Kickstarter

This morning marks the end of our Kickstarter campaign, and our send off is bittersweet. First and foremost, thank you for your generous support of Martha Madison’s Marvelous Machines!  

Despite not reaching our Kickstarter goal, we’re pleased to announce that Second Avenue will continue to work on the game thanks to a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation. This grant will help fund development of the game, building off our prototype built in 2011. Second Avenue will also continue to work in collaboration with the School of Interactive Games and Media at Rochester Institute of Technology. As a bonus, we’ve generated such a wonderful response through conversations that many of us have had. Whether we interacted with you via a personal email, in a tweet or here as a comment, we sincerely appreciate your interest in Martha. 

Those conversations don’t have to end. Follow us to stay up to date on everything we plan on doing with Martha and future serious games on our website, twitter, linkedin and facebook. We promise to keep you posted! 

Thank you again, and we’ll see you on our social channels. 

-The Second Avenue Team

Second Avenue Learning will be live on the CEO Hour, WCEOhq radio this Friday, 8/3 between 11 am and 1 pm EST to discuss Martha Madison’s Marvelous Machines. Listen to CEO Victoria Van Voorhis and VP of Development and Delivery Steve Nazarian live online, visit the archives or check out the free podcast on Apple’s iTunes at any time. 

Also featured on Friday’s show, Dave Mammano, Founder and CEO of Next Step U and Scott Steinberg, author of the Crowdfunding Bible.

Share with your friends, and don't forget to tune in!

Why did we play test? We play tested to make sure kids could play the game and had fun doing so, an important step for both entertainment and educational games.

What do we mean by efficacy testing? We had a diverse group of kids answer questions about their knowledge of science and their favorite subjects. Next, we gathered lots of data while they played the game, and again afterward. 

Our results were GREAT. 

All groups showed:

• High degree of engagement
• High frequency of replay, on average 5 times (far above the norm for education games)
• 76% of time: active, on topic communication
• Less than 6% of time: off topic communication. Students stayed on task.
• Improved science & math self-efficacy scores in all groups
• Urban students saw score increases of over 20%, almost closing the gap with their suburban and rural peers

Martha Madison's Marvelous Machines shows HUGE potential for the future of education!

Pledge today, and encourage your friends to do the same. Thank you!

If you've come this far, we hope that you've watched our campaign video. One of our favorite parts? A little something to do with a creek, Crisis Chasm and members of our creative and development team.  

Don't know what we're talking about? Watch that video. We promise it's good. Don't forget to pledge, while you're there. We appreciate all of the sharing many of you have done, but remember that we'll only succeed if we achieve our monetary goal.

Without further ado, images from our original shoot!

Greetings! 

We are building great momentum for Martha Madison, almost at $4K so far! 

THANK YOU to everyone who has pledged! Continue to help us spread the word, as our project depends on successful funding. We know you have lots of science loving gamer friends. Perhaps you know teachers who want to make a difference in education. Wouldn't they love to know about Martha too? The more beta testers we have on board, the better the game will be, and the bigger the impact we will have on education, together. 

We have received some excellent questions so far, and we encourage you to keep them coming. Once we get a few more, we'll create a FAQ here on our page. Ask and you shall receive. We are here to help!

Have a great Friday!

-The Second Avenue Team