John Smith Student Loan Calculations and Budgeting Exercise

John Smith recently graduated from an in-State University with a degree in physical therapy.  He is about to embark on his career as a physical therapist at New Haven Physical Therapeutics, and is expected to make $46,300 per year. In order to get his degree, John had to take out $35,000 in student loans (Stafford loans plus Student Plus loans).

Please click on this link to access an Excel spreadsheet that we'll use to calculate the costs and duration of paying off John's student loans.  You will also learn how to use the CNN Money student loan calculator to help John determine whether he should try to pay off his tsudent loans in 5, 10 or 15 years.

In the next exercise, we will take a close look at John's monthly cash flows - since he plans on creating a budget to monitor his spending habits across expense categories.

For some guidance on an average household's spending habits (expense allocations), please check out this monthly cash flow analysis calculator.

You will use it along with the expense spending cash flow spreadsheet that you downloaded for the student loan calculation above, to calculate John Smith's average monthly net income.

PC Rx Quiz

This quiz is about PC Rx or How to Keep Your PC Running Smoothly

Please click on this link to access the quiz.  

Remember to save your work as 

  PCRx_FirstNameLastName.doc 

and send it as an attachment via gmail to rwiegs@gmail.com

PC Maintenance (or PC Rx)

How many times have you heard someone say that their computer's crashed? or that their laptop is running so slowly?  Or that they receive so much junk (i.e spam) via email?

Well don't just stand there - let's do something about it!

You gotta stay proactive, don't let things pile up until the last minute.

Here are some guidelines for PC maintenance and repair:

General Tips

• Be organized - save your working files in sub-folders inside of a working folder on Google Drive (not on your C-Drive) - this will actually help preserve the life of your C-Drive
• Don't save files on the root folder of your C-Drive
• Uninstall (not delete, but actually use the Windows Uninstall routine) all programs that you don't really use - you'd be amazed at all the stuff that piles up on your C-Drive and web browser task bar over time - so get rid of it!
• Buy a surge protector - this will save your desktop, laptop, cable modem and wireless router during thunderstorms

Practice safe computing. Don't accept software or downloads for which you didn’t ask. Delete any suspicious email without opening it. And even if the     email came from your best friend, don't open any email attachments with the following extensions: * .exe, .com, .vbs, .bat, .mdb, .reg, and .js

Can you get to Level 20 on Code.org?

Code.org is a great site to get exposed to computer programming.  They employ a block building approach to get students to create real video games.  

There are 20 levels or puzzles that you need to solve in order to earn the coveted Code.org Certificate of Completion.  Think you got what it takes?  

Check it out at Code.org

Internet Research Detective – Q4A

                Internet Research Detective – Q4A

Your mission is to use your best internet research skills to correctly answer the following 10 questions within the shortest possible time.  You get 10 points for each correct answer plus 20 bonus points if you gmail your answers to me first, 14 pts for gmailing them to me 2^nd, 13 pts for gmailing them to me 3^rd, etc.  Those who submit these answers last do not get any bonus points.  The top 3 scorers per class will get a prize.

Please click on this link to access a Word document version of this exercise. Type your answers under each question into the document, save the document as FirstNameLastName_IRDQ4A.doc and gmail it to rwiegs@comcast.net

    1) In 2014, which ten sports teams have the highest average pay per athlete in the world?  (Hint: think teams, not individual athletes)

    2) Who are the top 10 highest paid athletes in 2014? (Hint: think individual athletes, not teams)

           

3)Which 3 countries have the fairest (i.e. most equal income equality or income distribution across its population), based on the latest World Bank statistics?

         

4) Refer to question 3.  Between which 2 countries does the United States rank in terms of equality of income distribution?    

     5) Which 5 countries have the highest GDP per capita in 2013 (according to  the IMF)?

 6) What are the top 5 languages spoken in the world, in order? 

   

 7) What percentage of women sit currently on the U.S. Supreme Court?

 8) What are the top 5 selling video games of all time?

 9) What are the top 5 countries in terms of the percentage of citizens using the internet regularly?

    

10) Which are the 3 countries with the highest calorie consumption per day?

              

11) What was the single most viewed sporting event in the world?  

    12) Which 5 states in the U.S. have the highest income per capita?

    13) Which 5 states in the U.S. have the lowest income per capita?

14) What are the top 10 most visited web sites in the world?

15)  What are the top 10 best jobs in the U.S. according to U.S. News and World Report?

(Hint: check out http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-best-jobs)

Use PicMonkey.com to edit a Portrait, Landscape image and create a Collage

In this exercise, we will use PicMonkey.com photo editing program to transform a portrait and a landscape image - and also to create a collage.

The only way to get to know this program is to just dive right in and start editing, using the many menu functions on the left sidebar of the site.  You'd be amazed at all the fun ways you can transform images and create flyers, holiday or business event cards as well.  

I have found this program to have a much faster learning curve than PhotoShop or Gimp, both of which are powerful photo editing programs.  And for many reasons, PicMonkey is much more fun to use and share images with friends.

Be sure to check out the tutorials on PicMonkey.com and the many PicMonkey video tutorials on YouTube as well, such as this one which shows you how to use overlays to create the illusion of a boy flying.