I am a curious onlooker at a site called Quora. For those not familiar with Quora, it is basically a site where people ask questions and other people answer them (with lots of people like me just reading the questions and the answers). All readers have the ability to upvote the best answers so they rise to the top and you get a well curated list of interesting questions and thoughtful responses.

I thought a good classroom activity would be to get your students to try Quora (see who can get the most votes for a question they answer) or to set up a Quora-like system in your classroom. So, to get you started, I thought I would seed you with some Money questions that your students could answer and then compare to some of the leading responses of Quora:

• What is the best way to start investing when someone is 21 years old?
• What is the best way to spend money?
• What is it like to be saving 70% of your salary?
• What will be the best investment for the next 10-20 years?
• What is the single most effective piece of financial advice that you’ve ever received?

Here’s one idea on how to run this in the classroom (or please drop me a line and let me know how you made it work):

• Have your students choose one question and write a few paragraphs to answer it.
• Consolidate the written responses based on the question it is answering.
• Have students rate each of the responses (1-5 scale perhaps)
• Rank the responses based on student feedback
• Just for fun, students can go to Quora to see the highly rated responses to the question they answered

Good luck!

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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