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Want to teach your students about financial literacy? Want to reinforce the importance of working hard to be successful in life? Want to have some fun with your class? Consider setting up a Classroom economy.

I came across this concept from the awesome Thom Gibson after listening to him on John Spencer’s podcast. He has created a heap of useful resources not only describing what this is and how it can work in your classroom, but also a short online training course. I completed the course and then embarked on setting up a classroom economy. Here’s how I did it:

Step 1: Set the scene

Explain to the students that the class will model itself on running as a business. I inform them that that I will be the business owner and I will employ students to do jobs, for which they will earn virtual money that they can do stuff with such as buy virtual houses, cars and use to bid for items in auctions. The reason are two fold. Firstly to reinforce class expectations including the value of working hard (the harder they work, the more money they can earn). Secondly to teach students some financial literacy skills such as managing finances, saving, and investing.

Step 2: Create a set of Class expectations

As teachers, we all have our expectations for students in our classes. Often at the beginning of the year we do an activity to have some student input into these class rules. Over the past few years I have reframed this as not only having expectations for all, but if students meet those expectations, they can have a number of privileges. This then acts as a contract where students can agree to the terms, and if they do they can participate in the classroom economy (I’ve never had any students refuse in the 4 years I have been running this in my class).

Step 3: Create a job list

Now you get your students to apply for class jobs. Rather than just make stuff up, I checked out this list from Thom Gibson’s course that I used as inspiration to make my own list. The job needs to have some authenticity to it and I’ve used some of them to ‘outsource’ some of the tasks that I do. A great example is the ‘Visual Display Artist’. This job is to design a new Google Classroom banner each week. This has turned out great as we regularly get refreshes for the digital hub of our classroom. This is something that I would do when I remembered, but now that it is a student job, it gets done more regularly and to a higher standard than me! Check out some examples below:

One thing I explain is that everyone will get an income, which I’ve called the Universal Basic Income. But I also deduct some expenses for being in the class (electricity, wifi, desk rent) so all students end up with a meagre amount left over at the end of the week. I invite all students to apply for ‘Tama tu, tama ora” or ‘Tohunga” (detailed in the job description below) that enables students to have a significantly higher income than their expenses. After that, they can apply for the variety of jobs listed. Some of my favourites are Bouncer (organised the class line for those who need to line up), Clerk (to handle any admin of giving out and collecting in resources), and Yogi (who runs a short session after returning from lunch to refocus students on their learning).

Step 4: Run your classroom economy!

I use a New Zealand based website called Banqer to handle the admin. It has two versions of class banking and I use the Primary version as it has better control over class jobs. Students can apply for the class jobs and I have enough so that any one who wants a job can get one (so even though I only have 16 listed jobs , some have 2 positions such as Bouncer). Part of the application process is to write a short CV and so we can have a class discussion around what type of information should go in this (previous work experience, characteristics such as hard worker etc). Once all the job have been allocated, I have the weekly pay to be automatically credited to student accounts on a Thursday. On a Friday, one task that Class captains need to do is deduct any wages for students who didn’t do their jobs that week. The Class captains can be made ‘Bankers’ of the website and so can manage these transactions.

Step 5: Have an auction

So now the students have earned all this cash, what do you do with it?

Firstly, have a class auction. Buy some prizes (including some mystery bags) and have students bid for each item.

Secondly, have an emoji race. Students can bet money on a particular emoji for either the pot of money bet, or a set prize.

In summary, I’ve tried this in my class over the last five years and after a number of iterations, find it really adds to the classroom culture. It’s amazing how keen students are to earn extra virtual dollars and it also serves as a great vehicle to teach financial literacy.

And if there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it. Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it

Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby”

Teaching students how to solve problems is an important part of a 21st Century education. But what if you don’t have a hook for a DJ to revolve like that great philosopher Vanilla Ice? Is there a process we can teach students to help them solve problems? Of course there are a number of different processes but the one I will focus on here is Design Thinking.

