Teach Yourself an Online Tool

There are many new online tools that you can use to learn new things or create content. Take a look at this list. Select a tool that you are unfamiliar with and learn it. You have till the end of class to learn the tool and how it works. Some of these have phone apps that you might wan to try as well.

Livebinders
Yelp
Urban Spoon
AudioBoom
Twiddla
Vyew
NotebookCast
Cloze
IFTT
Diigio
Digg
Feedly
Instapaper
Last.fm
Slack
Slice
Todoist
Trackif
Readability
PushBullet
Numerous
MixRad
NimbusNote
Periscope
Blogger



Assignment:

1. Select one of the Web or phone apps from the list above
2. Create an account and learn what the app does and how it works.
3. Present your findings to the class.
4. Write up a review of the tool. Desribe what it does, it's strengths and weaknesses, and alternative tools. Write your review in a Google doc and share it with me.  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cg-J0EqgL8TTM6Zw0oHvQ-NjcyPXROaoH9yLsescDe8/edit?usp=sharing

This assignment is worth 10 points.

The Basics of Computing

Teacher Survey

Use Google Forms to create a teacher survey.

http://goo.gl/forms/VUHvqjjm1o

Class Surveys

Here are the class surveys. Please complete all of them.

Mr. Maners Class Survey - http://goo.gl/forms/k80MMf2Ymg

Cell Phone Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eBIn8YeDNulB4Ii6K7lYYvje1NwTHRU7wVj5ROHYXEY/viewform?c=0&w=1

Snack Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y3Z7DaoJdo5y4yqG8ah6fCNFlYnE7CCw8UlJy0lqp5A/viewform?c=0&w=1

Phone Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZHgLk9na5EUiL-5eputriaBXRkwZykvCgDutuScQWP0/viewform?c=0&w=1

Another Snack Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Iw0WH-sT0F3Nlz8CKCBcCxVCo0fxn8NOZcyN8InW7-U/viewform?c=0&w=1

McDonald's Survey - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SXF8nFOgUYdXPWM656SSgw_uQC2X9D_W3MfNvhKbEXQ/viewform?c=0&w=1

Market Research

Shoes - Puma is looking to expand their market share in the youth market. They want to know what shoes students are buying and what price they are paying. Also, what is most important to them (style, price, celebrity endorsement, etc.).

Cell Phones - A cell phone company is looking at offering a new smart phone. The company wants to know how many students use smart phones, what brands they use, what carrier they use, and why.

Snacks - A snack machine company is looking to stock it’s machines at schools with snacks that students would like to eat. There are a limited number of slots for snack crackers, chips, candy and snack cakes. Your job is to create a survey to find out the categories of snacks students would like and what specific snacks in each category.

Soda - A soda company wants to find out what students like to drink. A drink machine can hold carbonated drinks as well as sports drinks and non carbonated drinks like tea and chocolate milk. Your job is to find out which drinks will be most popular.

Fast Food - McDonald’s is trying to create a healthier menu. They are looking at adding a grilled chicken sandwich, a pan fried fish sandwich, or a mexican style salad, all priced at $3 each. Which of these items would be the most popular or should they be looking at adding a different item? Your job is to find out what they need to do.

Create a Google Form to conduct market research to answer the above questions. Test the form within your group before sending it out to your classmates.

A Math Riddle

Here's a riddle. If you can solve this, I'll award you 5 bonus points.

Three men walk into a cafe and have lunch. Needing to leave early, they each leave a $10 bill on the table, knowing that it will easily cover the bill. Shortly after getting outside, the waitress chaises them down saying that they paid too much. She gives them five $1 bills to distribute among themselves. Not knowing for sure how to divide it up, they each take a dollar bill, leaving two. Then they start thinking, "We originally paid $10 each making it $30. Now by each taking a dollar, 3 people x $9=$27. We have just $2 left from the $5 the waitress gave us. What happened to the other dollar?"

See if you can figure out what happened to the missing dollar.

Phil Zimbardo - Heroes

Pop Quiz

A piece of wood measuring 40 inches in cut into three pieces. The three pieces measure 2X-5, X+7 and X+6. Which piece is the longest?

