High Tech High - Project Based Learning

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?

Overview

The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (WWM) project is an integrated ninth-grade project created by a humanities teacher and a math/physics teacher. The idea is built around the physics content: electricity. In the math/physics classroom the students design a consumer product that uses electricity and is not presently on the market. They build a working prototype and create engineering plans, a business model, a financial plan and schematics of their product. On the humanities side, students learn how to market their product by creating a company/business. They learn demographics and create an advertising campaign to convey their selling points to their intended customers.

The essential question for the project is, "How is a new electrical product developed, engineered and marketed for the public?" However, essential questions work best when brainstormed and developed by the students, and your students may want to come up with their own. The best time for this activity is early in the unit, a few days after the students have seen the overview and have been introduced to some of the associated issues and controversies. It is a good idea to re-visit the essential question as a discussion topic or journal entry every few class meetings.

The ongoing and final assessment for WWM is both authentic and alternative. Early on, the students apply for a loan from the bank (the teachers) and are awarded various amounts based on the quality of the application. The final assessment is a "pitch" made to a panel of venture capitalists and adults in the fields of engineering and marketing. During the pitch, teams of students present their prototype along with their engineering, financial, and marketing plans, and hope to win the approval and interest of the panelists. It is a truly authentic assessment of all components of the project!

Products

Students will produce each of the following:

In humanities, students form an imaginary company and develop a marketing campaign including  the following components:

  • Logo
  • Tagline/slogan
  • Trademark
  • Print ads (both color and black and white)
  • Radio spots
  • Television commercials
  • Splace page for a website

In physics/math, students produce the following:

  • Electricity:
    • Three lab reports pertaining to current and circuits
    • Calculations using Ohm's Law and P=IV relating to the product
    • A working prototype of the product that uses electricity to function and turns on and off
    • Schematic diagrams of the circuits in the product
  • Engineering
    • Perspective diagram of the product
    • Pictorial diagram of the product
    • Engineering Plan (includes multiple items; see rubric for specifics)
  • General Math:
    • Math lab using linear graphing
  • Financial Math:
    • Financial Plan that includes all of the following:
      • Background description of financial plan
      • Cost of Goods Sold table created on Excel
      • Income Statement table created on Excel
      • Break Even Analysis linear graph
      • Gross Profit margin table and graph

Learning Goals

Students will understand:

Humanities

  1. The Media
    1. Understand the different types of media
    2. Collect data by observing media
    3. Understand how to predict who is using a particular medium
    4. Demonstrate understanding by comparing types of media
    5. Identify bias in the media
    6. Discuss the following questions, showing understanding of the issues:
      • Are the media biased or objective?
      • Are the media liberal or conservative?
      • Are the media big business and does this affect the way they present the news?
      • How have changes (cable, internet) over the last 15 years affected traditional media?
      • What is the link between advertising and the media?
  2. Economics
    1. Understand the basic concepts of capitalism, command economy, globalization
    2. Explain the roles of property rights, competition and profit
    3. Explain the role of profit as an incentive to entrepreneurs
    4. Understand the relationship between supply and demand
  3. Patents
    1. Understand what patents are and who they protect
    2. Understand how the patent office works
  4. Demographics
    1. Understand how people are segmented and grouped
    2. Explain the differences between geographics, demographics, psychographics
    3. Identify the basic demographic groups
    4. Analyze which groups will buy certain products
    5. Analyze how demographic groups are identified by the media they embrace
  5. Marketing
    1. Understand the role a product plays in a market economy
    2. Explain the difference between marketing and advertising
    3. Explain the role of pricing and how it determines the success of a product
    4. Understand how to determine a product's selling points
    5. Identify how many members of a target group can be reached by a single ad
    6. Understand how the internet is changing marketing
  6. Advertising
    • Be able to create, using all of the above concepts, an ad campaign that consists of the following components:
      • Logo
      • Tagline/slogan
      • Trademark
      • Print ads (both color and black and white)
      • Radio spots
      • Television commercials
      • Splash page for a website

Math/Physics
Students will understand:

  1. How to turn an idea for an invention into a marketable product
  2. How electrical components and circuitry can affect the performance of a product
  3. How the cost of a product is affected by materials, product quality, ease of manufacturing, etc.
  4. How a business must balance various costs to make a profit
  5. How to achieve a goal while weighing different factors and accepting tradeoffs
  6. How to design a business to function efficiently and cost-effectively as related to employees and a business model

Students will be able to:

