Games That Make You Smarter

Educational Games

Last time on Characters Behind the Characters, we had a chance to meet Julia de Mars, the voice talent behind the character of “Angie” in Forgotten Trail. In this newest entry of our ongoing video series, we are spotlighting the man known as the “Voice of 7 Generation Games”, Eric Cappello. […]

Characters Behind The Characters: The Voice of 7 Generation Games

January 28, 2016 in 7GenGames / Educational Games tagged Characters behind the characters / Eric Cappello / Voice Talent by Erick Salomon

Julia is shocked — We are very fortunate to have volunteers who assist us with game testing, advice on game design, and sometimes I am sure they wonder to themselves. Are you people stupid or what? I gave you these great ideas three weeks ago and you still haven’t done hardly a thing! You […]

Are you dumb or what? What.

January 26, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Unicorn — Along with running a game company, I teach, both judo and statistics. In neither my judo classes nor my courses in multivariate statistics, epidemiology or quantitative data analysis does anyone ever ask “Isn’t there a way of doing this without effort? Could we possibly learn judo without doing any actual […]

Wanted: Magical Math Unicorn

January 11, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Math by AnnMaria De Mars

woman picking fruit — It might seem funny writing about this today when the Federal Trade Commission recently slapped Lumosity with a $50 million fine for claiming its games make you brighter. In a bit of bright news for Lumosity, the FTC did settle with them for $2 million. You might think I […]

How Games Can Really Make You Smarter

January 6, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Are you a Ronda Rousey fan? Well, then, there are five reasons you might want to get a game this week. Anyone who purchases a game in December will get a free license for the beta version of Forgotten Trail thrown in as a bonus. Ronda makes a cameo appearance […]

5 Reasons Ronda Rousey Fans (and others) want Fish Lake

December 21, 2015 in 7GenGames / Educational Games / Uncategorized by AnnMaria De Mars

We’d like you to be part of our development. We really would. Even when it doesn’t seem like it at the moment. There’s a reason that we started putting our game developers’ meetings on line . We started a “tourist visa program” for people to be able to drop in as […]

Be Part of the Tech Story

December 18, 2015 in AnnMaria / Dog food / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Ronda running — We had our weekly game developers’ meeting yesterday and were extremely lucky to have a stellar cast of visitors drop in; best-selling author Derek Landy, star programmer Dave Taylor and our favorite Pokemon moderator of all time, Ronda Rousey. Prior to the meeting, our marketing staff had requested, “Since this […]

It’s an Early Adopter Discount, Not a Late Majority Discount

December 17, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

classroom — Annie Hammond offers insight from an educator’s perspective on educational gaming. A new school year is a fresh start for teachers and students…right? Of course it is! That is until the previous year’s testing results arrive. Just when teachers and students are putting one year behind them, and looking forward […]

A Teacher’s Point of View: “And The Results are In…”

November 18, 2015 in 7GenGames / Educational Games / Newsletter tagged Annie Hammond / forgotten trail / newsletter / Teacher's Point of View by Erick Salomon

arm bar — In an interesting juxtaposition of events, I was teaching judo yesterday and then came home to finish up our final report on the Dakota Learning Project, which is the official name of the two-year grant we received from the USDA to create math games. Laying out the design of our […]

Why I teach math like I teach judo

November 14, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Girl in class with teacher — Whether we’re talking about a certified in the largest school district in the country or a parent helping a child with homework, the best case scenario is individual attention from a competent, caring adult. So, what if that competent, caring adult has the flu and you have a substitute who […]

Education Still Happens When the Teacher Isn’t There

November 12, 2015 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

Boy from game, killed by bear — Having raised four teenagers and taught hundreds of others, I’m very familiar with their brand of honesty. You might think that I would not be thrilled to get a game review from one, but … It was 7 pm, a couple of hours before I normally knock off working, and […]

Drake Defeats Apathy

October 29, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

candy — When I tell people I make adventure games that teach math, social studies and English, too often people respond with, “But aren’t there already a million educational games on the market?” Or even worse with, “My 13-year-old nephew made an educational game over the weekend.” Anyone who has ever taught […]

PLEASE don’t tell me about your 13-year-old nephew who made ...

October 15, 2015 in Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars