Great site for law classes!

The Discovery Channel supports a website with a vast array of offerings for topics related to the legal environment.  It’s worth a look!  Www.investigationdiscovery.com

Financial Literacy

When teaching financial literacy, do you find yourself tiring of the same old text book examples?  If so, you may want to take a peek at the following website.  You can find some curriculum under the “Financial Education” link.  There are also other tidbits geared towards teaching credit and other topics.  Happy hunting!

Teaching Personal Finance

Apparently there are many of us business education teachers that are currently teaching personal finance courses. I was surprised when the state designed the current standards for the social studies curriculum. Somehow the designers embedded a few standards within the economics standards. It appeared that it was done without research or input from teachers of personal finance.

I have taught both economics and personal finance courses. These are both content areas where business education teachers are highly qualified. I believe that both economics and personal finance should be separate courses even though the subject matter of one course could be integrated into the other.

The social studies standards will be revised soon and many of us should be involved in the process.

How I Use Blogs

Blogs are a great way to interact with your students and parents outside of the classroom. Below are two examples of how I use blogs as a teacher. Blogs are so easy to use and can be a very valuable educational tool. Before you start blogging, make sure your blog has a purpose. On another note much like an advertisement you need to incorporate A (attention) I (interest) D (desire) A (action) into your blog constantly to get students and others to view and respond to your blog.

HARRISON’S MARKETING STORIES - Marketing and business current events are fun to talk about and the students love discussing them. How many of you are like me and have started off class with some sort of marketing or business story for a bell ringer activity only to look at the clock and realize you have spent the entire hour discussing / talking /going off on a tangent about current events? I realize there are worse things but I also started to think about the “quiet student” who I know is with me but not adding to the discussion because they are over voiced by the other students.

This is why I decided to create the Harrison’s Marketing Stories blog and give students extra credit if they post a comment to an article / video / question I pose. I tell students in order to get extra credit two things must happen. 1. They have to pose a justified response – just saying I agree / disagree will not earn any extra credit. 2. They must sign their post with their first name and first letter of the last name as well as their hour they have my class. I also tell the students that even though all comments are worth extra credit; a comment earlier in the trimester is worth more than ones a few days before the final exam.

To compliment the extra credit I will randomly reward students for a post with a free soda or candy bar. I feel the more I can fulfill the “what’s in it for me” need the more successful this blog will be. I also can not tell you how many times students have come in and asked if they get a soda because they posted a comment on my blog.

I purposely try to “stir the pot” when I post a new story / video / question. I want the students to question why and ask why not. I have even posted stories just to see if the students are following what I am saying in class.

I have my blog linked off of my faculty home page to make it easier for the students to find. Another reason I did this was because if a parent / perspective student was wondering if they should take my class or another class hopefully this blog would give them an idea of what we talk about in class on a daily basis.

IRISH DECA NEWS - I also have a blog that is basically a news feed for all of my DECA members and parents. I communicate heavily with my DECA members and their parents via email. Every email that I send out to either the parents or the students is sent via email to my Irish DECA News blog. This is also linked off of my faculty main page for the same reasons listed above.

Blogs can be used for almost anything. I have seen teachers post the daily assignments, make the student’s authors and they have to post a journal entry, market research, essay quizzes, etc…

You can put as much or as little time as you would like into your blog. I spent probably too much time looking for just the right background and the best gadgets to add. When you do decide to create your blog, send me a link and I will post it on our site.



The two blogs mentioned are listed below


Harrison's Marketing Stories - http://harrisonmarketingstories.blogspot.com/




Irish DECA News - http://irishdecanews.blogspot.com/