It had been almost two years since I last checked in to talk tech with Jackie Prester of Mansfield High School (listen to our first podcast here). Jackie is one of those passionate personal finance teachers always looking to hone her craft by staying abreast of tech tools to boost student engagement and enhance their learning experience. She attends the conferences, demos the products and if a tech tool makes her Top 5 Short List you know that it has passed her "classroom test" too. Oh, and lest I forget, she is also a social media guru and will share how she uses it to collaborate with other educators. Enjoy!

Details:

• 0:00–0:58 Introduction
• 0:59–4:28 How Jackie uses transparency to beef up her course curriculum
• 4:29–7:42 The financial complicatedness of insurance bills & the cost of health
• 7:43–10:51 Vacation insurance: perhaps more pros than cons
• 10:52–15:42 Jackie still got her steady diet of EdTech
• 15:43–17:01 How she gets her sea of students engaged in watching Shark Tank
• 17:02–23:40 Fab Five tech tools that Jackie loves
• 23:41–27:35 Using Twitter as a developmental tool in the classroom
• 27:36–31:19 Incorporating current events into personal finance lessons
• 31:20–33:09 Tried and true method of managing finances is still important!
• 33:10–36:23 Helping her students make a budget specific to them
• 36:24–38:40 Where Jackie’s efforts to push for personal literacy stand in Massachusetts
• 38:41–41:37 Implement a course with no existing curriculum (that’s where we come in!)
• 41:38–42:25 Conclusion

Details about Jackie:

• Jackie's high school: Mansfield High School in Mansfield, MA
• She is a Google Certified Educator
• She brings Shark Tank into her classroom
• Once a month she is on Twitter chat with #busedu

Jackie's Top 5

• Piktochart, a website to create infographics, reports, and presentations
• Canva, graphic design software
• Google Sites, a place to create free websites
• Animoto, a website that helps create short videos for presentations
• Flipgrid, which helps create short video responses for classroom discussions

About the Authors

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.

Danielle Bautista

Danielle is a native of Southern California and a recent graduate from the University of Maine, where she braved the frigid winters—a feat in and of itself—and earned her Bachelor's degree in International Affairs. She has a passion for working with non-profit organizations and serving populations in underprivileged communities. When Danielle isn't writing NGPF blog posts, spearheading various outreach projects, or managing contests and flash surveys, you can find her doing some sort of outdoor activity, learning a new hobby, or cracking what she thinks are witty puns!