I recently organised a teacher workshop around this called ‘Design for Success’. Supported by Dr Cathy Bunting (Director of the Science Learning Hub), we guided 25 Tauranga based educators through a sequence of activities designed to enable teachers to “use Design Thinking to unlock students’ creative problem-solving potential.” So first up, what do teachers come up with when asked to articulate a process to solve problems? Check out their responses:

Next step was to hear from people who used a process in their day to day work. I was fortunate enough to have a link with Rocket Lab through their recently announced Space Educator programme and had a one hour video call with Felicity and Alex who went into great detail of how the $4 billion aerospace company use a design thinking process to build and launch rockets. We were particularly lucky to have Alex, who is the project manager on the Neutron rocket project, describe in detail their processes. He talked about trying to solve complex problems, where the solutions are unknowable and that it is often the ‘crazy solution’ that can lead to a significant insight in to building the actual solution. He also stressed the importance, as a project leader, the importance of empathy and integrity when leading a team on such ambitious projects.

Then it was time to get into some of the nitty gritty of how to teach this process to students. When I first started this, I used the d.school Design Thinking process – you know the one with the pretty hexagons?

But I found that I had to put in a heap of time and effort to deliberately teach what those words mean to students. They weren’t that accessible to the students I was teaching, but then I discovered John Spencer’s LAUNCH cycle.

I have been using this approach over the last couple of years with much more success than the more challenging language of the the d.school steps. Over that time I’ve sourced a series of activities for students to complete as they work their way through the LAUNCH cycle and come up with a solution to their problem. I’ll go through a task for each step in more detail with each heading being a link to a web page with more activities, but feel free to make a copy of the slide deck I put together (and please share with me any awesome activities that you have come across!)

Look Listen and Learn (Empathise)

The first step is to get a problem and a user. So it’s not just enough to have a problem with Design thinking – you need a user who is experiencing that problem to come up with a solution for. A task I get my students to do is to story board for someone who is experiencing the problem:

Ask Tons of Questions (Empathise)

In this next step, we want to get a deep understanding of the problem so that when we come to identify possible solutions, we know we are solving the problem at hand. The 5 Why’s task is a great activity for getting students to consider the root cause of the problem (best explained in this video).

Understand the process of the problem (Define)

As well as researching existing solutions, technology that they could use for their solution, students should get a deep understanding of users by conducting user research. They can either conduct an interview or use a survey.

Navigate Ideas (Ideate)

One of the best activities I’ve found in this phase in Crazy 8s. There’s a great video explaining the process as well as a timer you can use when your class does this task.

Create a prototype (Prototype)

This is then fun part – creating a physical representation of the idea. This could be a scale model or a diorama that represents how the idea works. Although it would be great to have a flash as maker space with different stations such as laser cutter, 3D printing, fabrics, modelling and the like, I’ve found pretty good success with just cardboard, hot glue guns, and a couple of bins of ‘junk’ that would have just been thrown out (think Pringles cans, egg cartons, disposable cups etc).

Highlight and Fix (Test)

Now the students have something physical to communicate their idea, they can show it to someone else to get feedback. John Spencer has a really good structured activity for peer feedback and you want students to end up with some sort of summary so that they can make improvements (iterations) to their idea.

LAUNCH to an audience

So we’ve been through all those steps and your student has a kick arse idea, it’s now time to share with the world! So, get them to create a LAUNCH video – a sort of ‘elevator pitch’ where they communicate the problem, who is affects, and their solution with all the awesome features. Flipgrid is such a great tool for this. Students can record straight from their device using a web cam, or make their own video to upload. Then all student submissions are shared with the class for others to see, like and comment.

So I hope you found some of these ideas useful, check out my short video of the whole process.

Like a number of New Zealand schools, we have a wharenui on our campus. Our whare is called Aronui – named after one of the baskets of knowledge. There are number of beautiful carvings, both outside and inside, and along with a number of tukutuku panels has some rich stories to tell. We have a comprehensive document that details some of these stories but we were wanting to get students to create something that was more engaging.

Like the start of many projects, there were a few ideas bubbling away. Rach Duckworth was exploring something similar for her Google Innovator project at #SYD19, the gorgeous VR tour of the Waitangi Meeting house came through my PLN feed, and my co-teacher was keen to do something with our class on a localised curriculum bent. Sometimes you just need a spark to prod you into action!

