E-Discovery “The Beginning”

                 E-Discovery Challenge has been a great experience for my students at ECMS.  The first year is always the hardest. There have been lots of learning experiences.  However, each experience will help us to be more successful as the program continues in the future.  My students have all be excited to complete the program.  The final products were wonderful and helped the students to learn some valuable lessons.

  In the business reflections and     final group presentations students seemed to mostly grasp the idea of “demand”.  Students that sold snow cones on hot sunny days were the most successful.  Snow cones were something they could offer at breaks and after-school events that no one else was selling and there was a demand from both adults and children for a cool refreshment.   The group that was the least successful and did not get a return on their investment was decorative socks.  The really looked great but what it all came down to was demand, and there wasn’t much for “splatter socks”. 

Students learned a lot of other valuable lessons that they expressed when presenting their final group presentations including:

·         - Groups were dissolved after some really hard work because they simply could not get along.

·         - Other fees are included in starting a business such as envelopes, markers, glue and poster board to advertise your product.  Those costs also come out of your bottom line profits.

·         - It takes hard work to get even the simplest business started.

·         - Starting a business and making a product takes TIME!

The biggest lesson that I have learned from this program that I will change next year is the timing.  Snow days, flood days, and testing really put some constraints on us.  Our program was set to begin in March.  Because of snow we were not able to begin until April.  Because of testing and the final day of school being moved up we had to move our sales event up and sell at school instead of the Memorial Days Festival.  The event itself was successful. However, had it been during a festival we would have had more traffic and the student would have made more profits.  Next year we are planning on starting first semester.  This will give us time to create and sell products and a school event that has students, parents and the general public.  We are already in discussion of some dates!

 Another great think I have learned about this project is what a GREAT community we have.  I have businesses offering to donate items for the sales, parents offering to pay for the start up costs so that their child’s group can be even more successful.  What a great community that we live in where businesses and parents are willing to support their future leaders in any way that they can.