Entrepreneurship Education

The resources available on this month's Surf Report have been compiled to aid teachers and schools in providing students with the tools they need to be entrepreneurial. All of these resources support DPI's publication, Wisconsin's Vision for Entrepreneurship Education.

Quick Links: Entrepreneurs | Process Skills | Innovation and Creativity | Lesson Plans | Resources

Entrepreneurs

Everyday Edisons from PBS documents the development process of 12 inventions and the parallel stories of the people who invented them. The Web site includes biographies of all 12 of these creative entrepreneurs.

These Kids Mean Business from PBS tells the tale of underserved youth from across the country and their entrepreneurial activities.

Global Focus: The New Environmentalists is a video series that highlights the positive effect social entrepreneurs are making for our environment. Each 30-minute documentary in this series features six portraits of passionate and dedicated environmental activists from around the globe broken into five-minute segments. Wisconsin teachers can record this series from Wisconsin Media Lab on Wisconsin's public television stations.

The New Heroes tells the stories of 14 social entrepreneurs from all corners of the globe who have developed innovations to help alleviate poverty and illness, combat unemployment and violence, and bring education, light, opportunity and freedom to poor and marginalized people around the world. Wisconsin teachers can record this series from Wisconsin Media Lab on Wisconsin's public television stations.

See short videos about Young Entrepreneurs from Colorado's Denver Channel.com.

Read about college student entrepreneurs and their businesses at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards website.

The Entrepreneur Center Video Room from Junior Achievement highlights the accomplishments of student entrepreneurs.

The Revolutionaries from the Tech Museum of San Jose is a collection of interviews with 18 of Silicon Valley’s top innovators. High school students interviewed these scientists and entrepreneurs to learn what lessons they can pass on to help today's young tinkerers avoid their mistakes and transform their own inspirations into reality.

Entrepreneurial Process Skills

Mind Your Own Business from the U.S. Small Business Administration and Junior Achievement walks students through five easy steps of business ownership: explore, decide, build, connect, and succeed.

Teen Business Link from the US Small Business Administration includes information for teens interested in starting their own business.

Biz Kid$ is a video series that teaches kids about money and business and introduces some amazing young entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Wisconsin teachers can record this series from Wisconsin Media Lab on Wisconsin's public television stations.

In Hot Shot Business from Disney; players choose a business to start in the fictional Opp City. Students must decide how fund their business, pay attention to customer needs, and make other business decisions while competing for the high score.

JA Titan is a simulation game that lets students test their skills running a business. This game from Junior Achievement is complex and may take high school students a while to master.

Baalty (My Shop) is an entrepreneurial game for children and young teens. The game was developed in Egypt by PPIC-Work (Promoting and Protecting the Interests of Children who Work), and the object is to start and grow a business selling things to people. Using this site could be a nice way to integrate entrepreneurial education with global studies.

For more on global entrepreneurship, Teachers’ Domain provides video segments from the series Wide Angle that highlight entrepreneurs from different countries. Log into Teachers Domain, then enter “entrepreneur*” in the search box.

The Boy Scouts of America offer an entrepreneurship merit badge for scouts.

The Girl Scouts of America offer Challenge and Change, a program in social entrepreneurship.

The Wisconsin Small Business Development Center offers a Youth Entrepreneur Camp for 6-8th graders.

Entrepreneurial Traits and Behaviors: Innovation and Creativity

All Terrain Brain from the Kauffman Foundation is designed to help kids ages 8-12 develop the self-confidence, perseverance, motivation, and creative thinking skills that are part of being an entrepreneur. This fun website includes 25 videos with topics such as Taking Charge, Failure is OK, Problem Solving, Creativity and Innovation, Goal Setting and more. The site also includes spotlights on young entrepreneurs from around the world.

Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner features business people and professors talking about topics in entrepreneurship such as creativity and innovation, leadership, recognizing opportunity and more.

Search for Spinoffs lets students search for everyday items that were invented as spinoffs from NASA research. Use it as a starting point or writing prompt for younger students to think about how they could take existing products or ideas and spin them off into a new product or business.

Design a Satellite challenges children to solve a variety of problems in order to design a satellite. The animated interactive from the Littleton Historical Museum demonstrates how ordinary people can come up with creative solutions to problems and invent new things.

By Kids for Kids (BKFK) encourages young innovators to create and share new ideas. Students can enter their ideas in various competitions, and winners have a chance to actually develop their ideas into commercial products.

First Lego League is a competition for 4th through 8th graders, designed to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders. The competition builds skills in technology, teamwork, problem solving and innovation and fosters capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

Destination ImagiNation sponsors educational programs for students to learn and experience creativity, teamwork and problem solving. Students work in teams and learn to think on their feet, work together, and devise original solutions that satisfy the requirements of a given challenge.

Design Squad is a PBS programs that features young people competing to design and build working solutions for real-world clients who are looking for clever ideas from a new generation of innovators. Wisconsin teachers can record this series from ECB on Wisconsin's public television stations.

Red Studio from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in San Francisco encourages teens to exercise their creativity and learn what it takes to become an architect, artist, or filmmaker. Read about arts entrepreneurs like Walt Disney or watch video interviews with professional artists.

Explore creativity and problem solving by solving an architectural challenge in 3D Studio from the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. Students try to design a house to satisfy the client's needs, and learn about architecture as a career.

InventNow from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Ad Council was designed to inspire young people ages 8-11 to be creative and invent. The website includes games and activities where students can use their creativity, as well as learn about the process of protecting their intellectual property.

Lesson Plans

USA Today’s Entrepreneurship Education Lesson Archive includes lots of articles about entrepreneurial people and projects, each accompanied by activities or questions for classroom discussion.

The lesson plan US History: Inventors and Entrepreneurs, from Econ EdLink, asks students to research some interesting examples (such as the chocolate chip cookie, McDonald's, Morse code) to explore the difference between inventors and entrepreneurs.

In The Entrepreneur in You, also from Econ EdLink, students analyze, compare and evaluate personal characteristics of entrepreneurs. They must then determine if they have the traits found in successful entrepreneurs, and set goals to help themselves to become more entrepreneurial.

Additional lesson plans from Econ EdLink include What Makes an Entrepreneur, I Can Be an Entrepreneur, Not Your Grandma's Lemonade Stand and more.

Two American Entrepreneurs: Madam C.J. Walker and J.C. Penney from the National Parks Service explores entrepreneurship in the context of U.S. History. The lesson asks students to identify the attributes that helped Walker and Penney to succeed as entrepreneurs, compare and contrast the two for similarities and differences in backgrounds, analyze the factors necessary for founding a successful business today and compare them with those needed in Walker's and Penney's day. They finish by investigating entrepreneurs who have established businesses in their own communities.

The Biz Kid$ website provides five complete lesson plans in English and Spanish.

The Road to Self-Sufficiency: A Guide to Entrepreneurship for Youth with Disabilities from the National Collaborative on workforce and Disability shows how entrepreneurship education can be implemented and offers suggestions on how to introduce self-employment as an option  for all youth, including youth with disabilities.

National 4-H Curriculum offers several guides for entrepreneurship education.

General Resources

• Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Entrepreneurship Education
• Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education
• Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation general website and Entrepreneurship website
• DECA is dedicated improving education and career opportunities for students interested in careers in marketing, management and entrepreneurship.
• Teens and Entrepreneurship Survey from Junior Achievement

Created 11/2009
Last updated 7/20/10