The Business Time Capsule

At our school, a high percentage of students who take GCSE Business Studies go on to take it at A Level as well. This means that I can do a time capsule exercise with a good chance that a significant number of the students who participated will be there when it becomes time to “unearth it”.

After a month or so of the GCSE course (when the students are starting to get a reasonable grounding of basic business terms such as market share) I introduce the exercise. I tell them that we are going to makes some predictions about some large businesses and other important social trends that will impact on businesses. These predictions will then be buried and then “unearthed” in about 2 1/2 years time (the approximate time from near the start of the GCSE course to near the end of the A2 course)

Some of the things you might like to include
- a sharemarket picking exercise where 5 stocks are chosen (perhaps $20,000 spent on each)
- finding out the current market share of major companies eg Google, Apple, Facebook and making predictions on how that might change in the future
- predictions that the students might have regarding phones, internet usage, education
- writing down the four largest companies over a range of market sectors (for later comparison)
- and anything personal they want to put in (a message to themselves?)

The “burying” process can be as elaborate as you want, or simply just collecting them in to store in your office!

Of course, nobody knows for sure where they will be in 2 1/2 years (including the teacher) but I think it’s worth a go. If only I had thought of this 2 1/2 years ago…