Is College Worth It?

For those of you teaching economics and personal finance,  here is a great WashPost article on the value of a college education as opposed to just a high school education.  

Flipping, flipping, flipping!

All three of my preps this year are being flipped so I am really getting into it which is good after four years of practicing the "craft."  Today we are having a tech in-service at Hayfield Secondary where I teach and I am teaching two sections of how to flip one's classroom.  If you aren't a teacher at Hayfield and want to watch how to do flip, above is an eight minute video detailing all of the steps and what to do in the classroom after you have done your flipped lecture.

Here is an example of a flipped video, the actual Google form we used and the interactive assignment that followed in class. 

Elasticity & Amazon.com

Most people know that Amazon.com has been in a price war with independent book dealers, but according to their blog and this article it's all about elasticity.  Make the price too high and people will not purchase as many books.  Lower the price and book sales go up.  It might make for an interesting article to show your students to make what they are learning more relevant. 

Cross Price Elasticity

Short that it is, this is very well explained for cross price elasticity.  

The World's Shortest Video Definition of Micro and Macroeconomics

Revenue & the Internet in Real Time

Click above to view the full version [h/t PennyStocks.la].
If you have been listening or reading interviews this week with Jack Ma or Alibaba, you know he sounds a lot like Jeff Bezos when he was starting Amazon.  Both saw a change in the market and jumped on it.  That might be something your students can relate to what you are teaching in class.  While you are doing that, the images above might help your discussion. 

My Book Can Now be Pre-Ordered

We now have a definitive early January release date for my book, whose name has changed to "Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction."  The name pretty much says it all as I relate research, examples and explanatory tutorials to show you how to effectively use technology for both primary (technology being used in ways similar to paper and secondary (more of the book and ways to allow you to do things you cannot do without technology).   There are also five "teacher challenges" per chapter so that you and your PLCs could set goals for your teams to integrate the techniques into your classrooms and school.    

Income and Substitution Effects

My students will be starting a new micro unit this week which will look at substitution and income effect.  This explanation, complete, with images is a big help, esp. for those looking for multiple scenarios.  For example it looks at what happens with normal as well as inferior goods to both under both income and substitution effects.  

What are Capital Gains & Credit Scores

While the goal of this WashPost video is how to avoid a capital gains tax, it is actually quite a good video on what is meant by capital gains.  

Below is another video explaining credit scores. 

Circular Flow Model

If you are flipping your classroom here is a nice video explaining the circular flow model.  If you prefer to show images to your students, here is a nice set of them.  

Teaching 9-11

A few years ago through the twitter #sschat a teacher posted their 9-11 lesson via dropbox and I instantly downloaded.  But I forgot who I got it from so if you are out there please contact me and I can give you credit for putting this outstanding lesson together.  Here is the 9-11 Lesson.

Flipping Back to School Night

I started this last year and had a great deal of success with my AP courses, so above is what I am doing for AP Micro/Macro.  I create a tinyurl (http://tinyurl.com/btsnapecon) and ask my students to text their parents in class the video.  Most of my parents watched it beforehand and then came to class with their questions.  If you look at my World History Teachers Blog, I have suggestions for those of you who have non AP classes.

If you want to create your own flipped back to school night presentation, here is how to do it. 

Remind Now Allows You To Record Homework Reminders

This is a pretty cool addition for those of you who have Remind on your smartphone (iTunes, Android).  You can, as the video shows, record your student assignments for your kids to hear rather than read.  You can also attach assignments if you like.  If you look at this video you can set up and use Remind with your students.  

Free Graphing Tools for your Smartphone

Thanks to Liz Brown on the AP Economics Teachers Facebook page for this suggestion which has free iTunes and Android graphing tools which you could use with your students.  

38 Maps That Explain the Global Economy

This is a nice series of maps from Vox that explain aspects of the world's economy.  Visuals are a great way to show your students what is being studied.  For example the image above is the per capita GDP of individual countries.  So if you know the ones colored black are the highest and then dark blue, light blue, you can very quickly see the richest areas of the world. 

Remind to Text Your Students

I have been using Remind (used to be called Remind101) for the past three years (in fact their CEO even wrote a nice blurb for my book which is coming out in a few months).  Students today do not use email very often, but cannot text enough to save their lives!  So when I started using Remind I found that the amount of homework among my standard (non AP/IB) students improved dramatically.  If you have students who do not have smartphones, the service also allows emails.  Additionally you can send a message to as few as three students.  

538 Blog for Making Econ Relevant to Your Students

First off thanks to the people who are starting to come more and more to this blog which now has over 100 posts which can be searched using the search engine in the upper left hand corner.  One the goals I have for my micro/macro students is to try to find some real relevance in the material.  Since we just started the year and will be doing supply and demand next week, I thought I would check one of my favorite economics' sites, the 538 blog which started from a purely political blog (which it still is) and has branched out to much more.

As an example, here is an article looking at computers diagnosing illnesses and what that might do to the number of medical professionals we need.  So after reading the very short (they all are which makes them nice to use to make a quick point), I will have the kids diagram the short and long term impact of such a possibility.  

5 Steps to a 5 Practice AP Macro Exam & Study Guides

This is a complete sixty question practice exam from 5 Steps to a 5 for AP Macroeconomics.  It would obviously be good practice for your students at some point.

Here, also, is a complete study guide for both AP Micro and Macro economics.  What I like about it is that there is a search engine as well as a list of every topic. Furthermore, the study guide then has five multiple choice questions on each topic for students to better prepare.  

Twitter Warm-up

So I always have a meet and greet on our first day of school, but tomorrow, thanks to @dougzywiol I am going more high tech (imagine that!) and having the kids Tweet their answers.  To do that yourself you can either create your own hashtag by putting a number a hashtag symbol besides a name (make sure others are using it first) and then have your kids add it in of their Tweets which is what I am going to do.  Alternatively you could just have the students write your Twitter handle in their Tweets.  I will then have the kids go to our hashtag and we will go through them.  For the kids who don't have Twitter, we'll just do it orally.   

Ding Dong! Currency in Vietnam

A friend I met in China a few weeks ago is traveling in Vietnam for the next month.  He texted us to say the dong is 21,000 to $1 which is mind blowing.  But it immediately made me think of a great way to talk exchange rates with my students such as in the graph above.   It also brings up the talk of inflation and planned economies.  If you care, here is an Economist article on the topic and here is a currency converter.  Dave paid $4 for some Cokes and ended up forking out 85,000 dong!