In Defense of Learning to Code

How to React to Comments

Lemonade Stand - Project Overview

In this project you will create your own business that sells a product.  You will be using Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, and Google Maps.

You will complete the following assignments for this project:

1. Creating a business - following your passion
2. Comparison study - who has sold this product before, and how will you do better?
3. Finding a market - where will your business be located?
4. Tracking income and expenses
5. Advertising
6. Presentation - going public

Grading your project:

• Each individual assignment will be graded on whether the directions are followed.  For most portions, this will involve the Sum key in Excel, so now would be a good idea to review your work with the Sum key in the "What's My Grade?" assignment.
• A portion of your project grade will be based on the outcome of the following:
1. Your classmates will be given a certain amount of money to spend
2. You will need to convince them in a presentation why your product is the best to buy
3. Your classmates will either choose your product or someone else's!
1. Note: if no one buys your product, the lowest you can get is a C on that portion of the project.

For reference, this is what my Business Plan looks like.

Lemonade Stand: Using Excel to Calculate Business Expenses

If you have not already, download my Business Plan to see what your formating should look like.

In your Business Plan Excel document, rename Sheet 3 to "Expenses"

• In column A, enter the following (the parenthesis tell you which cell to enter the text in):
• Employee #1 (cell # A2)
• Employee #2 (A3)
• Rent (A4)
• 10 [product you are selling] to stock (A5)
• Leave row 6 blank
• Total Expenses (A7)

• In row 1, enter the following headings:
• Hourly (B1)
• Weekly (B2)
• Monthly (B3)
• Yearly (B4)

• First expense: employees
• You will have two full time employees
• Check my Business Plan to see where you should enter the information.
• Find out what the minimum wage is in your selected location.
• I Googled "Boulder CO minimum wage"
• The first hit was a news article from 2010 that had the minimum wage ($7.24) in the title, but I wanted to confirm with a government source.
• The sixth hit was from colorado.gov, so I knew it was a government site that would probably have current information.
• I clicked on the link and confirmed that the current minimum wage in Boulder is $7.65.  It's a good thing I double checked the government website!
• Notice that I entered in the minimum wage in the Hourly column on the row labeled with my two employees.
• Use the Sum function to automatically calculate the weekly wage of an employee by multiplying the hourly wage by 40.  The average work week is 40 hours.  
• This is the formula you should use to multiply a cell by 40:
• =SUM(B2*40)
• Use the Sum function to automatically calculate the monthly and yearly salaries of your employees.

• Second expense: rent
• Determine how much space your product needs
• 100 sq. ft - Small (Beads, Comic Books) $500/month
• 1000 sq. ft - Medium (Blenders, Baseball Gloves) $5,000/month
• 5000 sq. ft - Large (Cars, Furniture) $25,000/month
• I think I will be able to fit enough bikes in to a medium space, so will enter my monthly rent as $5,000/month.
• Notice that I used the sum function key to automatically calculate the yearly amount.  This will be useful later if I need to move into a larger space.

• Third expense: products
• You can't open a store with zero products in it, can you?
• In Step 3 of the last post, we calculated the cost of our products.  The average price of a mountain bike in Boulder is $2,399.20, so the cost is half that at $1,199.60.
• Add the price and cost of your product to your expenses sheet.
• I put mine in cell D9 and D10.
• As a one time expense, let's buy 10 products to fill our shelves.
• Remember, it's best to use the Sum key to automatically calculate formulas in Excel.
• Use this formula to automatically calculate the cost of 10 products: 
• =SUM(D10*10)

• Total your expenses using the Sum key.  When selecting which cells to sum, be sure you have the correct cell selected!
• Explore my document to be sure yours looks like mine.

• Ask a neighbor to glance over your expenses, and ask if your Expenses sheet matches Mr. LaTorre's.

• Add your Total Yearly expenses to the Lemonade Stand Project Spreadsheet.

Advertising Your Product and Company - Lemonade Stand

Now that you have done the research of what you will sell, where you will sell it, and how much it will cost to operate, you will need to convince investors to give you money to start your company.

You will have two minutes to give a presentation to your classmates.  How you spend these two minutes is entirely up to you, but keep in mind that your classmates will be making a decision of what to do with their money based on how well you have planned out your business.  People don't like to invest in businesses that don't have a good plan!

