Dr. William McEachern writes a newsletter filled with tips on how to effectively teach economics. My favorite part of the newsletter is "The Grapevine." Here is the link.
I found myself looking at every back issue.
About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics and iMacroeconomics VB blogs.
An excellent review of the Loanable Funds Market and the Liquidity Preference models are here. Your students will "own" these models after working through the interactive graphs. I highly recommend this exercise for the serious AP Macroeconomics student,
About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics and iMacroeconomics VB blogs.
This textbook was produced by Mr. Dan Wise's 10th grade economics class at High Tech High in San Diego, California. This textbook is very good. In Mr. Wise's class, learning outcomes are project based. In his class of approximately 30 students, every student was engaged in active participation.
Teaching AP Economics requires a rigorous approach to content. Many times students are required to sit and get or listen to a chalk talk. My students know the material for the test, but forget as soon as they can after the test. The projects I saw around the room and in this book are made to stick. I asked a young author about her article on the wall and she could recall it clearly. This is learning--a dependable change in student behavior.
Mr. Jason Welker used Wikis to build his online book. Technology has made it easy for anyone to enter the publishing market pushing the marginal cost to zero. After seeing both Messrs
Wise and Welker's work, I know I have to have more project-based learning in my class. Recently, I made Excel spreadsheet problems and TI-83 problems in which the software handled the graphing. I am convinced that writing is the secret to long-lasting learning.
Please share any projects you have used in class to teach economics.
About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics. He was a 2008 ISEA teacher of the year finalist and a Toyota teacher of the month.
Many third-world countries export coffee as their main export. In this graph, I've plotted data on prices paid to coffee growers in Indonesia and the percent of forest area lost in a national park that lies in a coffee-producing region.
This data is from, Caffeine and Conservation by Timothy G. O'Brien. I intended to show that as prices increase, incentives to produce more coffee at the expense of national park land increases. This is exactly what the supply curve in AP Microeconomics captures.
Authors Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen write Marginal Revolution for serious economics enthusiasts. Their new text book, Modern Principles pioneers macroeconomic principles introductory textbooks omit. For example, their chapter on growth is brought down to a level of understanding that high school students can understand. This topic is always presented in intermediate classes. Also, their chapter on business fluctuations and dynamic AD/AS model is superior and forward thinking.
If you are looking for resources such as videos and PowerPoint slides on introductory topics for AP Microeconomics and AP Macroeconomics, visit their companion website for their book. The site is See The Invisible Hand. One of my favorite quotes is, "Only in economics can a ceiling be below a floor."
Ishmael Beah writes that a bribe to the immigration officers was 300 Leones to one Guinea. In terms of Guineas, how much as one Leone worth?
When Ishmael was working through rebab, he was given school supplies. He sold them so he could have money to go to the city. Eventually, he could not sell the supplies at any price. Was this a change in supply or a change in quantity supplied?
When Ishmael was in rehab, one of his friends was given a soccer shirt. The friend rented it out for toothpaste and soap. What tenet of capitalism does this illustrate?
Why does Africa's stagnate?
These are some questions I had as I read this powerful book. If you have students in AP Literature class, maybe answering these questions will make economics relevant in other content areas.
My answers to the questions are: .0033; change in quantity supplied; private property; and incentives are destroyed. In the last question, agricultural crops were stolen by the rebels and many men and children were killed. As long as there is civil war in Sierra Leone, the country will not grow.
One last thought. Can a free market develop without a government?
It seems to me that there must be some enforcement mechanism in place for the price system to work or disorder will develop. The questions run too deep right now.
Hans Rosling roiled the world with his TED Talk on dynamic data.
The Gapminder website describes the site as, "Gapminder is a non-profit foundation based in Stockholm, Sweden. We are promoting sustainable global development and the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view."
This site makes complex data understandable. According to the Economist, Wal*Mart stores one million pieces of data per hour about store transactions. Data store now approaches petrabytes. A petabyte (derived from the SI prefix peta-) is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quadrillion bytes (short scale), or 1000 terabytes, or 1,000,000 gigabytes. So our challenge as a teacher is to make data meaningful. This is what Gapminder accomplishes.
About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics and iMacroeconomics VB blogs.
The College Board has a link here.
I wish I could attend a training session every year. My favorites were at the University of Iowa with Amy Shrout and University of Wisconsin-Madison with Wayne McCaffery. At both training sessions I brought home tons of resources. I also brought home a passion for teaching that each of these instructors instilled in me.
I'm reading "a long way gone" by Ishmael Beah. Every day I wish for peace in Africa. The students in my class have seen horrors or war and refugee camps. Africa needs clean water and stability. Evoke is a game for change in Africa. It's only available for 8 more weeks. I have not played the game and encourage feedback.
About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics and iMacroeconomics VB blogs.
EconTalk host, Russell Roberts.
Hello! I've been working to make a summer reading project for AP Microeconomics teachers who read this blog the last two weeks. One of the books I highly recommend is The Price of Everything, by Russell Roberts.
In this book, Mr. Roberts discusses how prices emerge to allocate scare goods, how consumers benefit from the profit motive, and more. I have taught AP Microeconomics for 10 years and I had to admit the lessons in this book on supply and demand were some of the best I have read. After reading this book, I can simply state to colleagues why perfect competition has provided a higher standard of living and why price gouging is a myth.
I have heard many times that genius is in simplicity. As a mock trial teacher I know the most powerful way to sway a jury is to tell them a story. This book plaintively tells a story and teaches the heart of economics.
I hope to have a lesson plan available soon for download to readers of this blog.
About the Author: Mike Fladlien is an AP Economics teacher from Muscatine High School in Muscatine, IA. He is an EconEdLink.org author, and also publishes the Mikeroeconomics and iMacroeconomics VB blogs.
