Travis R. Martin, CPA » Education

NOTICE: Downloading Lesson Files from travisrmartin.com

travisrmartin — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:58:42 +0000

It has been brought to my attention that some are having problems getting the files on the website to download. It appears that if you are using a Microsoft IE Browser, clicking on the files will download them as a .zip file, and when you extract them there is nothing there.

If you are running Internet Explorer, try right-clicking on the file you want and saving it onto your computer. Users of Firefox should have no problem accessing any of the content on the website.

Until I can get this issue fixed, if you are running Internet Explorer, and need a copy something – e-mail me at travis@travisrmartin.com or leave a comment on the page and I will get you the files.

Thanks~Travis

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Personal Finance Lesson: Investing in Stocks

travisrmartin — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:34:49 +0000

Learning about stocks is an integral part of any Personal Finance or Economics class. And, regardless of what has

Despite the market's recent downturns stocks remain an important part of any financial portfolio

happened in the market the last few days, stocks are still one of the best tools for building long term wealth.

In this post, I thought I would offer a few of the PowerPoint slides I use to lead classroom discussions on stocks, as well as a few of the worksheets I use. I will post a couple of activities later on.

Since my Personal Finance classes do not have a textbook, and I’m not teaching Econ at the moment, these slides do not correspond to any particular text. I will place them below in the order that I cover them in class. Feel free to adapt them to your own needs!

PowerPoint Discussions over Stocks

PowerPoint Notes: Investing Expectations (Provides students with an overview of what to expect from stock market)
PowerPoint Notes: Introduction to Stocks
PowerPoint Notes: Financial Statements (Basic introduction of Financial Statements for students who haven’t had Accounting)
PowerPoint Notes: Characteristics of High Quality Companies (Students learn traits of high quality companies)
PowerPoint Notes: Other Investments (Introduces Bonds, Mutual Funds, and “other” investments)

Stock Worksheets

Worksheet: Reading Stock Quotes (Excel Format)
Worksheet: Company Financial Statements (Excel Format)
Worksheet: Company Quality (Word Format)

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Business Lesson Plans: Now Accepting Requests!

travisrmartin — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:56:18 +0000

One of the goals I had when I started posting my lessons on this website was to share information with the teaching community.

If there is a specific business topic that you would like to see an activity or project for, let me know by leaving a comment below or send me an e-mail at travis@travisrmartin.com. Chances are, I have something in my archives somewhere…and if not, it would give me a great excuse to make something up!

Travis

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Personal Finance Lesson: Mutual Fund Activities

travisrmartin — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:30:16 +0000

My MBA classes are winding down for the semester, which means two things: 1). I have been sleeping with a copy of Michael Baye’s Managerial Economics and Business Strategy on my head for the past two weeks and 2). I haven’t had any time to post lessons on here.

My last final is on Wednesday, so posting will resume at a more regular rate after that. In the meantime, here are a few mutual funds activities my Personal Finance class has been working on over the past few days. Enjoy!

Researching and Comparing Mutual Funds
Excel Worksheet: Mutual Fund Comparisons

Students learn the basics of comparing mutual funds by looking up fund information on Yahoo Finance.

Creating Your Own Mutual Funds
Instructions: Creating Your Own Mutual Fund

Students apply their knowledge of mutual funds by creating their own fund. They then “sell” their fund to the class in a PowerPoint presentation.

Sample Slide from Student "Create Your Own Mutual Fund" Presentation

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Marketing Lesson: Product Placement in Movies and Television

travisrmartin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:41:32 +0000

Lesson Background

In 1982, Elliot lured an alien out of hiding with a bag of Reese Pieces, and a phenomenon was born. And no, I’m not

ET & Reese's Pieces = A Match Made in Product Placement Heaven

talking about the birth of the Summer Blockbuster.

Product placements in movies and television shows have become common thanks to Steven Spielberg and his inclusion of a little-known bite sized Hershey product into his movie, E.T. Since then, the practice of product placement has become widely adopted.

