Great Debates and Taylor Swift
EconEdLink is a resource that I’ve recommended to social studies teachers for many years now. In addition to great economics lesson plans like this one about lemonade stands and this one about owning your first car, EconEdLink provides professional development opportunities throughout the year. Next week EconEdLink is hosting two free webinars for teachers. The […]
EconEdLink’s Most Popular Economics Games of the Year
Over the years I’ve referenced hundreds of EconEdLink’s resources for teachers. That’s because EconEdLink is a great resource for any teacher who needs ideas, lesson plans, games, and other resources for teaching economics lessons. On the site you’ll find resources for everything from teaching basic personal finance lessons to elementary students through resources for teaching […]
Where Is That Summer Paycheck Going?
Summer is near and for many high school students that means it’s time to start working at summer jobs. For many students the first real paycheck that they receive comes with a surprise in the form of tax withholding. PBS Learning Media has a free lesson plan through which students learn about reasons for taxes […]
Two Options Explained
A few weeks ago I published a short video that I produced as an introductory explanation of stock options. Dabbling in options trading is a hobby of mine as is producing various types of explanatory videos. Earlier this week I made a follow-up to my video introduction to stock options. This new video explains the […]
Stocks, Bonds, Options, and Economics
A couple of days ago I published a short video that I made to explain stock options. In planning to make that video I went back through my archives to look at some related resources that I’ve shared over the years. Here are some highlights from my archive of resources for teaching and learning about […]
The True Costs of Owning a Car – A Lesson Plan for High School Students
I paid $1500 for my first car. That was a hefty sum for me back in the fall of 1996. That car needed a little bit of brake work to pass the state’s safety inspection and then it needed about a dozen other little repairs over the next two years. Fortunately, I had someone in […]
The Difference Between Stocks and Bonds
Last week I finished reading Liar’s Poker written by Michael Lewis. The book is partly about his experience as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers in the 1980’s and partly about expansion of the bond market itself during the 1980’s. The parts about how the bond market evolved to compete with the stock market in […]
A Student Video Contest for Economic Education Month
October is Economics Education Month and the Council for Economics Education is hosting a student video contest to promote student awareness of how economics is a part of their daily lives. The contest is open to students and teachers in the United States in Kindergarten through twelfth grade. To participate students and teachers should create […]
Lessons on Compound Interest, Rent, and Mittens
Last week I got an email from the Council for Economic Education. The email listed the ten most popular resources on their site. Two of them stood out to me and one of them led me to an additional resource that wasn’t included in the email. The Compound Interest Calculator is the most popular resource […]
Living Wage vs. Minimum Wage
Last night I was reading a discussion on FlyerTalk that got into the question of whether or not tipping should be an expectation of hotel housekeeping staff. That discussion veered off into a bigger question of minimum wage versus livable wage. That discussion reminded me of two resources that I’ve highlighted in the past to […]
Good Explanations of Inflation, Recession, and Bubbles
Turn on any financial news network like CNBC these days and you’re likely to hear some discussion about inflation and concerns about recession. Even if your students aren’t listening to those stories, they might be hearing about them from their parents or perhaps in your classroom as part of a current events discussion. Financial news […]
Life on Minimum Wage – A Personal Economics Simulation Game
Almost twelve years ago I published a Google Document that outlines a personal economics simulation that I conducted in my classroom. For many years after that it was the most-requested Google Doc that I published. Then for the last few years I haven’t had any requests for it. In fact, I forgot that I had […]
Short Lessons on the Value of Money
Last week TED-Ed published a new video lesson titled Why Can’t Governments Print an Unlimited Amount of Money? The purpose of the video is to explain how governments, particularly the United States federal government, were able to spend trillions of dollars on COVID-19 economic relief programs in the last year. The video explains the role of […]
Blockchain – From the Basics to Advanced – A Free Course
Turn on CNBC or any business/ financial news channel today and you’re likely to hear about Bitcoin. Blockchain is the technology behind Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies. If you’re not familiar with how blockchain works or you’re looking for a simple explanation to share with your students, Common Craft has you covered. Blockchain Explained by Common […]
Tax Help for High School Students
Yesterday afternoon one of my students said, “Mr. Byrne, how do you do taxes?” It was one of those questions and moments that embodies the idea that we teach students first and content area second. I was happy to explain to her that her employer (Walmart in this case) would be giving her a W-2 […]
How Many People Does it Take to Make a Cup of Coffee?
I drink a lot of coffee! Thanks to the timer on my coffee maker my day usually starts by smelling freshly brewed coffee at 4:47am. Making the coffee is pretty simple task in my house; pour in some water, add some ground beans into the filter, and set the timer. But getting the roasted coffee […]
TED-Ed Explains the Basics of Stocks and Investing
TED-Ed has released a new lesson that should be of interest to anyone who has hopes of retiring some day. That lesson is titled How Do Investors Choose Stocks? Some of the highlights of the lesson include a basic explanation of what a stock and the stock market is, the differences between active and passive investing […]
C-SPAN Classroom Offers New Lessons on the Economic Impact of COVID-19
C-SPAN Classroom is a free resource that anyone who teaches U.S. History or civics should have bookmarked. I’ve written about many of their great resources and programs over the years including their annual student video contest and annual summer workshops for teachers. C-SPAN Classroom recently published a new lesson plan that includes a set of […]
PayGrade – A Classroom Economy Simulation You Can Use All Year
PayGrade is a great program that at its core teaches students money management lessons, but can be used for much more than that. In fact, even though I’m teaching computer science this year I plan to try using PayGrade in one of my classes. To get started on PayGrade you set up a classroom in […]
Inflation Calculator – Show Students Changes in the Value of Money
When I was a kid a 3 Musketeers bar cost 30 cents at my favorite shop, North End Pharmacy. The last time that I saw one in a gas station it cost $1.39. That’s ridiculous! What happened? Inflation, happened. I like to use that candy bar example whenever I begin to explain inflation to kids. […]
What Causes a Recession?
