Hobbies And Interests
Games for Budget Priorities
Economics is all about how society allocates scarce resources to meet its needs and wants. Students first encounter economics as consumers, where they have to budget their money and set priorities to get the things they want and need. A simple economic exercise that illustrates this is a budgeting game. Each student in the class is given a hypothetical amount of money to use, and the object of the game is to use those funds to furnish an apartment or meeting monthly expenses. Teachers can supply retailer and department store catalogs to help students identify and price items for furnishing their apartments. The game teaches students about setting priorities and allocating funds among what they want and need, as well as applying math skills.
The Investment Game
Another economic game, suited for high school students, illustrates how events in business and politics affect the economy. The stock market game calls for students to look through the business sections of newspapers and choose a set of stocks to create a hypothetical stock portfolio. Like the budgeting game, teachers can give students a hypothetical sum of money with which to build their simulated stock portfolios. This game can be played over an extended period of time, allowing students a little time in each class period to check the status of their portfolios by checking daily stock prices. Students can track the fluctuations of their stocks and see how economic news, government actions and world events impact their investments. This game also requires students to use math skills. It also instills a habit of keeping up with news and current events.
A Video Game for Economics
Students young and old like video games. Teachers with computer and gaming savvy, or with access to a person with such skills, can capitalize on this by creating interactive video games that illustrate economic principles such as supply and demand and resource allocation. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro did just that with a video game for its introductory microeconomics course. The game, Econ201, blends science fiction themes and economic principles by having students direct the actions of a group of aliens who come from a world of abundance. Their ship crashes onto a post-apocalyptic earth, where the aliens must learn and apply economic principles of scarcity, supply and demand, costs and others to survive in this new world.
It is not necessary to be a student UNC-Greensboro to play Econ201. Students from across the country can register as visiting students and learn economic principles through this game.