Earn Your Future Digital Lab and Other Resources Available from the PWC Foundation

Earn Your Future Digital Lab and Other Resources Available from the PWC Foundation

In celebration of April and Financial Capability Month, the Making Cents Project is showcasing a different financial education program or resource each day of the month. The 26th in this series features the Earn Your Future Digital Lab and other financial education resources from PWC. [embed]https://youtu.be/wuseoCxXohw[/embed]The Earn Your Future Digital Lab from PWC is a comprehensive financial literacy program designed for students in grades 3-12. Students engage with financial literacy concepts through innovative self-paced modules featuring custom videos, animations, and interactive activities. There are three levels: beginner (grades 3-5), intermediate (grades 6-8), and advanced (grades 9-12). Each level has seven or eight fun modules that engage students. And, students' financial knowledge increases after completing the modules.Guides are available for each grade level and additional guides accompany each module. The guides suggests ways to use the modules in a variety of settings. In particular, ideas are presented for using the modules in whole-group and small-group instruction as well as setting in which each student has access to their own device. The guides also indicate the correlations to the National Financial Literacy Standards from the Council for Economic Education. To access the Digital Lab, teachers or parents can sign up for a free account and then create individual user accounts for each student or child. The educator dashboard allows teachers to track student progress and completion.Check out these popular modules - one from each level (Note: To access the modules, you will need to create a free user login.)

• The Mystery of the High Priced Heels (beginner - grades 3-5) Students meet Alice and her mother, Grace, and discover that Grace has been charged for a purchase she did not make. With the help of Kreditt, a robot designed to help people solve financial problems, students join Alice and Grace in a quest to find out how the charge wound up on Grace’s account. As they discover the answer to the mystery of the high-priced heels, students learn about the consequences of identity theft, how to reduce their risk of being victimized, and what do if it happens to them.
• Truth or Dare (intermediate - grades 6-8) Many educators say they struggle to make insurance an engaging topic. This module does just that. Students learn about risk and three options for dealing with it—accepting it, reducing it, and transferring it.
• What’s the Plan (advanced - grades 9-12) In this module, students take on the roles of high school seniors who must manage their budgets to meet short- and long-term financial goals. Throughout the module, students learn why creating a budget is important, the components of a budget, and how to build a budget. They also get practice adjusting a budget in order to pay for their prom, in the face of changing conditions in their income and expenses.

In addition to the Earn Your Future Digital Lab, PWC has also sponsored these great financial education tools:

Time for Kids - This monthly magazine is available online free of charge, or print copies are provided to subscribers of Time for Kids. One version is for Grade 4 and another is for Grades 5-6. A teacher’s guide is available to accompany each issue. The April 2018 editions are entitled Choose Used focus on buying used items in order to both save money and help the environment.  

JA Build Your Future - This app helps teens, their parents, and teachers break down the cost of achieving one’s career goals into real, easy-to-understand numbers. Created jointly by Junior Achievement USA and PwC, JA Build Your Future helps teens explore potential future income from a desired career and evaluate the cost of post-secondary education to help them make informed decisions. In JA Build Your Future, teens can access more than 100 careers, see required levels education, and then calculate the cost of education. Teens can adjust the level of money they and their parents may contribute, combined with student loans they may need to secure. At the end of the exercise, teens are given a Return on Investment (ROI) score between 1 and 5. The score helps teens and their parents create a roadmap for success that will take them from choosing a career to calculating the cost of achieving it.

Disclaimer: Resources included on the Making Cents blog have been reviewed by Pennsylvania educators and deemed worthwhile for classroom or professional use. Inclusion does not indicate endorsement by the Pennsylvania Department of Education or Penn State University.