53% of Singaporean 8th graders got this right. See if you can solve it.

Using Google Forms

One of the best ways to gather data for a spreadsheet is to use Google Forms. To get started, create a new folder on your Google Drive called Forms and share it with me. Now, try creating a basic Book Request form. here's a quick video to show you how it's done. I've also created a prototype that might give you some ideas on how to make your form more useful. Check it out here.

Assignment:

Create a book request form for a library. Include the following fields in your form:

Name of the book - Text
Author - Text
Your name - Text
Type of book - Multiple Choice - Fiction, Non Fiction, Periodical, Reference, Other
Date you finished the book - Date
Your Review -  Paragraph Text

You can see a copy of my finished form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13cAeP-uWm_Gh2qWj1oX343mpkcxpLZxwG3hfjJhFPWI/viewform

Tournament Analysis

Now that you've created a team stat sheet, we can compare the team from game to game. First  though, we'll need to add a line for rebounds. You'll need to add data for three columns, offensive Rebounds, Defensive Rebounds and Total Rebounds. Then add a line for the totals at the bottom of each column. Use the SUM function to create the totals. To get the percentages, you'll need to divide the "made" columns by the "attempts" column. Freel free to color or bold columns to make it more easy to read. Us this example:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AGv8kVNCXdZe0mY4sk1B19kykykiYivQiAgkireBkSU/edit?usp=sharing

Now highlight and copy the data set and paste it twice on the sections below like to see in the example.  Next. you'll need to enter the data from the other two playoff games against CPA and Fulton. You can find the statistics on the TSSAA web site here:

http://tssaa.org/2015-bluecross-basketball-championship-scoreboard-division-i-class-aa-boys/

Simply click on Statistics next to the score for each game. Let me know if you have any questions.

Tony Robbins: How to Invest Your Way to a $70 Million Retirement Fund | ...

Analyzing Mutual Funds

Now that you have built the tools to analyze stcocks and mutual funds, lets put your knowledge to the test. Select 3 mutual funds from the Vanguard site to invest in. Create a diversified portfolio of stock mutual funds. Assuming you bought the funds one year ago, calculate how much money your portfolio would have made.

Here is the link to the list of funds you use.

https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/vanguard-mutual-funds-list

Analyzing Investments

Google Sheets makes analyzing your investments easy. To get the current price of any stock or mutual fund simply use this formula in any cell to get the number

=GoogleFinance(AA)

Simply replace AA with any stock or mutual fund ticker. Try it out on the following Stock and mutual fund tickers:

Stocks
APPL
C
GOOG
NKE

Mutual Funds
VFIAX
ARTIX
MLAIX

Now, try building a mutual fund analysis form to analyze your investment portfolio. Here is a sample:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hIhFAqg2N6FAP362yWD3m8CmWfwyAqpCsnjYKFcG01I/pubhtml


If you need help, try watching this video on using Google Finance.

http://youtu.be/_uLp7DpuS_8

Spreadsheet Skills Needed

Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal. 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-ATWORKB-2315

The Retirement Gamble.

Watch this video from Frontline. You may need to explore more of the web site to find answers to the questions below.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement-gamble/

Answer these questions on a sheet of paper. Use complete sentences.

1. What are some factors that keep people from saving as much as they should?
2. What role does the financial services industry play in keeping people from retiring with as much money as they should?
3. What is expense ratio? How is it used to calculate dollar amount expenses?
4. How much does a typical investor pay in fees? You may find more info in the following link:

 http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/fees-commission-value.asp

5. What mistake do most people make when the market drops in value?
6. Who is John Bogle and what radical idea did he bring to the market?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/retirement-gamble/index-funds-the-key-to-saving-for-retirement/

 Look up the current stock price of the Vanguard 500 Index fund here

http://money.cnn.com/quote/mutualfund/mutualfund.html?symb=VFIAX

What is the expense ratio of this fund and how does it compare to the industry average?

Assignment: Calculate your lifetime returns using the returns of the Vanguard 500 less the expense fees. Compare the expense fees of this fund to the industry average. Assuming that you invest 300 per month, what is the amount of money you save compared to the industry average?

