5 Peer-Recommended Resources for Business Teachers

The content within the app appears to be too complex for high school students, especially for 9th and 10th graders that I teach. Further, licensing is required and I have seen other apps that are free that I have found to be very useful (e.g., EconEdLink, Teachers Pay Teachers, etc.).

The Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) is a website that provides teachers with free resources for personal finance classes. It moreso a website versus an app; however, my school uses this as its main curriculum for the personal finance classes, as it provides lesson plans, assessments, PowerPoint presentations on NearPod (which this platform provides teachers with real-time feedback), and engaging computer games that reinforce the curriculum. The website curriculum is great for high school students (9th - 12th) and it allows me to easily make modifications to lessons. NGPF outlines a curriculum for a 9-week course, semester course, and full-year course, which allows me to either discuss the main points of a specific topic (with using the 9-week course) or delve deeper into the material (with using the full-year course).

I recently started taking advantage of Next Generation Personal Finance, a relevant platform that integrates various resources, such as published personal finance related articles to create top-notch lessons.

As I shared with my students, I trust the selected reports and videos that students link to while completing lessons. I feel like NGPF management has vetted its sources. (Although one article seemed to be a custom publication of some sort, as there was an ad at the end for the namesake publication.) NGPF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, by the way.

While initially I had trouble getting approved as a teacher, that finally happened – then I had access to “print” the answer keys. (I sent them what they requested, like a copy of my school ID, but there was still a delay in getting approved.)

There’s a day-long, in person, NGPFL workshop coming up in NJ in late June, 2024, but unfortunately the date is not ideal, otherwise I’d certainly attend. Lunch will be served and it’s free!

NGPF “encourages the use of higher order thinking skills, including, evaluating, and analyzing,” as stated in level 3 of “The Educational App Evaluation Rubric.”

It would be nice to have paper resources that coincide with the lessons. That’s because many of my students do not bring charged Chromebooks and present a slew of other excuses. So, for the better students it’s great, but for my students with lower proficiency levels, not as good. However, I’ve created workarounds in my classroom.

“Our mission is that every U.S. high school student will graduate having taken a one-semester course in personal finance by 2030,” wrote NGPF adding, “but we started in just one high school in 2010: Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto.”

Knowledge at Wharton High school encourages the use of higher order thinking skills including creating, evaluating, and analyzing. That said, there is limited connection to high school students and may not be appropriate for them. Even though the app seems to offer flexibility in its articles and cases, it seems to be at too high a level for most high school students. This is especially the case for 9th and 10th graders. With this in mind, it could be a good resource for more aspirational assignments.

Alternate Route - Resource Round Up Part 2: Knowledge at Wharton
As this is a business journal from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business (and as such is a journal geared towards business graduate students), it would (at best) be minimally relevant and not appropriate for high school students who are learning Financial Literacy for the first time. The application is not customizable or flexible for the needs of high schoolers, though an article might be useful for the purposes of one or two class sessions, allowing students to understand or remember. There is no mechanism for student feedback. Students would need a prompt to use the application, though it is more likely the case that a resource (article) would be linked by the teacher to the learning management system in use. Furthermore, such an assignment runs the risk of being seen as "extra schoolwork." There is no performance mechanism, no space given for student product. The educator who uses a website like this would need to scaffold his/her lesson plan to maximize the use of this resource.

Knowledge Matters Virtual Business is a way to immerse students in their learning of personal finance, entrepreneurship and marketing. It does require licensing, but it provides real time and constructive feedback based on the student's input. From what I've seen of the offering, teachers will need to model how to operate the simulations, but once set up, the students should be able to follow the simulation independently. It does appear that the lesson plans and simulations are not as flexible if the teacher needs to focus more time on a certain content area. In general, the highlights of the simulation certainly encourage, if not force, the student to use higher order thinking to navigate the simulated world. Decisions have immediate outcomes that must be evaluated as they occur because they affect subsequent parts of the simulation.

This is a very relevant app that can be a great support resource to my core lessons. I often find engaging class assignments that help reinforce key topics. It is particularly strong in investing, mortgages and insurance.