Virtual+Stock+Exchange


 * Russell Stevenson **
 * Dr. Rick West **
 * IP&T 286 **

My project will teach students how to use the stock market using the website []. Since I am a history teacher, I want to students to use the knowledge gained from this website as context for their understanding of the Great Depression. This will allow them to understand what was at the root of the Great Stock Market Crash, other than the fact that it was just a “bad thing.”
 * Summary **
 * Audience: **8th-grade Social Studies
 * Objective: **To teach class the basics of economics in preparation for learning the causes of the Great Depression


 * Utah State Standard: Standard 6, Objective 1: **Analyze the major causes of the Great Depression


 * Anticipatory Set: **Show students clip of John Stossel’s Fox News report on merits of private vs. public holdings; use as starting point for discussing centralized vs. lasseiz faire planning

The website has an introductory section with a glossary that allows students to understand the basic lingo of the market. I will start class by having students browse through the Glossary so that they can feel prepared to engage the literature on the Great Depression that we will be using in class. Students need to understand what a bellweather stock, a security, or a commodity is before they can hope to understand the complexities at work in creating the Great Depression
 * // Lesson Outline // **
 * Step One: Understanding jargon **

The website offers up a number of stock market games that students can play. The importance of the game to the students is less what happens during the game and more absorbing the atmosphere of the marketplace. Some students will come to realize that they like the high-stakes of penny stocks; other students will prefer the security of money markets and mutual funds. For example, the game that I have been using (the Akash Salam UMM Best Stock) gives me 100,000 dollars to invest as I choose. I can develop a portfolio using mutual funds, common stocks, and commodities.
 * Step Two: Choosing a game **

When teaching the great depression, I would be sure to assign a number of students to invest in speculative stocks, similar to the Florida land rush of the 1920s. This will teach the students that one of the fundamental causes of the Great Depression rested in the notion that an investor could become rich through flight-of-fancy investments without any real work.
 * Step Three: Walking the students through the game **

After assigning students to certain stocks—some in gold, others in real estate, and others in technology—I would have them research their chosen stock and report on the market trends for it. The website offers graphs and tables that allow students to understand the volatility of the stocks they have been assigned.

One students demonstrate their understanding of basic stock terminology, they can begin to approach the Great Depression with greater ease. Historian John Kenneth Galbraith stated that there were five underlying causes of the Great Depression—all of which can be taught using the Virtual Stock Market. In this game, we can demonstrate three of them
 * Step Four: Connect to Great Depression **

** 1) **** Imbalance in Income Distribution ** ** a. **Demonstrable in stock market game by allocating limited resources to the vast majority of the class while giving the real wealth to a select few  ** 2) **** Reliance on leverage  ** ** a. **There are games that allow for investors to buy on margin. This will teach students the risks that Depression-era investors faced ** 3 ) **** Poor state of economic intelligence ** ** a. **Demonstrate lasseiz-faire solutions vs. central planning solutions  ** b. **Show outcome

By showing the students how to run the present-day stock market, students will begin to have a grasp for how trading works generally. This provides foundation knowledge necessary for understanding how the Great Depression took place in the 1930s.
 * Conclusion **