As an elementary school teacher, I find this assignment quite challenging. Since I do not possess a creative entrepreneur mindset, I've decided to piggy-back (no pun intended) on a successful app from kickstart called Pigzbe. Before thinking like an entrepreneur, I had to immerse myself fully into Pigzbe's world to learn all about this business. The more I delve deeper, the more I learn that this application is much more complicated than just teaching financial literacy to children ages 6 and above. Since Pigzbe uses cryptocurrency to engage its users for the actual functionality part, I had to fully educate myself, to the best I can, about cryptocurrency and blockchains. I sincerely like where Pigzbe is going with their product, but I feel that it is very limited in terms of its user target since their platform design is tailored to be more child-friendly and they only cover the basics of financial literacy. Therefore, I've decided to connect Pigzbe more to our educational curriculum while adding on Pigzbe Plus+ element to further include users up to grade 12, who are desperately in need to learn and be financially independent in preparation for adulthood. At the same time, to teach all users about cryptocurrency and blockchain as well as preparing themselves for the future of banking. I have learned so much through the process of modifying and extending Pigzbe that I feel this has been an interesting journey for me and I will need to continue thinking more from a business mindset when present with new products in the future.
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I believe my modification and extension of Pigzbe provides actual aid and guidance to all students in K-12. There is a need to educate students with a focus on preparing them for the real-world problem, and teaching through videos and reading through textbooks offer limited chances for students to make a connection to learning. Having real-life problems and scenarios, simulations, and games for the students to engage with followed by constant follow-up with teacher feedback will offer more guidance and able to lay down the proper groundwork in building their financial skills and understanding. Our banking system is changing rapidly around the world, so there is a need for students to learn other methods of saving, investing, etc., rather than living paycheck to paycheck or graduate from college only to pay off their debt for the next 10 years. As we slowly introduce financial literacy to students at a young age and built on it as they grow older, the result will be more pronounced and more beneficial for the learners.
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The weakness of this project will be my lack of entrepreural experience. I tried my best to convince the audience of the purpose of extending Pigzbe, but I worry that it will not be convincing enough. When I was modifying and creating Pigzbe Plus+ section, I find it difficult to create examples that I want to portray for educators and parents to use. I ended up explaining my ideas through short and concise point-form formate, which may not be compelling enough. At the same time, I find myself editing the website over and over again because I was trying to present the product from an educator's perspective rather than as the leader of this product. Through experience, I hope I will become better at creating a product from an entrepreneur's mindset, but so far I am trying to work on being able to differentiate myself from an educator to more of a business mindset.
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