for “AzTech Games” has flown by – and we’ve already raised over $4,000, putting us fully on track to hit our goal. (If you haven’t backed us yet, here’s your chance!) As we started going through the artwork to select the reward images for our “Art Director” […]

Cool Kickstarter Reward: AzTech Artwork

August 18, 2017 in 7GenGames by Maria Burns Ortiz

Kids playing game — Kids will play a video game 50 times to incrementally improve, to get a fraction of a level further. Wouldn’t it great if they took that same approach when it came to homework problems? With educational games, that can happen! That realization is one that more and more people are […]

Why Your Kids Should Use Educational Games

August 16, 2017 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Educational Resources by Maria Burns Ortiz

Yesterday, I wrote about how SBIR awards are a highly competitive, but also amazing way to fund your startup’s R&D. (Speaking of funding startups, you should totally back our Kickstarter!) Today, I’m following that up with the biggest misconceptions I keep running across that will ensure that you do NOT […]

How NOT to Get A Grant

August 15, 2017 in Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

If you’re running a startup you have probably read pages upon Internet pages about how to get funded. It’s about pitching to VCs, seeking angel investors, getting into accelerators or crowdfunding, but I’m still surprised by how many people don’t know what SBIR awards are. They literally are the reason […]

Funding Your Startup: SBIR Grant Awards

August 14, 2017 in 7GenGames / Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

We rolled out a Kickstarter campaign for our upcoming series AzTech Games on Thursday. Now, this marked out third Kickstarter campaign, so I knew what I was getting myself into. But we’re also further along as a company than we were the first two times, so it’s also very different […]

That Time I Emailed Everyone I’d Ever Met

August 12, 2017 in 7GenGames / Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

basketball court — We launched our Kickstarter campaign for our bilingual AzTech Games series yesterday – hitting 13% of our goal in the first 12 hours – which was amazing! Of course, we still have a long way to go, and part of the reason why we decided to do a Kickstarter wasn’t […]

An Introduction to AzTech Games

August 11, 2017 in 7GenGames / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Educational Resources by Maria Burns Ortiz

We just launched a Kickstarter campaign for our upcoming bilingual games series, AzTech Games! (Back us please!) After weeks of planning and pulling together the video/determining rewards/lining up rollout/putting together the project page, now the real work begins. Doing a Kickstarter is kind of like having a baby. You spend and […]

Why We’re Doing Another Kickstarter

August 10, 2017 in 7GenGames / Educational Games / Parenting Like I Know What I'm Doing / Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

Maria — Excuse me if I don’t feel all empowered by this recent uproar about women in tech and the recognition of how poorly women are treated. As if this is some big revelation that people are suddenly having. As if it’s actually something that’s going to change now because now people are […]

Lots of Outrage, Little Action on Issues Women in Tech ...

July 7, 2017 in Start-up Diaries / Women in Tech by Maria Burns Ortiz