Week 11: PayGrade (From Free Technology for Teachers - Richard Byrne)

 Earlier this week, Richard Byrne made a blog post about this online classroom economy called PayGrade. This post was just an update in reference to his previous post a year ago (PayGrade now allows you to sign in with Google). I decided to check out PayGrade for myself and I was amazed at how realistic this online tool is. 

Once your educator account is created and your students are added (requires parent permission), you can begin having students interview for jobs and assign classroom job roles for students. PayGrade has a good amount of pre-created jobs (which can be edited) but you can also add your own jobs. Students are even set up with a virtual bank account where their pay will be deposited either daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. They can use this "virtual money" to spend on rewards that you have created within your classroom. However, they can't just pile up the cash; you can set up weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly bills that students are required to pay. The pre-created bills that PayGrade has in their system are very realistic such as rent, phone, health insurance, etc., but can be edited to include "bills" that may be more age appropriate. I love that they included this feature as it really separates this from any other online classroom economy that I have seen. Students can be charged "fines" (not sure that I would use, personally) or given bonuses for things like positive behavior. PayGrade takes financial literacy for students to a whole new level and I think this can be used for almost any grade level as you can easily customize to meet your students where they are, developmentally (although, it may difficult for students below 3rd grade to use). 

They do offer a paid version with other features however, those features are likely more geared toward middle school or high school age students. The free basic version would do just fine for elementary and most classrooms in general (the paid version is also $500). Here is a breakdown of the features in each version. 

In the past I have set up jobs for students that extended beyond the classroom and into a school-wide setting. Right before the pandemic, we were even discussing adding a "coffee cart" where a group of students would have the job of selling and delivering coffee and small breakfast items to teachers in the morning (with a staff member handling the hot coffee of course). This tool would be an awesome way to help students understand the work-money connection in addition to other financial literacy topics.