Dream Car Project
"purchasing and financing your car"
goal | lecture | procedure | assessment
GOALS • •
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To use the Internet as a research tool to locate and finance your "dream" car. Choose between: o design and present a Powerpoint presentation of the finished product, or o design an advertisement (Publisher) to market your dream car, or o design a web page that reflects information on your 'dream car'. Sample of Mandy's finished product (you'll love it).
LECTURE
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Did you ever think about owning that "dream" car that you saw in a magazine, on the internet, or driving around town? Well, maybe now's the time. The Internet is a wonderful source to gather information about this vehicle, and Excel is a great tool to help do the number crunching to determine monthly payments, amount of interest, etc. In this activity you will have an opportunity to gather pictures and 'specs' about your dream car via the Internet, copy/paste the results into one of a variety of software products. Choices will include: 1) a Powerpoint presentation to try to convince your parents to help you buy this car, and use Excel to derive the payment plan; 2) a Microsoft Publisher document creating a flyer to advertise your car; or 3) create a web page that will include pictures and specs of your car, and loan information. Sample of Mandy's finished product (you'll love it). PROCEDURE
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There are 4 parts to the DreamCar procedure that you must complete before beginning the actual 'presentation'.
They detail the steps and information you need to collect so that when you get ready to begin building the actual presentation you have "all the pieces".
Part 1: Locating your dream car
1. Using the Internet as a tool, locate a dream car you would like to own. Try experimenting with:
Giggo.com Carsoup.com Carpoint.com
Yahoo! Auto's
Vehix.com
Antique Cars
2. You can search by type of cars (sports cars, trucks, SUVs, etc.). 3. Next, you will want to prepare some work space to collect and store all the information and pictures you find. o build a new folder on your pc and label it 'dreamcar'. o save all your dreamcar photos and research information in this folder. 4. Your goal is to find information about your Dream Car that includes the following: o picture(s) of the car o standard features o special additional options of the car o prices o sample loan information o cite references 5. Open up Word, and begin to copy/paste the information and specs you find about your dream car. You will be using some of this information later in your presentation. Be sure to save regularly (dreamcar.doc). 6. After locating your vehicle, look around the auto website until you locate a table that contains two prices --> the MSRP price and the Invoice price. o o Discuss the meaning of these two prices and paste them in to your word processed document. www.carpoint.com has a good mechanism for this (Price with options)
Part 2: Securing a Loan to finance your dream car.
1. Let's return to the Internet and research Loan Rates, as most of you can't afford to pay cash for the car! 2. Go to www.usatoday.com (or a similar site like www.giggo.com) to find information on current interest rates. o From Usatoday.com, select the Money link from their home page. As time goes on, this web page may change, so use common sense. o Scroll down the page and find "Auto Loans". 3. Select a time period for the loan (4 years or 48 months is good), and select your State and City. 4. From the results, select the least expensive rates. o Last month the Bank of America had the best rate (7.79% for 48 months) with no additional fees. 5. Place this information into your word processed document.
Part 3: Using an Excel Loan Payment template
1. Now is the time to use your 'loan information' to calculate a payment schedule (to
pay back your parents.) Excel has an excellent "Loan Payment Calculator" that can be copied to your work drive. Click Here to retrieve the Excel Loan Payment Calculator, and enable all 'macros' and just move on. 2. This worksheet is protected except for the areas with a green background. Complete filling in your address and other loan information. The spreadsheet will compute the monthly payment, the total interest over the life of the loan, and the total amount that must be repaid. Save the changes made to the spreadsheet. 3. To retrieve another, but more detailed Loan Payment program, click on AMORT2003 and redo the above loan for your car. If you have trouble understanding how to use this tool, then click here for a brief video demonstration of the process (although the spreadsheet is continually updated, the video still instructs one how it works). o The amount you borrow is called the principal. Notice that this spreadsheet actually gives you the month-to-month breakdown between interest and principal. Please copy/paste some of your results from this spreadsheet into your presentation (include the loan information you entered, and the resulting chart up thru the first 6 months).
Part 4:
Creating a 'Cite Sources' page.
1. The last page in your Powerpoint presentation should be a 'cite sources' page. 2. It should include: o the name of all the websites you used in your presentation. o the URL's (web addresses) of all the above sites. o the name of any downloaded files you used in this project (ie., amortization) 3. This concludes the Powerpoint piece of the project, so be prepared to display your Dream Car presentation. ASSESSMENT Assessment:
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8-DreamCar
Now that you have collected all the required information, please pick one of the following 4 presentation options to build your DreamCar Presentation All of the information for this project should be in your word processing software from Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 above. Please read through all four options before making a decision.
Option 1: Would you like to create your presentation with Powerpoint?
• It is recommended you begin with a little outline or storyboard of your plan of attack (using left frame of powerpoint). Include: o introduction about the vehicle that interests you o picture(s), specificiations, pricing, loan information (copied from your Word document) o Save the presentation as dreamcar before proceeding.
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Next, let's go fill in the blank Powerpoint pages as follows: Find the picture of your car, and copy/paste it into your Powerpoint presentation. Be sure to copy/paste the URL's (location of the website)
o o o o
Be sure to save your presentation regularly. Go to Assessments on the left-hand navigation bar and click on 8-
DreamCar
You will be Uploading your presentation document into a folder for your instructor to evaluate. Be sure to hit the Submit button when done.
Option 2: Creating an advertisement in Publisher
1. Create a one or two page advertisement of your 'dream car' in Microsoft Publisher (or similar publishing software). 2. Be sure to include picture(s), features, options, prices, etc. 3. Print a hardcopy of your advertisement 4. Go to Assessments on the left-hand navigation bar and click on 8-DreamCar 5. You will be Uploading your presentation document (from one of the three above options) into a folder for your instructor to evaluate. 6. Be sure to hit the Submit button when done.
Option 3: Building a Web Page
1. Create a web page to share information on your 'dream car' that includes: o title page o picture(s) of the car o standard features and options of the car o prices o sample loan information o cite references 2. Save the the web page as: dreamcar.html 3. Go to Assessments on the left-hand navigation bar and click on 8-DreamCar 4. You will be Uploading your presentation document (from one of the three above options) into a folder for your instructor to evaluate. 5. Be sure to hit the Submit button when done.
Option 4: Building your presentation in Microsoft Word (or any word processor)
1. Although you used your word processor to collect all the information for your presentation, I would strongly recommend that you begin a new word processing document to build a clean and attractive Dream Car presentation if you choose Option #4. It should include a: o title page o picture(s) of the car o standard features and options of the car o prices o sample loan information (copy/pasted from the original)
o cite references 2. Go to Assessments on the left-hand navigation bar and click on 8-DreamCar 3. You will be Uploading your presentation document (from one of the three above options) into a folder for your instructor to evaluate. 4. Be sure to hit the Submit button when done. designed by b.jahn
designed by B. Jahn