Have 3 minutes to help my students?

As I write this blog post, I am excited for the opportunities my students have in our Entrepreneurship course.  We are participating in a regional competition called the Greater Binghamton Scholastic Challenge sponsored by Modern Marketing Concepts.  At this competition over 50 student groups from 20+ school districts bring product/service ideas to fruition through much hard work.  The past couple of years, the winners have received funding to actually start a business. Last year, partly due to your input, we won 2 of the 3 events!!  Every aspect of it is real-world and we need YOUR help! Below are the surveys each group put together.  IF you have time to complete a couple, they could really use your feedback.  None of them will take you more than 90 seconds to fill out.  Remember, this is a learning experience for all of them, so if you have any feedback for them, please feel free to comment on this blog or tweet me at @MrsMurat.  Thank you in advance for your assistance!

Feel free to skip around on the list!

Tomorrow's Eden  

Luxury Weight Training 

Shoe Cycle

Incentive Service

Better Braces

Color Shifters

No Worries

WeatherWear

Shark Detection

ClearVision

Sneakerhead App

Cop Radar Detectors

LZ Farm

Part and Labor Product

Three Bowl: Microwavable Dish

Quick Shopper

Key Tracker

Nite Light

ShortStop Shop

MiFi

Sleep Soundly Speaker Pillow

Heat Feet

App Smackdown, Periscope and #DigCit!

In #digcit class this week, we concluded our unit on digital literacy by engaging in an app smackdown.  It is housed in a Google Slides.  They signed up via a Google Doc and off we went!

Here is the set up of the project:

Students had to choose a Chrome app/extension that none of their classmates chose for the app/extension blog review we did the previous week and could not duplicate one for the smackdown. The rubric they had was this:

They chose apps/extensions that even I learned from, which is a pretty big feat since I have over 250 apps and extensions!!  This year not only did we have our classmates, two teachers, our district PR person, our district IT person and our building principal and assistant principal in as guest judges we also did a live Periscope broadcast where we had over 100 views and guest judges through Periscope.  This Google Form: was used as the evaluation and feedback form.

Coupons at Checkout was the unanimous winner even though there were so many useful apps and extensions in this smackdown!

I hope you are able to pick up a few new apps/extensions!

Providing an Authentic Audience

This post is to show a colleague the power of getting her student's work out in front of an authentic audience. If you have a minute and could leave a quick comment about the student's projects or about the power of being a connected educator, I think we can get her connected!

Our business teacher first approached me about how to do a pamphlet about credit cards.  I asked her what her end goal was.  She said she wanted her students to not only show what they know, but to share that information with their classmates.  I asked how she would share them.  She said put them on the table in the back for others to look at.  I asked her if she would consider having the students do them in a virtual platform so that they could be shared beyond the four walls of her classroom.  At first she was hesitant because she didn't exactly know what that meant, but she has a growth mindset and is always looking for ways to provide a better learning experience for her students.

Here is a very brief overview of her lesson and the student's projects.

In the weeks leading up to the project, students learned what debt/credit was, how it can be helpful/useful and how it can be harmful. We defined and discussed terms associated with both revolving loans (credit cards) and installment loans (car loans, mortgages…) Students learned about how interest rates impact debt and what happens if debt isn’t paid off before the grace period and debt snowballs.  Also learned what credit score is, how it is established, and the advantages of having a good score.  Students then used the knowledge that they acquired to teach other teens about credit in an online platform of their choice.

Resources that were used: 
NEFE booklets
https://www.debt.org/understand/

Student's Projects
Projects Class 1
Projects Class 2
Projects Class 3