Turning $10 into $1 million.

Today, we're going to take that 10% savings and turn it into a 1 million fortune. It's not magic, but it does take discipline. First, you have to commit to saving 10% of your income. THat may mean that while your friends are going to the movies all the time, eating out, wearing the latest fashions, and driving nice new cars, you're renting videos, staying home, driving an older car, and wearing your clothes a bit longer. The payoff is that while your friends are working till they die, you'll be retired at a beachfront home!

Here's how to start out. First, calculate your yearly savings across the top of your spreadsheet. Calculate your yearly savings by multiplying your monthly saving by 12 months. So at the end of the first year, you have $3000 saved. Now, multiply that amount by 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years. You'll see that by the time you're in your 60s, you have about $150,000. While that's a nice sum of money you still can't retire on it.

The secret lies in investing wisely and compounding your saving. If you go to this Web site or any others, you'll find that the annualized return of the S&P 500 is between 6% and 7% over the lifetime of the market. That means, if you invest in the stock of the 500 largest companies in America, you would yield a return of about 6.5%.

We're going to assume that that interest gain in paid yearly and all of your gains are reinvested in the stock market and you don't pull any money out early. That's the tricky part. Can you stop yourself from taking out money to buy a new pair of Nikes.

Calculate the first years returns by multiplying $3000 times 6.5% to yield  a first year's savings of $3195. So, instead of making $3000 you actually have $3195. Next, you take that number and add the next $3000 to it to get to the beginning of year 2. Multiply that about times 6.5% and you end up with the next years ending balance of $6597. So at this point you've not just saved $6000, you have an extra $597 that you've earned. Congratulations!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yB1St0hEtlDw9715uB1dnRpAbh1NRQrYAdT_261wTgE/pubhtml

Now, you just need to keep going. Do the same thing until you get to year 10. Now, compare what you've put back to what you actually have in the bank! Instead of $30,000, you have over $43,000. If you have the guts, you can keep saving and compounding your gains. By the time you're at year 50, you've made over $1 million. Enjoy your retirement!

Creating a Budget

One of the best things you can do with Google Sheets is to create a simple budget. Start with listing what you need to know. First, you need to know how much you are bringing in each month. For this case, we'll assume that you are bringing home $2500 per month after taxes, Social Security and health insurance. So, now that you know how much you are making, what do you need to do next? Well, because we are smart, we're going to save 10% of our income ($250) and invest it. Think of this as paying your future self. We'll talk more about this later. For now, lets just save 10%. Next we'll need to list our expenses. Since you probably don't have any expenses now, you have a chance to make decisions about how you'd like to live. Start out with the major expenses of your life, rent/mortgage and auto expense. At this point we won't go into the wisdom of renting over mortgage or buying a car over leasing one or vice versa. Lets just list the major expenses assuming that you are living alone with no children. Feel free to adjust these numbers to fit your personal lifestyle.

Rent/Mortgage $600
Auto Expense $300
Groceries $250
Utilities $300
Clothes/Shoes $200
Gas $200
Entertainment $200
Taxes $100
Insurance $200
Cell Phone $70
Haircare $40
Misc $50

Now, you'll need to enter this data in a spreadsheet. Here is a sample of what you'll need to do.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YhZPrvfx4Z9w_O92OVZJ3vtXn8-5yF5C5kn4qCCRgr4/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true

Here are a few tips:

1. To calculate your net take home pay, subtract the saving amount from $2500. 
2. Calculate your total expenses by adding up the entire expense column. in this case the formula is =SUM (B7:B18)
3. Subtract the total expense cell from the net takehome cell to see if you are in budget. If you aren't, adjust your expenses to stay within you budget.

Place your Budget spreadsheet in your spreadsheets folder. 

Introduction to Google Sheets

We're going to begin using Google Spreadsheets for the next several weeks. You may already be familiar with using spreadsheets or you may have never used a spreadsheet program before. I'm going to assume that you've never used a spreadsheet before so we'll start off slow. Watch this beginners tutorial on Google Sheets.

