Locally developed financial literacy game wins "Game of Year"?
Locally developed financial literacy game wins "Game of Year"?
Locally developed financial literacy game wins "Game of Year"?
By Pam Chickering Wilson
November 17, 2020
Summary
A financial literacy game developed by Jefferson Middle School teacher Erich Utrie and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater's Julie Woletz has just won "Game of the Year" honors from the national Institute for Financial Literacy.
The original game on which the new high school game was based, developed in 2012, was directed at educators themselves, serving as a fun tool to help educators understand the power of compound interest and the value of starting early to save for their future.
Educators responded so positively to the humorous, interactive financial literacy tool aimed at WEA members that soon teachers were requesting a student-centered version of the game to use in their classrooms to convey the same messages to a younger audience.
WEA Member Benefits personnel and experts in the field served as advisors during the process, with Utrie and Woletz taking a lead role in adapting the game for teens, based on Wisconsin's Academic Standards or Personal Financial Literacy for the high school level.
Like a typical board game, the game has questions touching on a number of personal finance topics, spanning investing, saving, budgeting, insurance decisions and more.
The high school edition of the game has students work in teams to make decisions and to discuss and learn about different personal financial issues or situations they could encounter in life.
The student version of the game, "Don't Be Jack: High School Edition" was released by WEA Member Benefits in 2019 and made available to teachers around the state.
After a few months of COVID-related delays, the newly developed game, "Don't Be Jack: High School Edition" went into consideration this fall for the 2020 EIFLE awards.
Soon enough an email came through from WEA Member Benefits officials verifying that the game Utrie and Woletz had worked on had won.
No monetary award, statuette or trinket comes along with the award - it merely serves to raise the profile of the games' creators, to heighten awareness of financial literacy education, and to make teachers more aware of some of the resources that are available to them in this field.
Reference
Wilson, P. (2020, November 17). Locally developed financial literacy game wins "Game of Year". Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://www.dailyunion.com/locally-developed-financial-literacy-game-wins-game-of-year/article_336e338b-ba0f-5e65-aefd-13eded304d7e.html