Kids' Consumer Guide
	SNAPSHOT "Now hear this! Skippy Peanut Butter is the all time kids' favorite. Buy yours today!" So proclaims Tara as she and her group finish their sales brochure. Their conclusion is not just their opinionÑthey have surveyed their peers both at their school and online. Their ad will be posted at their school and will become part of the online Kids' Consumer Guide at their Web site. The Guide already lists 50 products ranging from sneakers to frozen pizza to marking pens. UNIT OF PRACTICE Invitation How do students begin to understand the way products come to market, get advertised, and sold? How can we combine our understanding of the scientific process by using it in a real-life math setting? This unit introduces students to consumer product testing, advertising, and publishing on the Internet, while improving their emerging math skills. Situation The bulk of this unit takes place in the classroom, although students explore their local markets, get information from Internet sources, and use the school library as well. Tasks Pairs of students work together to select a consumer product to investigate. Using television, radio, and print sources, they investigate how the product is advertised. They create market research surveys which they conduct with peers and online keypals to find out which brand is preferred and why. They analyze the results, and then develop an advertisement for the winning product. The ad is published as a tri-fold brochure. Their report is added to the online Kids' Consumer Guide published on the school's Web site. Interactions Students work in pairs or small groups. They work with keypals in other schools to collect survey results. The teacher serves as a guide to resources, helping students find information and invite guests to speak to the class. Last year, this school had a visit from a scientist in the Research and Development department of a marker company. She showed them how to test products and had the classes take part in testing a disappearing ink! Standards This unit meets standards set by the National Councils for Teachers of Mathematics, Social Studies, Science, and the Language Arts. Math standards call for students to be able to use a variety of computation and estimation techniques; to be able to select and use computation techniques appropriate to specific problems and determine whether the results are reasonable; use mathematics in other curriculum areas; and to use mathematics in their daily lives. Social Studies standards call for social studies programs that provide for the study of how people organize for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Science standards include teaching students to use appropriate scientific processes and principles in making personal decisions. The National Council of Teachers of English call for students to conduct research by generating ideas and questions and by posing problems and that students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. Assessment Students will be assessed for their ability to define a problem and create a questionnaire which will provide data to answer the problem; the mathematical accuracy of their results; the creativity and persuasiveness of their brochure and the overall quality of their market research. Tools This unit depends on the following tools: ¥ Computer with Internet connection ¥ Web Buddy; DragNet; ClickBook; Myrmidon ¥ Electronic Teachers Guide with active links to sites referered to in this Unit of Practice ¥ The Eco-Marketing Project on the Web has some similarities to this unit. Getting Ready Creating a unit for consumer education is exciting and takes some advanced planning and preparation. Here are some things to take into consideration: ¥ Introducing the Internet: If your students are brand new to the Internet, use the Internet, the City, tutorial on the World Wde Web. Use the downloaded sites from Web Buddy as examples to teach your students how to browse by following links. ¥ Student Research: Use Web Buddy to download ("whack") several sites on the Internet that show a variety of advertising techniques. As you browse, use DragNet to save additional site addresses for future use. You can create separate DragNet folders for different groupings of companies or products. ¥ The "How To...Access Information" section of this guide provides you with tips on researching the Internet if you have limited access to computers with Internet connections. ¥ Brainstorm a list of products the students might investigate. Try to get a range of products in different categories. Maintain a list of the products they choose to test. ¥ If you are interested in having guest speakers, try the R&D departments of local companies. Often, they have scientists on staff who may be willing to come to school and discuss how new products are developed and tested. ¥ Finding a Partner: When students are ready to conduct their surveys, you will need to secure the collaboration of another classroom. The "How To...Communicate and Collaborate" section in this guide will direct you to sites where you can find potential partners. Students can execute their surveys as pencil and paper documents which are posted to a HotLine server or through e-mail. To conduct their surveys, students select a product type (for example, toothpaste) and make a list of the major brands, including a category called other for minor brands. Then, they decide on a sample group (for example, all the students in your class), survey the group and figure out what percentage of the group prefers each brand. This can be a good opportunity to introduce your class to spreadsheets to calculate sums, percentages and averages. They can also produce graphs and charts of their results. ¥ Publishing: Students will write up their product testing reports and the text of their brochures using word processing. UseClickBook to create a booklet of the class' findings or use Myrmidon to convert their word-rocessing documents into HTML documents for posting to a Web sever. If you anticipate publishing your students' work on a server, contact the school webmaster and find out about the guidelines for posting Web pages on the school site. The "How To...Distribute Information" section of this guide gives suggestions for using the software in this kit for publishing. Internet Resources Web sites. Some have product information on them, but the quality of their content varies. Here are some Web site addresses you might consider: Kraft Foods, Inc. Proctor and Gamble, Inc. Nike, Inc. Subaru, Inc. Ford Motor Co. General Mills, Inc. Pizza Hut, Inc. Apple Computer, Inc. The syntax for these sites is usually http://www.companyname.com. If you're looking for a particular company, try this approach.