Secure State Exam Test Taking with Chromebooks

For those of you investing in Chromebooks the video above show you how to use them for secure test taking.  We use TestNav (Pearson) and fortunately this is one of the ones that can be used.   When you secure a Chromebook, the kids cannot get to any other sites except the one you are using for the exam.  

Personalized Urls

We normally start my classes with a five question quiz where my students can use their notes from their flipped video to answer the questions.  It serves a few purposes.  First I won't count the quiz grade if the notes aren't good enough as I want the kids to have a repository they can use later (which is easy with the search function in Google Drive).  Secondly the questions are the main points for the day so it tells the kids what their exercise is going to be about.

But to the point.  I very rarely use the LCD in my classroom other than for when I am giving our opening quiz.  But the other day the my LCD lightbulb went kaput.  So I had to improvise by taking the url from the Google Drive document into a Tinyurl which I also personalized.  For example I am doing the fifth and sixth units in my for AP microeconomics called tinyurl.com/apmicro56.  So I wrote the url on the board and didn't worry that we didn't have a LCD.  It also is nice when kids want to redo a quiz, I just give them the url and we are all set.

In addition there is bitly.com that allows you to keep a repository or your shortenings as well as Google's shortening.  

1-5 Minute Econ Video Overviews

Mjmfoodie has a complete set of micro (oligopoly is above) and macro videos.  They are typically one to five minute videos and are narrated cartoons.  

My Education Week Column

Along with the interview I did with Larry Ferlazzo last week, he had me write a column in June which he just published in his Education Week column.  Above is a summary of my thoughts, but here is the entire article.  Of course if you want my detailed thoughts and how to implement them, they are in my book: Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction. 

How Does the Cloud Work

Most people now have heard about the cloud, but few understand it.  The top video above shows where the actual cables are in the oceans that transport our messages across the Internet.  The bottom one shows how webpages are broken up and transported.  

Force Fitting Technology into the Classrom

Last week Larry Ferlazzo interviewed me and Susie Boss for his radio show.  Ferlazzo is a leading innovator in tech education, a writer for Education Week and a classroom teacher.  We discussed the topic of which comes first, technology or content.  Perhaps you would be surprised with my answer.   Here is the interview. 

Demand and Marginal Revenue in Monopolies

It is one thing to be able to draw a diagram with marginal revenue and demand, it is another thing altogether to understand why demand is different from marginal revenue in a monopoly.  Above is a great demonstration of why this occurs.

To show the difference to your students from perfect competition skip to 1:40 in the video below.

Learnerator Reviews for AP Economics

Learnerator has started a great review series on YouTube which picks a topic each week for review. In addition to looking and showing standard items (supply, demand, oligopoly, etc.) it also shows students a ton of different tutorials on different FRQ questions (see above for example). 

How Scary is US Debt?

Vox is one of my favorite websites and this article on debt is one example why. First off it includes an economists' view of US debt (realize that in referring to US debt it is not including what we borrow from entitlements that are included in the US debt clock below) as well as the image below looking at it as a portion of GDP.  This link shows what percentage US debt is of our GDP.

Productive & Allocative Efficiency

For some reason it took me a while to grasp the concept of allocative and productive efficiency.  I finally got it because of this Jason Welker video.  It goes through perfect competition, monopoly and monopolistic competition and shows it for each of them.  If you want to see a quick replay go to the last minute of the video.

While I am on it Jason Welker teachers International Baccalaureate economics in Switzerland.  His videos are longer than my 10 minute rule, but they can be broken into parts.  His YouTube playlist is here and his website is here.  Since IB economics has a component where students must relate the learning to the real world, Welker also has a blog which does just that. Below is a great tragedy of the commons story from Market Place which he just posted on his blog.