7 Gen Blocks has everything you need to take educational software from an idea to in your students hands.
This includes not just a point and click game development platform but also the game narrative, images and math problems that can take a lot of time to create – time teachers don’t have. All of these resources can be swapped out or modified to suit your needs.
7 Gen Blocks is our no-code platform that allows almost anyone to make an educational game. To create a game, teachers type in text, select from images and click their way through to a completed game that can be played in a web browser. The number one message, loud and clear, in meeting with educators is that teachers don’t have enough TIME. As lot of the time in making a game is finding or creating images, editing images to the right dimensions, creating problems and writing dialogue, we’ve done much of that work for you. Because our beta users have found worked examples to be helpful in learning, we have sample games, sample scripts and “asset packs” of images you can download for a quick start.
What’s in 7 Gen Blocks?
7 Gen Blocks includes the following:
The Game Builder! You can click here to go there now but we highly recommend taking 5 minutes to read the rest of this page.
Documentation (you are here!)
Game Building Blocks
Your demo includes the following blocks.
- Creating a splash screen (title page) – Every game needs to start with a splash screen. Your splash screen will have an image, the title of your game and a play button. When the player clicks on the play button, they’re taken to the beginning of your game.
- Making a visual novel – The basic visual novel block is used to present a series of images and text. Each time the “next” button is pressed, the next text in the sequence is presented, potentially with a new image. This block has a text, with caption, for each screen. Optionally, you can add a voiceover for each screen. There is also a title page option.
- Making a moving targets game – This is a game block where players click on an item that is moving across the screen.
- Creating a runner game – This is a game where the player runs from left to right, jumping over obstacles that appear in the way. Jump over a set number of obstacles to win the game. If you ever played the dinosaur jumping over cactus game on Chrome when the Internet was down, yeah, it’s like that.
- Making a matching terms assessment – This block has terms and descriptions or definitions. The player clicks on the term and its match.
- Making a drag and drop assessment – As the name implies, this block has categories and the player drags items on to the category that fits.
- Creating a level up screen – As you might guess from the name, is a page that shows when a player levels up. It shows an image, text and a button which, when clicked, goes on to the beginning of the next level.
- Making an end game screen – Even the best games have to end sometimes. The end game block includes art and text signaling the end of the game, and links to a credits page, which is also included in this block.
Supplemental materials
Because teacher time to design games is limited, we’ve included sample scripts, math assessment and lessons to serve as a basic template. These can be used as-is or modified.
- Example games made with blocks
- Sample math problems – Thirty sample assessments are provided using the drag into categories block. As additional assessment blocks are released, accompanying samples will be provided.
- Starter scripts – Every game needs a narrative, so we have provided some samples you can use or modify. Based on years of research, we have broken scripts into less than three-minute blocks
- Lessons using games – Teachers have told us they like the idea of game-based assessment and instruction but they don’t have the time to write new lessons or units to include these games. We have developed the Growing Math site, with a searchable database of complete units, lessons, virtual manipulatives and games made using blocks.
Blocks Example Games
Minnesota Turtles: Another short demo, integrating math and science.
Bake-off: This is a short demo level assessing division of unit fractions. Students who answer incorrectly are re-taught the information in a video, complete a scaffolded assessment and then re-take the assessment.
* Differentiated instruction – For students who cannot complete the assessment after instruction within the game, it may be necessary to step back to fraction basics. A 30-40 minute introduction to fractions lesson can be found here.
FAQs
Still haven’t found what you’re looking for? Check out our frequently asked questions page.