The U.S. stock market has been on a historic bull run over the last decade. That has a lot of people asking and a lot of talking heads on CNBC speculating about when the next recession will hit. Fittingly, TED-Ed has a new lesson titled What Causes an Economic Recession? By watching What Causes an […]
The Cost of Owning a Car – Free Lesson Plan
The cover image on my personal Facebook page is currently a picture of my first car. I’m pretty sure I paid $1500 for it which was a hefty sum for me back in the fall of 1996. That car needed a little bit of brake work to pass the state’s safety inspection and then needed […]
A Chrome Extension That Shows You the Value of Your Time
Time Is Money is a free Chrome extension that can help students see what the expression “time is money” means. Time Is Money will display the number of hours a person would have to work in order to have enough money to purchase any product that has a price listed on a shopping site. For example, I went […]
How the Stock Market Works
Playing a stock market simulation game is one of the popular ways to teach the basic concepts of stock markets. I played one when I was in fifth grade and decades later teachers still use the same concept. In fact, I did a stock market simulation game with my own high school students. Before jumping […]
A Few Resources for Learning About Income Taxes
Tomorrow is the deadline to file income taxes in the United States. If you have high school students, some of them may be filing taxes (or having parents do it on their behalf) for the first time. That may lead to all kinds of questions about why we have taxes, the way taxes are calculated, […]
More Free Webinars from the Council for Economic Education
The Council for Economic Education has recently published their schedule of free professional development webinars that they are hosting in the first five months of 2019. The series begins next week on January 15th and runs weekly (mostly) through May 28th. All of the webinars are scheduled for 7pm Eastern Time. You can register for one […]
Knoema – Huge Collections of Data Maps and Charts
Knoema is a service that offers a huge collection of data sets and maps for public use. Knoema offers data maps and charts for almost every country in the world. There are dozens of data categories to pick from. Some of the data categories that you will find include GPD Per Capita, Government Debt, Migration, Housing, […]
Free Webinars from the Council for Economic Education
The Council for Economic Education has recently published their fall schedule of free professional development webinars for teachers. The series begins next week on September 18th and runs weekly through December 12th. All of the webinars are scheduled for 7pm Eastern Time. You can register for one webinar or all of the webinars. There is […]
60 Second Adventures in Economics
The Open University hosts a series of six short videos intended to introduce viewers to some of the basic concepts of macroeconomics. In 60 Second Adventures in Economics you will find short videos explaining things like the Paradox of Thrift and Comparative Advantage. The video about comparative advantage is embedded below. Applications for Education 60 Second Adventures […]
Measuring Worth – A Lesson on Inflation
Do you remember when a cup of coffee didn’t cost $3? Or when ten dollars bought you enough gasoline to drive for a week? How about buying a pack of baseball cards for 25 cents and getting a piece of gum in the pack too? I remember those days. My money seemed to go a […]
A Timeline JS Timeline of Wall Street
Timeline JS is one of my favorite tools for social studies teachers and students. It’s one of six excellent storytelling tools produced by Knight Lab at Northwestern University. Timeline JS lets anyone create a multimedia timeline by entering data into a Google Sheets template. It’s used by teachers, by students, and by media companies like […]
The Economics of Seinfeld – Lessons Based on Seinfeld Clips
The Economics of Seinfeld is a neat concept for teaching economics lessons developed by economics professors from Eastern Illinois University and Baker University. The Economics of Seinfeld is a catalog of clips (sometimes entire episodes) from the hit sitcom Seinfeld that demonstrate various economics concepts. There are seven pages of clips that you can browse through. Alternatively, and more practically, […]
By Request – Life on Minimum Wage Simulation
Last week I received a handful of requests for the Google Docs version of my Life on Minimum Wage economics game. While I no longer grant print or edit access to my public Google Docs, I do make PDFs of my documents available to download through Box.com. The purpose of Life on Minimum Wage is […]
A Crash Course in Taxes
The deadline to file income tax returns here in the U.S. is less than one week away. If you have high school students, some of them may be filing taxes (or having parents do it on their behalf) for the first time. That may lead to all kinds of questions about why we have taxes, […]
300+ Free Economics Lessons, Videos, and Educational Games
Econ Ed Link hosts hundreds of lesson plans and interactive games for teaching students about a wide range of topics in economics. Teachers can search the lesson plan index by grade level, concept, standard, or length of lesson (one class period vs. multiple class periods). Most of the lessons attempt to provide “real world” context. The interactive section of […]
A Game for Learning About International Trade
This post contains content that I originally published a couple of years ago. An email from a reader who was looking for suggestions on activities for teaching global trade prompted me to pull these resources from my archive. The multimedia library on The Economist contains a set of cartoon videos explaining some big concepts in […]
21 Real World Math Lessons for High School Students
Getting to teach economics lessons is one of my favorite things about being a social studies teacher. In economics lessons high school students start to see how many of the math concepts, logic concepts, and political theory they’ve learned can apply to them in the “real world” after high school. Econ Ed Link is a […]
My Two Most Requested Documents
Last night I forgot to silence my phone before bed. Not ten minutes after putting my head on my pillow I heard a Google Drive alert. I looked over at my phone to see that someone had requested access to my file titled Life on Minimum Wage. That is one of the two most frequently […]
Time Is Money – And Other Short Lessons on Money
The majority of the high school students that I’ve had over the years has been engaged by personal finance lessons. This is probably due in large part to the fact that high school age is when many students get their first real jobs. For many students that first pay check comes with excitement followed by […]