In this lesson, students learn the basics of product placement by:

Participating in a classroom discussion that includes YouTube clips of popular product placement examples
Watching the movie Transformers and identifying product placements
Developing a product placement plan for an existing product
Discussing the ethical advertising issues surrounding product placements

My main goals for this lesson are to:

Have students identify product placement
Have students understand why companies engage in product placement
Have students look at existing product placements with a critical eye (are the effective or not)

Note: The PowerPoint discussion below contains hyperlinks to clips on YouTube. In presentation view, if you click on the photos, it will bring up the YouTube clip. (Links checked as of 4/19/10).

If you have any questions about this lesson (or any of the other ones posted), feel free to drop me a line at travis@travisrmartin.com or leave a comment below.

Lesson Resources
PowerPoint Discussion: Product Placements in Movies and Television
Worksheet: Transformers Product Placement Hunt
Instructions: Determining Product Placement Activity

Website: BrandChannel’s Product Placement in Movies

Article: “Transformers” a GM Ad in Disguise – MSNBC

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Accounting Lesson: Accounting Monopoly

travisrmartin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:29:50 +0000

Lesson Background
“Accounting Monopoly” is a great way to give your Accounting students practice journalizing business transactions in a simulated business environment. There are a number of different ways to play the game, but the basic idea is to have students prepare journal entries that correspond with the moves they make around the Monopoly board. At the conclusion of the game, students prepare financial statements using the information they have recorded in their general journal and ledgers.

Money Changes Hands During a Game of Accounting Monopoly

You can start incorporating Accounting Monopoly into your curriculum using the materials below and a few Monopoly boards.

If you have any tips and tricks from your own Accounting Monopoly experience, please share them in the comments section below.

Lesson Resources
Instructions: Accounting Monopoly (Includes sheet for Chart of Accounts)
Accounting Forms: Accounting Monopoly (Includes General Journal, Ledgers, & Memorandums)

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Teaching Resource: The Random Person Picker

travisrmartin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:39:52 +0000

There’s a classic scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Ben Stein, playing an Economics Teacher, has a one-way discussion with a class full of bored students.

If you’re a high school teacher, you probably know how he feels. Sometimes you get a class where the students just don’t want to volunteer any information. Or maybe you get one or two kids that answer all the questions while the rest of the class sits there in whatever world teenagers drift into when they tune out.

Screenshot of Random Person Generator

One thing that I like to do to get the entire class involved when reviewing material is to use a Random Person Picker. The “Picker” is just an excel spreadsheet with a list of student names and a formula that randomly selects a name from the students on the list. By using this random selection method, I can keep students on their toes, because they never know who may be picked. This also eliminates any tendency I may have to call on certain students (aka – the ones that know the answers) over-and-over.

The spreadsheet itself is fairly simple to operate. You enter the student names in one column, tweak a formula, and then hit “F9″ to generate a random selection. Most of the time I have the students pick a number between 1-5 and then click “F9″ the corresponding number of times. Using this method, they get to see their names flash along the screen and it builds a little suspense for the class.

The instructions on how to use the spreadsheet are spelled out specifically in the actual file, which I will link below.

Resource
Excel Workbook: Random Person Picker

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Personal Finance Lesson: Investing Expectations

travisrmartin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:31:53 +0000

Lesson Background
If you have ever taken a high school economics class, you are probably familiar with the stock market game. You know, get $100,000 fake dollars and try to make as much money in the stock market as you can over a six-week time period.

While stock market games are fine, they do have some weaknesses.

Sample Slide from Investment Expecations PowerPoint

First of all, they teach students to have a short term investment horizon. While I haven’t fully subscribed to a “buy & hold” philosophy, I do think novice investors should have a longer outlook than one or two months.

The second problem I have with these games, is they can cause students to have skewed expectations of how the stock market works. Depending on what the student invested in, they may leave the game with the impression that the stock market is an impossible crapshoot or a guaranteed way to make easy money. Neither of these expectations is grounded in reality.

