MoneyPower: Everyday Money Missions
MoneyPower is an interactive CD Rom produced by the Basic Skills Agency (www.basic-skills.co.uk/). It focuses on levels 1 and 2 of the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Core Curricula as well as aspects of the Adult Financial Capability Framework (these documents are on the disc as pdfs.). Consequently, it is a good companion to Money-go-round.
It comprises nine separate missions, each with three separate objectives, which enable students to practise their money skills. These missions are:
- Making a home
- Thinking about the future
- Improving your lot
- Bad news in the post
- The rest of your lives
- It’s a lottery
- In your dreams
- Things that go bump in the night
- Something for the kids.
Accompanying the missions are numerous mission tools; these include: a calculator; a financial dictionary; a notebook; and a graph maker. These enable students to record, save and retrieve their own work. Training documents are available as pdf and there is a training session for students on the disc.
The missions are based on real life situations, for example: buying a sofa for a new flat; pension planning; discovering more about council tax and business rates; is it worth investing in a timeshare scheme?; and ethical investments.
The missions include numeracy and literacy tasks, which are well integrated, however, not all missions cover both in equal measure. ‘Things that go bump in the night’ (the thing that ‘bumps’ is a gas boiler!) primarily requires literacy skills.
Tutors can also create paper-based missions for students to use the tools on the CD ROM.
It represents excellent value particularly when it may be copied and distributed freely!
Steve Bishop
Maths Lecturer, City of Bristol College
£10.00 + VAT
Basic Skills Agency
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