September 25, 2007

Spreadsheet Mini Project

Objective: This assignment will be used in Business Foundations during the unit discussing financial planning. The students in this class will not have the skills to create this spreadsheet on their own. The spreadsheets have been protected so that the students can only manipulate data in the loan payment calculator portion. I will use this model to explain the different formulas and functions used, so that students understand the concepts behind the spreadsheet. Students will use an Excel loan payment calculator to manipulate data that includes an interest rate schedule, amortization schedule, hyperlinks to financial institutions, a chart that visual depicts yearly interest payments versus amount paid on principal, and a vlookup function that determines poor, average, good interest rates. Students will use this spreadsheet to determine the financial cost of credit when purchasing items using a loan or credit card. This worksheet is set up so that students can manipulate the key factors to calculate interest in different types of consumer credit situations such as student loans, home mortgages, or credit card purchases.


Assignment: Using credit to purchase goods and services may allow you to be more efficient or more productive. Valid reasons exist for using credit. A medical emergency may cause financial need. You may be offered a new job and need a car to get to work. There are many choices about what and where to borrow. Wise credit shopping involves careful analysis of the cost of credit. If you are thinking of borrowing money or obtaining a credit card, consider two factors. First, figure out how much it will cost you. Second, determine whether you can afford it. After deciding to use credit, you should shop around for the best terms. Consumer credit enables you to have and enjoy goods and services not and to pay for them with future income. Always remember that credit is not free.

This assignment will allow you to see monthly payments, total interest, and total cost on the basis of loan data entered. The interest rate schedule will update the monthly payment, total interest, and total cost for a range of interest rates based on the data entered. The amortization schedule will summarize loan information over the life of the loan. There are two different worksheets for this assignment. The short term worksheet will give you information regarding loans that have ten years or less to pay back. The long term worksheet will give you information regarding loans that have more than ten years to pay back. The charts corresponds to either short term or long term calculations.

Click here for a screen shot of the Excel spreadsheet.
Click here for a screen shot of the Excel chart.

Enter the following information into the Loan Payment Calculator/Long Term:

Notice how much in interest payments you will be making over the life of the loan. What happens when you increase the rate? How about decreasing the rate?

Now that you have entered the data, make the following changes:

What happened to the monthly payment? How did the cost of credit change?


Enter the following information into the Loan Payment Calculator/ShortTerm:

Notice how much in interest payments you will be making over the life of the loan. What happens when you increase the rate? How about decreasing the rate? What are some changes you noticed from the orginal data (for a car loan) to the information on the boat loan?

Now that you have entered the data, make the following changes:

What happened to the monthly payment? How did the cost of credit change?

If you click on the graphic, you will be able to look at interest rates that are currently available.

The chart worksheet plots yearly interest payment versus paid on principal amounts. You will be able to visualize the effect of time increasing the amount of interest owed when using credit.

Finally, you will be able to determine if the rate of interest you are using in the loan calculator is catagorized as low (good credit), average, or high (bad credit).

Posted by ascummings at 09:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2007

Spreadsheet Phase 1

Project Goals
Students will use Excel to create a loan payment calculator that includes an interest rate schedule, amortization schedule, hyperlinks to financial institutions, a chart that visual depicts yearly interest payments versus amount paid on principal, and a vlookup function that determines poor, average, good interest rates. Click here to see an Inspiration Model of my project.

The objective of this spreadsheet assignment is for students to determine the financial cost of credit when purchasing a vehicle. This worksheet is set up so that students can manipulate the key factors to calculate interest in different types of consumer credit situations such as student loans, home mortgages, or credit card purchases.

Unit Plan
This assignment will be used during the unit in Business Foundations that deals with consumer credit. The unit consists of four topics which include: credit fundamentals, cost of credit, credit applications/documents, and protection of credit rights.

Students will be able to analyse the cost of credit. When borrowing money or obtaining a credit card it is important to figure out how much it will cost and whether or not you can afford it. The finanacial cost of credit should be a major consideration when planning and selecting among borrowing alternatives. This assignment will allow students to calculate monthly payments, total interest, and total cost on the basis of loan data entered. The interest rate schedule that they will create will list the monthly payment, total interest, and total cost for a range of interest rates. The amortization schedule will summarize loan information over the life of the loan.

When deciding to use credit, students should shop around for the best terms available. By creating a hyperlink within the spreadsheet, students will be able to look at interest rates that are currently available to them.

By creating a chart that plots yearly interest payment versus paid on principal amounts, students will be able to visualize the effect of time increasing the amount of interest owed when using credit.

Finally, students will be able to determine if the rate of interest they are using in their loan calculator is catagorized as low (good credit), average, or high (bad credit) by using a vlookup table function.

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September 09, 2007

Technology Review-#1

Rose-Hulman's Institute of Technology has developed a web site that focuses on providing digital teaching materials and professional development materials. The web site is called PRISM (Portal Resources for Indiana Science and Mathematics). PRISM is a free, assistive web site for Indiana teachers. Originally designed for middle school math, science, and computer teachers, PRISM has extended its content for teachers of all grades and subjects. Teachers can quickly find engaging, standards indexed, online learning activities in PRISM'S database. A little over a year ago they began offering free Moodle hosting, enabling teachers to create their own course/communities on PRISM.

Most of the digital teaching materials are interactive web sites that include student use of simulations, gaming, PDAs, and other forms of technology. The focus of this section is on science, mathematics, and technology. This does not mean that some of the resources of this section could not be used in a different subject area. A colleague of mine teaches digital tools and is always trying to find materials to help teach the PDA section. I showed her some of the math and science sites that integrated the use of a PDA, now she can demonstrate to students how to use this tool in a variety of situations.

The professional development section of this web site is also very useful There are links to multiple online tutorials such as Excel, creating a web site, and how to write grants just to name a few. There is a section called "Tools" that has many links, but one in particular I thought would be very useful to most of the teachers in my building--A Technical Glossary! It lists the latest terms in technology such as Is your PING working? What FTP does your WAIS use? Or is WYSIWYG?. Links are also available to articles for those teachers who are growing professionally.

The addition of the Moodle service allows teachers the accessibility of using a content management system without having their own server space to do so. They have designed this so that any teacher in Indiana can set-up a free account to post their classroom community and has made it compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. I would like to try this out for myself. Our technology coordinator is planning on setting up a server just for the high school and allowing use to use Moodle. I've already been warned that I will be training the teachers in our building how to use it. I have never used Moodle, at this point I've always used Moveable Type, so this feature would allow me to set-up a class and begin exploring.

The most recent addition to PRISM is a page of Classroom Software links. All links lead to open source and/or freeware applications. Two very cool, free links are to Celestia a space simulation software and Stellarium an open source planetarium for your computer. Celestia lets students explore a close-up of the space shuttle Discovery in orbit over Florida and the 1989 flyby of Neptune by Voyager 2 in three dimensions. Stellarium shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Other useful downloads include a PDF file converter and Microsoft Office alternatives.

I like this web site because I do not have to spend so much time searching on the Internet to try and find interactive projects for my technology students to use. Too many times educational type web sites tend to have a lot more resources/lesson plans for the required classes and not too many of the elective type classes such as techology. I am also excited to incorporate some of the other resource sites listed such as MarcoPolo, which is a web portal for teachers sponsored by Verizon. They have a few lesson plans focusing topics I could include in my Multimedia course. Another site is the Digital Library for Earth System Education. I'm planning on using some of the projects from this site when I help start our environmental student club at the end of this month.


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