My spark came from Raranga Matihiko – in particular the Marau Pāhekoheko Mentor Programme. At the workshop they hosted in Tauranga, one of the pieces of work was a VR / 3D tour of a class created wharenui where each student had a pepeha and pou inside (see video above). So I reached out to the team at Raranga Matikhiko for some more guidance and got a detailed reply from Kerry that I reckon is worth sharing in full here:

The virtual world you saw was made with a collection of CAD (Computer-aided Design Tools) and the virtual reality set itself (VIVE) with the use of the Tilt Brush VR app. The whare was built in Tinkercad. Worth noting, is that with Tinkercad, you are able to view as a Minecraft build and then configure block size and material before exporting as a schematic file which can then be imported into Minecraft.

The best way to experience the worlds such as we create, is to do so with a Virtual Reality interactive set. The Tiltbrush app now enables video to be imported directly into a PC world and developers are continually adding functions that allow users greater control over their own content. Unfortunately, although prices have come down significantly over the last few years, sets like VIVE are still too expensive for schools and educators to use widely and single sets only accommodate one user at a time. Alternatively, some good progress has been made with handheld viewers such as Google Cardboard.  You would possibly have to work on creating an app that supports your requirements but it may also be worth looking into what apps are already available. Some developers are open to working with users on specific requirements if that is something you think would be worth doing with your students.

If the end product of VR creation is your main focus, I would suggest the above. However, if your learning intentions are more about the content of the video or the creation of a Digital Learning Object, I would consider simply adding CAD created objects to your student videos.  For example; a student carving a pou whakairo using SculptGL and uploading to a 3D object repository, like Sketchfab. An audio recording of the student telling their story can be added to each object. You could also go on to use a screen recording of the object being rotated to see all sides in a Green screen background for their content video as they then retell their story (like a news report might do). 

From Kerry Leaf – Gallery Educator

I then reached out to Steve from Google NZ as I had a play round with Google Earth projects for another resource on Tauranga’s first migrants as part of an ancestry unit. Here’s the transcript:

The tip off to try Thinglink was the secret sauce that I wouldn’t have come to if I hadn’t been in touch.

First iteration: I used a panorama image and inserted the interactive just to test the basic concept. But I wasn’t able to embed the student video which was frustrating. So after doing some searching I came across an example of sort of what I was after so I reached out via Twitter which got a response in less that 24 hours!

YouTube embeds will not work in a Sandbox. It's a YouTube thing. You can use html5's video tag. See github https://t.co/ftuyDpcLpo for panel example. Sample Earth Project with both full and large panel html. https://t.co/WA30FSlnsT Feel free to copy project and grab html.

— jwilliams (@geteach) August 9, 2021

So after more trial and error I now have a concept that works!

After using the Streetview app to take a 360 image, this latest artefact shows the concept. Starting with a 360 Thinglink, going to the full video and then link to Google Earth Project which contains the embedded video.

So a great example of how collaboration, seeking help and having a go can lead to better outcomes. Our next step is to get our students to record high quality videos of carving stories as well as have them create their own Google Earth project of their story. Once these are done we will collate into one comprehensive resource for our school and use as an example for other story telling projects (we also have a grove of Totora tress planted on site for each of the Old Boys that fought and died in WWI).

Being an Ed Tech nerd, there are not many new apps, online tools, platforms that I haven’t had a crack at. I always enjoy trying out the new shiny things. However what seems to be the pattern is that I dive deep in the the tool and then realise that while it is great for a few particular tasks, it won’t be a tool that regularly comes out of my tool box.

I came across Parlay a few months ago via Twitter and as usual dove straight in. But it has stuck with me and I think it is one of those rare bits of gold dust in the Ed tech landscape that will grow and grow because it is just so good! So what is it? Basically it is an online, class based, discussion forum. Not too excited yet are you – seen heaps of those before aye. But Parlay is different, so let me explain why.

