Bead-Ville

Overview

The Why

Reinforced Values
Be Principled
Opportunity
Sound Judgment

Students will have the opportunity to participate in the three basic economic systems. By working in each of the systems, students internalize the fundamental values present in each system. They also gain insights into the basic advantages and disadvantages of each system.

Intro

• Review the economic systems and their characteristics.
  • Inform students they will be working in a specific economic system that is assigned randomly based on the number connected to the student handout they will access via your virtual classroom platform. Let them know the student handout will inform them what their system values are as well as their goals for the activity, situation, and the production process they MUST follow.
    • At this point, you will select one person from each group to be your compliance officer. The compliance officer is responsible for making sure their group follows the production process guidelines.
    • If you have a smaller class and do not have enough students for each group to have a compliance officer you can have classroom volunteers, administrators, etc. serve as the compliance officers for the room. Another approach would be having students experience one economic system at a time to be able to compare during the debrief.
  • Feel free to “fine” the groups if they violate their production process guidelines at any time during the activity. For instance, if the “We Want Everyone To Be Equal-Ville” group doesn’t take a break, you can fine them $2.
    • Pro Tip: You will need to become familiar with the ways to enter and exit each virtual group while they’re in their breakout rooms.

Social and Emotional Skills

Students participating in this activity will practice engaging their Social Awareness as they reflect on countries and societies that embody the economic system that their team was bound by. Likely this economic system is different than one they may envision occurs in the U.S. and will spark questions about freedom, social and ethical norms, and culture. By exploring social awareness through the lens of economic systems, students will learn to practice developing layers of empathy including taking the perspective of others, recognizing the emotion that they might feel, staying open minded and free of judgements and finally, learning to communicate their understanding of others they’ve studied or built rapport with. This is important as students will learn the benefits of long-term value creation vs. short term as it relates to not only profit but the wellbeing of the team that helps produce the goods and services.

Preparation

• Before class, ensure your students can use the Edtech tool Draw. Chat and give them 3-5 minutes to play around in the application to see how it works.
• Determine which platform you will use to engage students in the activity.
  • Upload all necessary materials (like worksheets) to your classroom platform before class. Create folders with the names of “Beadville 1,” “Beadville 2,” etc. and upload one economic system handout to each folder. This will be helpful when students are assigned to their groups and need to identify which group handout they need to follow.
• Determine how you will arrange students in groups.
• Review the activity guide to ensure an understanding of the activity instructions and debrief.
• Determine how you engage students in the debrief following the activity.

Directions

• Split the students into virtual groups and have them come up with a team name.
  • Group sizes should be determined by the number of roles required for the economic systems.
• Remind each group of the materials they should have available for this activity –
  • Access to Draw.Chat
  • Access to the economic system handout containing their groups values and goals.
• Explain to students that they will use the Draw.Chat tool to draw the materials needed to create their bracelet, necklace or ring, but only in accordance with the values and goals of their economy. Tell them to use their imagination!
• Three 8-minute rounds will be played. (Because this is being played virtually.)
  • Option 1: The values and goals sheets are rotated from group to group after each round so every group can experience each system during the session.
  • Option 2: Do not rotate the student handouts containing the values and goals. This allows students to experience the “long-term” effects of one specific economic system.
• Groups are to follow whatever directions are on their values and goals sheet. The compliance officer is responsible for making sure their group is in compliance. This person will also be the quality control person.
• After each production round, the group scores are posted on the score board. The winning group is the one that has the most dollars after the third round.
  • Consider having a virtual score board in form of an excel sheet that is shared with each student or having a white board with you in person that the camera can see when you make updates.
  • The teacher must be very familiar with the information on each of the values and goals sheets, as it helps to speed up the scoring after each round.
• Do not pay for any merchandise that does not meet standards set in the production process guidelines.
  • As the teacher, you can decide if you want to pay all of the groups what they earned or just the highest earning group. Be prepared to give a lot of virtual dollars if you plan to pay all of the groups.
  • Additionally, you can leave it up to the students in the group to decide how they want to divide the money they earned.

EXAMPLE SCOREBOARD

• The first column indicated the size of the groups, which serves as a reference for the teacher. Some economic systems require certain roles to be filled. You will want to make sure you have enough students in those groups.
• The second column is the amount earned based on Round 1 production.
• The third column shows the amount earned based on Round 2 production as well as the running total.
  • Post on the scoreboard after each round of production.

Supplemental Activity

Now that your students have a deeper understanding of the importance of our Foundational Value of Freedom, consider having them watch “The Pursuit” (you can find it on Netflix or Amazon). This documentary examines the question: “How can we lift up the world, starting with those at the margins of society?” and the role that freedom plays. See the support resource “The Pursuit Film Discussion Guide” to then debrief the viewing.

Debrief

When you debrief you can do it a few different ways. You can do it as an entire class and ask them to discuss the activity as a whole. The other option would be to work through it group by group. Below are some questions and topics you could cover during the debrief.

Entire Class

• Which type of economy did each of the societies represent?
• How are the goals of each society different and how will that affect the growth of their economies?
• How did the type of economic system affect production and profit?
• Which type of society is actually better for everyone and why?

What incentive was there for you to keep working in the communist society? How about the socialist society?

Group by Group

Have the groups debrief one at a time while all the other groups are listening and participating in the

discussion based on their experience in their economic system.

• Have someone from the group read their economic systems’ values. Then ask the group what economic system they think they were working in based on those values. Ask them to explain.
• What did they produce and why? Was there freedom to decide? Did they use sound judgment?
• How did they decide who did what role? Was there specialization? Was there freedom to choose a job based on knowledge and skill?
• Were they as productive as they could have been? Did they create the greatest value for those living in their economic system? Why or why not?
• Did their economic system provide them with the chance to be opportunity obsessed?
• Did their economic system provide the opportunity to create the greatest value?