Another portion of what will make a convincing presentation is if you already have an advertisement for your product.  Like I mentioned, there are no requirements for the two minute presentation, but I believe that having an advertisement for your product will help you attract investors.
I know what you are thinking: "But wait! How will I be graded on this assignment?"  Answer: I will not be grading the actual presentations.

How you will earn your grade:
Your classmates will be given a sum of money to invest in a limited number of companies.  Your grade will be based on whether you convince enough of your fellow students to invest in your company, and the investments you collect are more than your expenses.

Creating a Business

As you create your business plan, you can use my business plan for guidance.  Download my document and save it in your student drive for future reference.

Step 1

Start Your Business Plan

Open a Microsoft Excel document and save using the class saving guidelines. (File name: "YourNameBusinessPlan")

At the bottom of your document, you will see that there are already three sheets that have been created.  Rename Sheet 1 to Overview.

Come up with a product that you would like to sell.  When deciding on a product to sell, keep the following in mind:

• Is this a product you know something about, and/or would be willing to learn more about?
• Is this a product that you can feel passionate about?
• Is this a product that people would buy?

If your answer is yes to all of the above (and your product is school appropriate), you have found your product!  Enter in the following in your Business Plan Document on the Overview page: "Product: [your product]"

Navigate to the Lemonade Stand Project Spreadsheet and fill in your information.

Step 2

Find a Market

Now that you have found a product to sell, you will need to find the best location to sell your product.

• Come up with a place that you would like to sell your product (SE Portland? Beijing? San Francisco? North Dakota?)
• Navigate to maps.google.com
• Search for your place.  My place is Boulder, Colorado.  After searching for your place, the map screen will show a zoomed out picture of your chosen location.

View Larger Map

• You should now search nearby for vendors that sell products similar to yours. I clicked on "Search nearby", then entered in "Mountain Bike"
• I have found that there are about 10 vendors in Boulder that sell mountain bikes. Side note: this could mean one of two things: either there are too many mountain bike shops in Boulder (too much supply), or there are a lot of people who want to ride mountain bikes (high demand).
• Bonus point! (Not required) In your business plan overview sheet, defend why your product supplies the demand in your chosen location.

View Larger Map

Step 3

Market Research

You will need to do some research to find out how much to charge for your product.

• In your Business Plan Excel document, rename Sheet 2 to "Market Research"
• Accross the top row (Row 1) of your Market Research sheet, create the following headers, one per cell:
• Company
• Product
• Price
• Fill in the Market Research sheet by searching the shops you found in your area.
• My first shop I found is "Redstone Cyclery" in Boulder.
• I went to their website and found a mountain bike for sale, then entered the information in my Market Research:
• Under the Company column, I entered "Redstone Cyclery"
• Under the Product column, I entered "Tomac Primer 220 Mountain Bike"
• Under the Price column, I entered "$2,349.00"
• I repeated this process for as many companies in the area that I could.
• Once you have at least 5 companies and products recorded, find the average price of the products in your area by selecting all the prices in the price column, then clicking the Sum key drop down menu, and selecting "Average".
• The average price of a mountain bike in Boulder is $2,399.20.
• Let's assume that to purchase your product from a supplier, you will pay half of the price you will sell the product for.
• I used the Sum key again to automatically divide the average price in half =SUM(C8/2)  This will be useful later if I find that the price of bikes changes and I need my calculations to stay current.
• Now that you have divided the average price of your product in half, you have found out the cost of the product.

Step 4

If you have finished all of the steps above, it is time to use Excel to Calculate your Expenses

Lemonade Stand Class Spreadsheet Guidelines

Google Docs is a great place to compile information from a large group of people, say, three computer technology classes.

I have created a Google Document where you can enter your information about your Lemonade Stand Project so that others can see your work.  Before you enter your information, however, we should observe a few guidelines:

1. This document can be edited by anyone.  Please respect others' work.
2. Do not delete or edit others' work.

Here is the link to the Lemonade Stand Project Spreadsheet.

What's My Grade? Microsoft Excel Assignment

Microsoft Excel is a very powerful tool.  Like many powerful tools, it is also sometimes complicated.  While this is an individual assignment, you may need to work with your neighbors if you get stuck.  Asking a question in Google and using the Help menu are good, too!