When I began my teaching career almost 20 years ago we had a great teacher who was starting philosophy classes with students. The philosophy for children movement was gaining traction in New Zealand and the old sage convinced me to invest some time going up to a weekend workshop. The basic premise with this approach was to get students tap into their natural curiosity through a philosophical inquiry with a main activity being the Socratic seminar. Basically, learners discuss with each other a particular issue, agreeing and disagreeing, building on and breaking down various points of view and gaining a richer understanding of the issue.

So I came back all keen and motivated to incorporate these discussion based activities in my health classes. Now, when it works it is awesome but it is a challenge in creating that class culture where every voice matters, where students will listen respectfully to each other, and the discussion isn’t dominated but a few voices. So throughout my teaching career, including a period teaching the IB Theory of Knowledge course (the best course I have ever taught), I would always try a few socratic seminars but didn’t use them consistently due to the struggle with management and trying to get all students to contribute.

Then along comes Parlay. Parlay solves many of these pain points of managing a meaningful class discussion and in the short time I’ve been using it has lead to some great ‘aha’ moments amongst learners and generate awesome reflective writing. So how does it work?

First you start with a discussion prompt. This can be more than a question and include image, audio of video resources. Students then respond to this prompt (I mostly use the anonymous setting for this as it definitely improves students honesty and depth of response). You can help scaffold this response by providing sentence stems or sentence starters. Thirdly, students can then comment and respond to other responses. Again the teacher can structure this peer feedback with sentence stems or prompts. You can then bring the online discussion offline and into a live discussion. Once completed, Parlay provides a rich data analytics interface where you can easily see how many students responded, the quantity of their response (average word length, number of responses to other students etc) . Finally, Parlay has built in an easily customisable set of assessment tools so you can efficiently give feedback to students.

Parlay plays nicely with Google and Microsoft accounts so your students won’t need to forget another set of log in details. There is also 1 click sharing to Google Classroom. The killer feature is the Parlay Universe. This is where busy teachers can grab curated content on a wide range (and ever expanding….) of topics categorised into different curriculum areas. It is so good to see their approach to sharing user created content – I don’t know how many lost hours I’ve spent trawling through the 1000 Kahoots on Space science to find just the right one. Parlay has the quality right at your fingertips.

The support from the Parlay team is awesome! I signed up to an online webinar (almost a must do as you don’t get the full scope of how you could use it in your classroom by just playing with the app) and was followed up with further support from the awesome Anna Lisa and Cynthia. Plus, they have a detailed Google Drive resource folder you can dive into at any time!

I’m just starting to explore some wider uses. For example I started a science lesson on bottle rocket cars with a Parlay discussion on Newton’s 3 laws of Motion and the question:

Just a great way to spark some curiosity before diving into the investigation. I also used another Parlay discussion for students to give each other feedback on their draft fertile questions before started an independent inquiry. Each student posted their fertile questions and then had to comment on three others with some research questions that would help answer the fertile question.

In conclusion, I can see Parlay sitting at the top of my teaching tool box for some time to come. I encourage you to have a crack.

I have found myself in the daily routine of checking the numbers on COVID19. The go to is usually the Johns Hopkins COVID 19 data dashboard, and the Spin Off’s daily update for NZ data (pity it isn’t live data and you need to keep going to a new page each day) but also this Interactive graph of the logarithmic scale of COVID 19 cases has been intriguing.

But I got to thinking about the effect on population density and COVID19 spread. Surely in a more dense country with people living closer together would have higher number of cases. Could I find a quick answer to this query? No, so using a few recently gained Sheet and Data Studio skills I DIY’d!

Step 1: pull live data using the =IMPORTHTML function from Worldmeter COVID 19 data set and population & land area data from Wikipedia.

Step 2: Combine these two data sets using the MATCH and INDEX function (heaps better than a VLOOKUP). See this tutorial by my Innovator project mentor – Richard Poth.

Step 3: Use Google Data studio to play with the data! Shout out to Chris Smith and the Data Chat webinar he hosted.

Link to my Data Studio COVID19 Data Wall

So some insights from the data so far. Europe is being affected most – Belgium has been particularly hard hit with a high rate of deaths per million in a relatively dense population. Great using the interactivity of Data Studio to just play with the data.