Now that you've been introduced to Google Sheets. Try making one yourself. First, create a folder on your Google Drive and call it Spreadsheets. You'll place your work in here for review so please share it with me. Now you won't have to share each individual file. I'll just check your folder to give you your grade so make sure your work with Google Sheets is in this folder! Remember, if I can't see your work, I can't give you credit.

Now, make a class roster using these steps.

1. Create your column headers on row 1. Your headers should be Last Name, First Name, Class, Sex, Height

2. Enter the names of the members of your class in the following rows. If you need to ask their heights just ask.

3. Try using the sort function to sort A-Z for each of the columns. After you sort the selection by sex, proceed to step 4.

 4. Make the following calculations using the function section of the menu.

• calculate the total height of the class in inches
• calculate the average height of the entire class
• calculate the average height of the females 
• calculate the average height of the males 

Use this as your guide.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tR5ZCUxPYvSHFbi7n8BUSTfytfoGx3SCxGLApUkepiE/pubhtml

Creating a continuous slideshow.

Creating a continuous looping slideshow with Slides requires a bit of creativity but it can be done. Here are the steps you'll need to take to create a slide show.

Follow these steps carefully!!!!

1. First, Create a slide show consisting of 10 pictures. You may use any subject you like. Select a singer, athlete, team, automobile, anything you like. Create at least 10 slides.. Don't forget to use animations to add interest.

2. Select the first slide in the slide list. Then, hold down the shift key and select the last slide in the list. Now, all of the slides in the list should have a highlight around them.

3. Now comes the fun part. With all your slides selected, go to File>Publish to the web.

4. In this window, select the auto advance time for each slide. The default is 3 seconds. Then check the two check boxes:

Start slideshow as soon as the player loads

Restart the slideshow after the last slide

Now click on the blue Publish button.

5. Finally, select the URL, copy and paste it to a new browser window. Your slideshow will begin automatically. 

Sit back and enjoy your slides.

Also, Try putting a slideshow on your Google+ homepage or your twitter account. You can also mail a slideshow from the Publish window. Give it a try!

Share your slide show with me using the blue button so I can record your grade.

Create a Biography

Your next project will require you to use a couple of tools from your Google Drive, Slides and Google Docs. You'll be working with a partner to create a short biography on a character of your choice It can be a historical person or someone living. It can be a person from the world of sports, music, politics or popular culture.

First, you'll create a two page  Google Doc that provides an overview of the person's life. Use the following outline as your guide.

Background

• Birth date and place
• Parents
• What was the person's early life like?
• Who influenced him/her?

Career

• What were the person's major accomplishments?
• Who did the person influence and how?

Closing

• What is the person's enduring legacy?
• How will the person be remembered? 
• Where does the person live now or where are they buried?

Works Cited - Create a single works cited page using MLA style. You must cite at least 3 sources for your paper.

Create your paper using 10 point Times New Roman double-spaced text. Create a title centered at the top with you and your partner's names on the next line in bold.

Second, create a Google Slides presentation using the outline for the paper as your guide. Your presentation should be 8-10 slides in length. When you are finished, you and your partner will present the slides presentation together.

This project is worth 30 points. I'll be using the following rubric:

Paper:
Formatting 3 points
Grammar Usage and Punctuation 3 points
Quality and completeness of your writing 4 points
10 points total

Slides
Neatness 3 points
Proper length 3 points
Quality and completeness 4 points
10 Points Total

Presentation
Participation 3 points
Engagement with audience 3 points
Quality of the presentation 4 points
10 points total

Dead Web Sites

Have you ever visited a dead or dying mall? Pretty depressing isn't it? What image does a dead mall project? Believe it or not, that's exactly the same image that you're projecting when you don't update your web site. People assume you're either deceased or you just don't care.

Right now, Take a look at your personal web site. Go to sites.google.com and look at your current portfolio. Does it reflect your best work? You've learned many things over the past few months and you've completed a number of projects. Some, you may have performed better at than others. Take a moment to review your best work and link it to the portfolio section of you web site. Also, change up or add any information to make your web site more up-to-date. Keep in mind that you'll need to do this a few times a year to keep your site relevant.

When you're done, send me an e-mail with the URL of your web site. The exercise is worth 10 points.