-Open Microsoft Excel, and save your file using the class saving guidelines.

-As your header, add a title (What's My Grade?), name, and class.

-Across your first row, create some column headings: Assignment, Earned, Possible, Percentage


-Format your first row in Bold.

-Log in to EdLine, and record your assignment names in your first column under Assignment


-Enter in your earned credit for each assignment in the Earned column.

-Enter in the total possible points in the Possible column.

-Now format your Percentage column.

1. Right click on the letter above the column to highlight the entire column.
2. Select "Format"
3. Under the "Number" section, select "Percentage"
4. Click OK

-Now find the percentage earned for each assignment.

1. Select the top most cell in the percentage column that is in the same row as your top assignment.
2. Click the sum key.  The sum key is represented by the greek letter Sigma: 
3. Note that the automatic function of the sum key is to sum or add a string of numbers together.  It probably looks something like this: =SUM(B2:C2). Excel guesses which numbers you want to add and highlights those cells.  In this case Excel has probably chosen both the Earned and Possible points to add together.  Unfortunately adding the two numbers together will not give us meaningful information so we need to...
4. Edit the function.  We find the percentage of a number by dividing.  So you convert this sentence: "I earned 6 out of 10 points for First Assignment" to a function like so: 6/10.
5. But what if we resubmit the assignment for more credit?  We want to be able to enter in the new number in the correct box and have the percentage represent the new number.  So change the function in your selected box to =SUM(B2/C2), then press enter.
6. You should now see the percentage in the box you edited!
7. Okay, how about the other assignments percentages?  Do I have to redo the same process for every assignment? No, you don't!
8. Hover your mouse cursor over the lower right corner of the cell you just added the function to.
9. Your cursor should turn to a solid black cross.
10. If you drag the cross down and release, it will copy the function to every cell you highlight.

-Okay time for your totals.  Use the Sum function to total up your Earned, Possible, and Percentages columns with separate totals.

-Download my template to see what your file should look like.

-If your document looks like mine (including functions!),  you may save, then attach to a professional email to teacherlatorre@gmail.com No earlier than the last 10 minutes of class!.  If you finish the minimum requirements before the last ten minutes, add a sheet to your document and repeat the process for all of your classes.

Cyberbullying Project Reflection (Individual)

Your reflection should be written on a Word document then sent as an attachment to teacherlatorre@gmail.com.
Use the same format that your group used for the Proposal.
Please include:
-An appropriate file name
-Date
-To
-From
-What happened?
-Was this a success? Why or why not?
-Include a compliment to one of your group members for something they helped your group to accomplish.
-Finally, assign yourself, your group members, and your group over all a grade (A-D).  Defend and explain your decision.  It should look like this:

[example]:
Grade
Mr. LaTorre (me): A-
I worked hard but there was one day I was tired and did not help out as much.

Phillip Group guy: A+
Phillip did a ton of work, and even got some things done outside of class.

Gene Group guy: B-
Gene wanted to do another topic, and it took all day to get him to help.  Eventually he was really good at doing research and adding it to our project.

Group Grade: A
We worked well together even though we had some disagreements.  We learned a lot about cyberbullying, and were able to compile our facts into a presentation that made sence and was educational to others.

Cyber Bullying Presentation

Once you have completed the action portion of your project, you will need to create a Microsoft Powerpoint file to share your project with the class.

Steps:

1. Choose one group member to navigate to docs.google.com, and create a presentation document.
2. Add all group members to the document as editors.
3. Using the rather plain presentation below as your template, create a much more creative presentation to share with the class that will describe your project.
4. Download your Google presentation as a PowerPoint presentation, using the class saving guidelines.
5. Attach your file to a professional email from your Outlook account to teacherlatorre@gmail.com

Follow this example while creating your presentation:



Grading for this assignment:

• Students will be graded as a group, not individually for this portion of the project.
• I will be looking for the following components in determining your grade for the presentation:
• Title Page (group members listed?)
• Project Overview (how did your group decide what to do?)
• Action (Is it clear what your group has done?)
• Outcome (All questions answered?)
• Conclusion (lessons learned)
• Thank You/Questions page
• Works Cited (MLA format)
• Proper spelling and grammar
• Each of the above requirements is worth 5 points each, totalling 40 points for the presentation.