  1. Design and build an electrical product that will work well
  2. Troubleshoot malfunctions in an electrical product
  3. Design an affordable and marketable product
  4. Create scale engineering drawings of an object
  5. Use graphs to analyze data, make projections, and make decisions
  6. Complete an in-depth financial analysis

Content: Topics Addressed

Throughout the project, students learn about:

  1. Humanities
    1. The Media
      1. Types of media: television, radio, newspapers, periodicals
      2. History of the media
      3. Media and politics
      4. Differences between liberal and conservative thought
      5. Media political slant
      6. Media commercial slant
      7. Links between media and business
    2. Economics
      1. Economic systems such as capitalism, market economies, command economies
      2. How consumers act in a market economy
      3. How entrepreneurs make a profit
      4. Partnerships and corporations
      5. Supply and demand
      6. Property rights and patents
    3. Demographics
      1. Definition of demographics
      2. Differences between demographics, geographics, psychographics
      3. Four basic demographic groups: gender, age, education, income
      4. How the media links demographic groups with what they buy
      5. Target groups
    4. Marketing
      1. Products and how they are sold
      2. Advertising and how it works in the different media
      3. Pricing
      4. Selling points
  2. Math/Physics
    1. Electricity:
      1. Electrostatics: electrical forces and charges, conservation of charge, conductors & insulators, transfer of charge, grounding charge, and units of charge in order to do calculations
      2. Electric Potential & Electric Potential Energy
      3. Electric Current: electric potential difference, voltage sources, electrical resistance, Ohm's Law, DC, AC, converting between DC and AC, Electric Power (including P=IV)
      4. Electrical Devices: capacitor, battery, LED, Amplifier, Comparator, SPST Switch, resistor, Trimmer/Variable Resistor, Ground, Bulb/lamp, DPDT switch, SPDT Switch, Push Switch, Operational amplifier
      5. Circuits: Series, Parallel, Power of Resistors/bulbs in circuits, combination circuits, schematic diagrams
    2. Engineering Drawings:
      1. Scaling factors, scale drawings
      2. Perspective Diagrams: 3-view engineering diagrams
      3. Schematic Diagrams
      4. Pictorial Diagrams
    3. General Math
      1. Linear Graphing
    4. Financial Mathematics and Analysis
      1. Find the cost of development and production in order to determine if the company will make a profit.
      2. Financial Terminology
      3. Cost Break Down: Cost of Goods Sold (variable and fixed costs of Direct Materials, Direct Labor, and Overhead) and Operating Expenses
      4. Break Even Analysis: Plot Cost of Goods Sold, Revenue, and Fixed Costs on a graph to determine where company will break even
      5. Income Statement
      6. Gross Profit Margin
      7. Extensive work on Microsoft Excel
    5. Business Development
      1. Design building to house the business
      2. Create employee hierarchy (flowchart)
      3. Web Page Design with Macromedia Programs

Standards Addressed in Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? Project

California Standards, Algebra 1:
2.0 - Students understand and use such operations as taking the opposite, finding the reciprocal, taking a root...
5.0 - Students solve multistep problems, including work problems, involving linear equations...
6.0 - Students graph a linear equation and compute the x- and y- intercepts.
7.0 - Students verify that a point lies on a line given an equation of the line.  Students are able to derive linear equation by using the point-slope formula.

California Standards, Physics:
5a - Students know how to predict the voltage or current in simple direct current (DC) electric circuits constructed from batteries, wires, resistors, and capacitors.
5b - Students know how to solve problems involving Ohm's law.
5c - Students know any resistive element in a DC circuit dissipates energy, which heats the resistor. Students can calculate the power (rate of energy dissipation) in any resistive circuit element by using the formula Power = IR (potential difference) I (current) = I2R.
5d - Students know the properties of transistors and the role of transistors in electric circuits.
5e - Students know charged particles are sources of electric fields and are subject to the forces of the electric fields from other charges.
5f - Students know magnetic materials and electric currents (moving electric charges) are sources of magnetic fields and are subject to forces arising from the magnetic fields of other sources.

California Standards, Language Arts (Grades 9/10)
2.0 Writing Applications (Genres and Their Characteristics)
Students combine the rhetorical strategies of narration, exposition, persuasion, and description to produce texts of at least 1,500 words each. Student writing demonstrates a command of standard American English and the research, organizational, and drafting strategies outlined in Writing
2.5 Write business letters:

  • Provide clear and purposeful information and address the intended audience appropriately.
  • Use appropriate vocabulary, tone, and style to take into account the nature of the relationship with, and the knowledge and interests of, the recipients.
  • Highlight central ideas or images.
  • Follow a conventional style with page formats, fonts, and spacing that contribute to the documents' readability and impact.

