I came across this news release announcing Dollars and Sense, a new fun educational site produced by Maryland Public Television aimed at helping teenagers better understand money issues. Boy was I excited!
While the press release claims that Dollars and Sense was "developed in collaboration with educators and economic organizations, incorporates a hip design with interactive activities and tools to engage middle and high schoolers," the site falls way short of its billing. One "fun activity" in particular, All About the Benjamins, promises to teach teenagers about the history of money. In actuality, the lesson consists of four very trivial questions about money (e.g. Some coins are pickled before they're made.) and then a bunch of links to external sites.
One of the best "interactive" features was simply a graphically enhanced, interest rate calculator that revealed the true cost of purchases charged to a credit card.
While the graphics and web design are terrific, this site is seriously lacking in activities, real interactions or even intelligent content. I posted this to the blog because this is typical of a lot of sites that I have come across that promise interactivity, simulations and games but offer nothing close to it. It is clear that Maryland Public Television spent some money on this site (at least on graphic designers) and I'll go out on a limb a say that it was a complete waste of time and resources.
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