As a starting point for my unit on investing, I like to emphasize the importance of having the right expectations when making an investment. I use the PowerPoint presentation attached below to lead a classroom discussion about expectations and afterwards I have the students log onto finance.yahoo.com where they practice looking up stock quotes for companies that interest them.

During the classroom discussion, students are urged to expect the following when investing in stocks:

Risk/Return Tradeoff
To Own a Piece of a Company
Growth
To wait for said growth
Volatiliy
To, possibliy, lose money
Conflicting advice
Do homework on (and have fun with) their investments

The PowerPoint also touches on the concepts of diversification and stock betas. Each of these will be built upon in later lessons.

Lesson Resources
PowerPoint Discussion: Investing Expectations
Website: finance.yahoo.com

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Personal Finance Lesson: Choosing a Bank

travisrmartin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:58:22 +0000

Lesson Background
The last Personal Finance lesson I posted covered the basics of checking and savings accounts. If you missed that one, you can find it here.

In this follow-up lesson, the class discusses some basic pointers on how to choose a bank. After the brief class discussion, the students take part in a group activity in which they combine their knowledge of different bank accounts with some online research to produce a sales presentation for a bank of their choice.

In creating and delivering the presentation, the students assume they are actual employees of the bank giving a sales presentation for their checking and savings accounts. I do not specify an exact layout for the students to follow, since I want them to be able to organize their thoughts on their own. However, I do suggest they cover these topics:

Account Fees
Interest Rates/Required Balances
Sample Slide from Student Presentation of First Financial Bank
Bank Locations/Hours
Account Features (ATM locations, online banking, etc.)
Bank History
Anything else you feel will help you “sell” your bank to the class

After the students present, the class votes on which bank they would choose.

By the time the students research their bank and listen to the other presentations, they should be able to compare/contrast the different types of accounts offered by a number of real banks, as well as their features, benefits, and costs.

Lesson Resources
PowerPoint Discussion: Choosing a Bank
Instructions: Bank Salesperson Activity
Scoresheet: Bank Salesperson Activity
Businessweek Article: PNC Lures Generation Y with Virtual Wallet

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Personal Finance Lesson: Intro to Bank Accounts

travisrmartin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:59:10 +0000

Lesson Background

When teaching Personal Finance, I am always excited to get to the “fun” stuff, like investing in stocks. But, before you can get to that point, you have to start with the basics. Like checking and savings accounts.

Some high school aged students are already familiar with bank accounts and their benefits. But, there a lot of people (high school students and adults alike) who avoid banks altogether – instead opting to pay fees to check cashing services every time they want to cash a check. Wal-Mart’s massive rollout of their in store “MoneyCenter” is a good example of the demand for non-traditional banking services.

This lesson guides students through the basics of checking and savings accounts through a PowerPoint discussion that includes the following topics:

How Banks Work
Sample Slide from Banking Basics PowerPoint
Banks vs. Credit Unions
Types of Services Offered by Banks
Differences Between Savings Accounts, CDs, & Money Market Accounts
FDIC Insurance
Checking Accounts

I also include two small activities that get the students out of their seat.

Bank Rate Comparison Activity: Students search the internet for a bank’s website. Then they find the APY for that bank’s various accounts and write the rates and the bank on the board. Class then compares the rates to determine which bank has the best rates.
CNN Money Quiz: There’s a 10 question online quiz on CNN Money that goes along with this topic. I label four spots in the room (A, B, C, & D) then bring up the quiz on the projector. Then I read the questions off one by one and have the students move to the spot for the correct answer.

If you have time, and if your students need the practice, themint.org has a couple of good activities that could be incorporated into this lesson as well.

Themint.org – Writing a check: Walks students through the process of writing a check
Themint.org – Balancing a checkbook: Teaches students how to balance their checkbook

Lesson Resources
PowerPoint Discussion: Checking and Savings Account Basics
Website: CNN Money 101 – Basics of Banking and Saving Quiz
Website: Themint.org – Writing a check
Website: Themint.org – Balancing a checkbook

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