2.6 Write technical documents (e.g., a manual on rules of behavior for conflict resolution, procedures for conducting a meeting, minutes of a meeting):

  • Report information and convey ideas logically and correctly.
  • Offer detailed and accurate specifications.
  • Include scenarios, definitions, and examples to aid comprehension (e.g., troubleshooting guide).
  • Anticipate readers' problems, mistakes, and misunderstandings.

1.0 Listening and Speaking Strategies
Students formulate adroit judgments about oral communication. They deliver focused and coherent presentations of their own that convey clear and distinct perspectives and solid reasoning. They use gestures, tone, and vocabulary tailored to the audience and purpose.


Comprehension
1.1 Formulate judgments about the ideas under discussion and support those judgments with convincing evidence.
1.2 Compare and contrast the ways in which media genres (e.g., televised news, news magazines, documentaries, online information) cover the same event.
Organization and Delivery of Oral Communication
1.3 Choose logical patterns of organization (e.g., chronological, topical, cause and effect) to inform and to persuade, by soliciting agreement or action, or to unite audiences behind a common belief or cause.
1.4 Choose appropriate techniques for developing the introduction and conclusion (e.g., by using literary quotations, anecdotes, references to authoritative sources).
1.5 Recognize and use elements of classical speech forms (e.g., introduction, first and second transitions, body, conclusion) in formulating rational arguments and applying the art of persuasion and debate.
1.6 Present and advance a clear thesis statement and choose appropriate types of proof (e.g., statistics, testimony, specific instances) that meet standard tests for evidence, including credibility, validity, and relevance.
1.7 Use props, visual aids, graphs, and electronic media to enhance the appeal and accuracy of presentations.
1.8 Produce concise notes for extemporaneous delivery.
1.9 Analyze the occasion and the interests of the audience and choose effective verbal and nonverbal techniques (e.g., voice, gestures, eye contact) for presentations.


Analysis and Evaluation of Oral and Media Communications
1.10 Analyze historically significant speeches (e.g., Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream") to find the rhetorical devices and features that make them memorable.
1.11 Assess how language and delivery affect the mood and tone of the oral communication and make an impact on the audience.
1.12 Evaluate the clarity, quality, effectiveness, and general coherence of a speaker's important points, arguments, evidence, organization of ideas, delivery, diction, and syntax.
1.13 Analyze the types of arguments used by the speaker, including argument by causation, analogy, authority, emotion, and logic.

California Standards, Economics
12.1 Students understand common economic terms and concepts and economic reasoning.

  1. Examine the causal relationship between scarcity and the need for choices.
  2. Explain opportunity cost and marginal benefit and marginal cost.
  3. Identify the difference between monetary and nonmonetary incentives and how changes in incentives cause changes in behavior.
  4. Evaluate the role of private property as an incentive in conserving and improving scarce resources, including renewable and nonrenewable natural resources.
  5. Analyze the role of a market economy in establishing and preserving political and personal liberty (e.g., through the works of Adam Smith).

Materials/Texts/Resources

In PBL, we have come to rely less on textbooks (and their accompanying activities), creating instead our own activities using a variety of resources. Many teachers feel a need to use textbooks because they have them, they are expected to use them, the kids have them, and they offer an easy fall back plan. The challenge is that when planning real world activities, textbooks fail to meet the needs of the PBL unit (unless your project is to re-write a textbook, in which case a textbook is a perfect resource). Finding the resources that are a good fit for your project is one of the biggest and most rewarding challenges for a PBL teacher. Often, the best resource may be an outdated textbook that has the perfect activity for one of your teaching goals, or an op-ed piece in today's newspaper that addresses precisely the issue your students have been discussing for the past few days.  Because this is a "real-world" project, the resources you use should be the same as those used by professionals in the field.  Naturally, due to the variety of skills and topics incorporated in the project, the teacher will use a wide range of real world resources.

Helpful Resources:

  • Schlosser, E. Fast Food Nation.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
  • Hewitt, P. Conceptual Physics. Boston: Addison Wesley, 2005
  • Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. Fundamentals of Physics: Extended. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
  • Mansfield, E. et. al. Managerial Economics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005
  • MacAulay, D. The New Way Things Work. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998
  • www.howstuffworks.com