Here’s a fun and quick interactive from NY Times to get your students thinking about the pervasiveness of technology companies in their lives. Students are forced to rank order the importance of the top five tech companies in their lives by selecting the order by which they would give them up (if forced by an evil monarch:) The five companies: Alphabet (Google is one of their subsidiaries), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft (interesting that three start with the letter “A”).

Questions:

• Have the students write a few sentences about the first company they booted out of their lives and the rationale as well as the company they were least willing to part with and the reasons for that too. Enjoy!
• Here’s a Google Sheet if you want students to input their rankings (after they play the simulation) to see how their results compare with NY Times readers.
• Not only are these tech companies pervasive in our lives but they are also highly valued by investors too. Have students look up one measure of value for these companies: market capitalization (shares outstanding X stock price) by going to Yahoo Finance.
  • Do the stock market values for these companies correspond with how your class valued these companies?
  • Do people pay to use the services of these companies?  Which companies offer free services?
• Are there other non-tech companies in their lives that they would also rank as incredibly important? Have the class generate a list of their top 5 non-tech companies that they couldn’t do without.
  • Repeat the same market capitalization analysis described above.

____________

Looking for additional engaging games or simulations? You will find lots of great ideas in the NGPF Interactive Library!

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.