eLearning and economics - digging a little deeper

Showcasing and assessing Conceptual Thinking

Andrew McCarthy — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:32:58 +0000

I feel that technology has a really strong role to play in helping students showcase their learning in new and engaging ways. It also offers opportunities for teachers to set formative assessments that offer rich opportunities for quality feedback. Despite this potential, technology is often used as a poor substitute for traditional text-rich tasks and makes very little difference in how students learn and acquire an understanding of new concepts. Students write notes on their laptop, submit written assignments electronically and post and comment on blogs. All of these tasks are really only substituting the basic assessment that teachers have set for years. I always like visiting 1:1 schools and seeing how students work at the coalface. This week I am off to the ASB Unplugged Conference at the American School of Bombay in India, and will see another 1:1 school in action. I look forward to seeing some examples of what students actually do in lessons and to see if their is evidence of the deeper transformational learning experiences that we link to the ideas of a 21st century classroom.

Conceptual Thinking

As a teacher of Economics and previously Geography, the majority of my teaching and learning is centered on conceptual thinking and helping students grasp abstract ideas. Take an concept such as floating exchange rates as an example. Trying to ask students to write sentences of text to showcase their understanding is futile.

Many student are tempted to plagiarise their understanding from textbooks and the internet and therefore have little ability to explain and think on their feet, or to apply these concepts to other contexts. Conceptual thinking is one important area where I think technology can make a great difference in deepening the learning experience to also transform the way that teachers formatively assess learning.

I will explain three tools which I have used which show how technology can help teachers formatively assess how students learn concepts. Each tool is a shift away from text-rich forms of assessment and is focused on using voice recordings to glimpse into the students metacognition. At the ASB Unplugged Conference in Bombay, I will share these ideas and some reflections on how they can be used in the classroom.

Using Keynote to assess Conceptual Thinking

Keynote is a powerful presentation tool that allows students to integrate a variety of multimedia formats. You can drag and drop pictures, videos and easily add a narration that flows through the presentation. The final explanation can rehearsed and exported as a video file, which captures the explanation with a mixture of images and video. The beauty of using Keynote over iMovie is that it is so simple and quick to complete, yet perfectly adequate to showcase learning. The instructions for the task can be set in such a way that students are forced to demonstrate the conceptual understanding. Below is a link to three examples from different subjects.

The English example, based on a Graphic Novel uses images as a prompt for discussion and thinking about how motifs are illustrated.
The Economics example is a tool to help students apply a concept such as Demand and Supply to a real world example of Vodka and Beer in Russia.
The Geography example uses a digram from the textbook and asking students to explain the concept of erosion using pictures that typify each stage of the river profile.

If teachers craft formative assessments and questions in a way the elicits deep explanations, then these tools can help highlight students metacognition. The oral recordings can be rehearsed and scripted but the best outcomes are when students are forced to explain without the additional support and are thinking out loud.

Using StopMotion and Common Craft presentations

The concept of StopMotion has been around for a long time as a creative tool. More and more teachers are seeing applications of this tool in different subjects including Science. Laptops with built-in cameras or a class set of iPod Touches make the creation of StopMotion explanations relatively straight forward. We have used tools such as FramebyFrame.

The basic premise is that students have to break down a concept or process into a series of component steps, and then explain them in simple language to others. In Chemistry we have used StopMotion to explain different types of chemical reactions. The products are liberal interpretations of the StopMotion concept, but I think the voice over is more important when student are explaining complex concepts. These animations were created in iMovie by either squeezing a series of images together, or by increasing the speed of an existing recording and then adding an audio layer.

The process of students having to teach a concept to others really forces them to question their understanding, to find the links between ideas and to develop mastery. The video below is an an example of some work I helped with in a Chemistry class at UWCSEA.

I see other applications where students use StopMotion to explain topics such as migration using simple props, such a lego figurines, world maps and drawings. Through the process of developing a script and thinking of examples they are showing the explain a story relating to a concept and apply their content knowledge.

Using iPads and ShowMe Apps

One of the most powerful tools for helping students demonstrate their understanding is a new app called ShowMe! available on the iPad. ShowMe is a simple tool, which allows students to annotate what looks like an electronic whiteboard, whilst also recording their voice. The interactive whiteboard concept is really neat and intuitive for all students.

