In this lesson, students use technology to learn about simple and compound interest through the development of a college budget plan. Students are given different options that simulate what upcoming first-year college students face, and the students have to decide which options they want, including which bank to invest with, based on their financial and personal interests. To organize the costs of the various expenses, the students create a spreadsheet. To support student learning with the technology involved, supplemental handouts are included to guide students through their spreadsheet. While working with the spreadsheet, the class learned how to perform basic functions on the data they entered. The students could then use the formula for simple or compound interest to compute what the total cost of their loan would be based on the bank they chose.

      The objective for this lesson is to have students compute the total cost of repaying a loan through different payment methods using the formulas for simple and compound interest. By introducing the students to spreadsheets, students learn how to quickly and efficiently organize their data so that they can perform calculations. The students see how the functions in spreadsheets automatically update with any manipulations made to the data, which is a helpful feature for when students have to make changes to their budget and compare banks.  Also, being able to visually see the effects of the changes made to their budget and the ability to compare different costs allow students to recognize the results of their financial actions. Overall, the use of technology is a great tool to organize data and obtain calculations immediately, ultimately catalyzing students’ understanding of simple and compound interest. After students develop their budget plan, they can submit it for evaluation and a whole class discussion should be held to compare and contrast the two banks involved.