INDIANAPOLIS, March 23, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As bank failures continue to make headlines in the United States and around the world, free digital content from Poptential™ offers teachers multimedia-rich content to help students learn why banks fail and what happens to the global economy when financial institutions collapse. Click to tweet.
Poptential is a family of free social studies course packages that boost student engagement by using a variety of pop culture media to illustrate concepts, including those taken from sitcoms, movies, animations, cartoons, late-night shows, and other sources.
“Today’s high school students are too young to remember the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual, so this month’s failure of Silicon Valley Bank is all new for them,” said Julie Smitherman, a former social studies teacher and director of content at Certell, Inc., the nonprofit behind Poptential. “In both cases, the banks were forced to shut down when investors quickly withdrew deposits and created a ripple effect across global financial markets.”
Poptential Economics and American History course packages offer students a look at previous bank failures and provide opportunities to compare these to today. Content includes:
What is a bank run: Poptential Economics Module 6 mini-lesson, “Bank Runs and Failures,” features a video clip from the classic Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and a parody from “The Simpsons” to illustrate how word-of-mouth and investor fear can create a bank run.
Not too big to fail: Poptential American History Volume II Module 29 teaches about the financial crisis of 2008, its impact across the global economy, and the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act that limited the amount of risk financial institutions could take on. In this mini-lesson, a video clip from the movie “Too Big to Fail” offers an explanation of why the financial system collapsed. A clip from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert explains why the U.S. government bailed out the biggest banks responsible for the collapse.
Lessons from the 2008 financial disaster: Poptential Economics Module 6 also features a “Housing Bubble and Bust” mini-lesson about how predatory lending practices led to losses across financial institutions that created the 2008 recession and global financial crisis. This video clip from the mini-lesson gives an in-depth review of the causes of the financial system collapse and why it needed to be reformed.
Poptential course packages include everything instructors need to teach a subject, including lessons, e-books, bell ringers, quizzes, and tests. The curriculum is standards-based and developed by teachers. Poptential is available via a digital platform that allows students to access lessons even in poor bandwidth environments. Course packages in American History, World History, U.S. Government/Civics, and Economics are available free at www.poptential.org.
About Certell, Inc.
Certell is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to foster a generation of independent thinkers. More than 100,000 users from throughout the United States have signed up for Certell’s Poptential™ family of free social studies courses. Certell course packages have won a number of awards, including EdTech Digest Awards for Curriculum and Instruction Solution, Tech&Learning Best Tool for Back to School, Tech Edvocate Awards, Bronze Award of Excellence from the National Association of Economics Educators, and Civvys Awards. More information is available at poptential.org.
For information contact:
Mara Conklin, 847-340-6823
mconklin@teamclarus.com
Kathy Zoeller, (312) 485-2422
kathy@mattsonpr.com