Recently I worked with an Economics class and used the ShowMe app as a revision tool. We asked them to explain one of several ideas that they have covered in class. Each of the questions were very abstract and covered the concepts of revenue and costs for firms. The students were encouraged to visualise the concept and tell a story of an example.

As you can see from the student example, the tool really allows the teacher to see the student’s thinking and metacognition as they explain a concept. In a 35 min class each student produced an explanation and the teacher could later look at the list of presentations linked from a Google Doc. Students could also peer review and look at each others work. Previously the teacher would attempt to conference with each student during the class to see how they understood a concept.

ShowMe is a great example of how you can see the levels of student conceptual understanding very quickly and at the same time students are learning in a powerful way when they are forced to teach and verbalise a concept to others. It is also one of the nicest tools I have seen that shifts students away from the text-rich tasks and encourages creativity.

For a nice explanation of using this technique in Mathematics, have a read of these excellent blog post by a fellow Apple Distinguished Educator, Jennie Magiera – Show Me More Maths Metacognition

How do these tools support Formative Assessment?

In my opinion the model classroom in the 21st century is one founded on group work, differentiation, authentic learning tasks, and is a classroom that uses assessment to support learning.

Setting Strategic Questions:

Each of these three techniques offers a glimpse into the students thought patterns, but they are only effective if we are very strategic in setting questions for our students. We need to set questions deliberately, so that we can find out what a student knows. Simple questions such as describe or outline will prompt very descriptive examples of understanding. More complex command terms such as compare or contrast will allow students to grapple with higher order thinking skills and will more clearly show the underlying conceptual understanding.

Quality Formative Feedback:

It is really important to explain to students what they have achieved and where they need to improve. Some tools such as ShowMe point out where students are in their learning and can help identify where they need to progress next and help identify the steps to get there.

ShowMe also allow teachers or peers to comment directly under the students work in a private manner when the link has been shared. If the end product of a Keynote explanation or StopMotion can be shared in an online gallery like Picasa or YouTube then other students can offer feedback. Often it is hard for students to apply the same success criteria as teachers.

As long as we can offer quality feedback to the students when we use tools such as Keynote, StopMotion or ShowMe in classes, I believe the learning has been transformed in a way that was previously inconceivable.

Since I began teaching, I have always had the quote below emblazoned across the classroom wall. I think each of these three techniques and can help they students learn more when they are encouraged to teach others.

Students learn 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they see and hear, 70% of what is discussed with others, 80% of what they experience personally, and 95% of what they teach to someone else. ~ William Glasser

iBooks on the iPad – engaging textbooks at last?

Andrew McCarthy — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:40:01 +0000

As an Economics Teacher and Technology Coach, I am very interested in the way that students access and learn content. Our traditional textbooks obviously have an important role to play in the way that students learn and develop conceptual understanding, but in many ways this area of education is ripe for change and disruption. In my opinion, engaging, interactive, portable and quickly updated textbooks are where education should be heading.

Most teachers agree that textbooks are not the ideal modern teaching tool. Some would say that there needs to be a shift from static books and passive reading to interactive versions which feature different forms of media and that boost student engagement. Books also should be updated without the need to purchase another class set of the newest edition.

With technology, there is every possibility that this can occur and slowly there is evidence that this shift is occurring. Developments such as Apple’s recent education announcement about iBooks, iBooks Author and iTunes U, or start ups such as Inkling, show what is possible. To me iBooks and Inkling’s products are the sexy versions of the old static textbook and show how the shift may occur in future years. This has lead me to experiment with the iBooks format for IB Economics, with the idea of eventually publishing my material. The images and video below are of my initial drafts.

A New Textbook Experience – iBooks 2:

iBooks 2 was a product launch by Apple several weeks ago, which explained and publicised Apple’s education strategy. The development was to make the “iBook” application on an iPad capable of handling more complex books with a friendly interface. I think part of this is due of the increased processing power in the latest iPad 2. Opening a textbook such as Life on Earth – Biology on the newly updated iBook app is a revelation. It shows a level of interaction and engagement that is missing from a traditional textbook.

The main feature of an iBook is the way that the iPad’s interactive gestures guide your reading experience. You can swipe between chapters, open pages with a pinch and then tap to zoom into pictures. In some iBooks, interactive elements present diagrams that are fluid and change, 3D models and drop and drag learning objects. All of these gadgets support learning and boost engagement. The layout of the book automatically shifts as you rotate the orientation of an iPad, while pinching and swiping gestures always takes you back to the table of contents.

Features to enhance learning

Some of the nicest examples of how iBooks supports student learning are tucked away.

By tapping on a word students will find a glossary definition of the term. You can access indexed links of the glossary, back to sections of the book, or use Google to search for the phrase.
iBooks can be searched in the top menu bar by typing in keywords, and this will highlight the context in which these words are mentioned. You can also jump to different page numbers, by using a top menu bar.
Some images within the iBook are presented as galleries, which can be brought up to full screen and then swiped though as a collection of pictures.
Review sections are presented at the end of each chapter. These are provided to support immediate feedback, and are self marking.
By tapping on a word students can highlight portions of text and add a note in the margin. These notes can be accessed as a summary in the menu bar, and also viewed through the study cards function by tapping through. Glossary terms can also be reviewed as flash cards and randomized.

The positive elements of iBooks are the level of interaction and engagement that they will facilitate. At the moment this will engage more students, but one can assume that this will only be temporally, until they become accustomed and slightly bored over time.

Availability of iBooks in International Schools?

In any case, at the moment iBook Textbooks, such as the examples created by Pearson’s are only available in countries with iTunes Book Stores, where the author’s company has allocated copyright to that country. At the moment this excludes me from accessing more books beyond the limited range of free books which are available on the New Zealand and Singapore iTunes Stores.

The future of eBooks and iBooks is yet to be determined but iBooks and the iTunes Textbook Store are only available on an iPad and not on Apple’s other products such as a MacBook. For my current 1:1 laptop school this is a little frustrating as our students are at the moment unlikely to purchase an iPad as a second piece of technology to take to lessons. Many students do have iPads and will likely be keen to use iBooks on these devices, but as a school it will be unlikely that the iBook announcement will be the disruptive technology that it could be in the textbook arena. Perhaps in a few years, but not just yet. The iBooks are also only available on iPads and not transferrable to other devices. There doesn’t seem to be a standard form of eBook at the moment, which allows use across other tablet, touch screen devices. In schools that follow an American Curriculum, iBooks will become available very shortly from Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. How long it will take for books relating to International Baccalaureate or British A Levels and GCSE curriculums to arrive is anyones guess.

The Apple announcement also highlights how innovative Inkling and their eBook developments have been. As you can see in the video below, the books available from the Inkling iPad app have for the last six-months, had all of the functionality of the iBooks. I wrote something about Inkling last year and it is interesting to know that Inkling was founded by a previous Apple Education executive, Matt MacInnis who left Apple a few years ago to reinvent the text book. An article by Jason Gilbert, features an interesting conversation with Matt. Read the article here.

Creating your own iBook?

I will post shortly, about the ability of teachers to create their own iBooks for the iPad using iBooks Author. Some international teachers will try to fill the gap before the above mentioned companies enter the fray of iBooks on the iPad. I have started an iBook for Economics which I will share soon.

More resources:

Apple Special Event – Education Announcement
iBooks App for the iPad
iBooks Author
iTunes U
Sorry paper books still win on specs – Nice article from the Verge about iBooks.
Apple scores with Digital Textbooks

The Price of Milk – domestic, world markets and Fonterra

Andrew McCarthy — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:14:18 +0000

Milk seems like such a nice friendly product, but in New Zealand the rising cost of the essential good is getting everyone annoyed. In the past 5 years the price of dairy products in New Zealand has risen by 50%. Most assume that because of New Zealand’s comparative advantage (good weather, soils, grass growth and livestock) farmers produce milk in such great quantities that it should therefore also be cheap for consumers at the local shop. Our understanding of international trade is that it alters the domestic market, might suggest that firms who export on the global market are focused and motivated by world prices.

The NZ milk market

Fonterra is a virtual monopsony in New Zealand. This is like a monopoly except that the cooperative it is the sole buyer of raw milk products in New Zealand. It then sells 95% of its production of refined milk products to consumers around the world. The company supplies around 40% of global dairy product exports, and is by far New Zealand’s biggest company.

The world market for milk

Milk is a commodity that is traded on the international market and is traded according to the forces of world supply and world demand. These forces and the equlibrium of this market determines the world price of milk. Over the past five years more consumer globally in countries such as China, Indonesia and India have entered the middle income group and have begun to consume dairy products and feed their babies milk formula. In theory this will have likely caused a gradual shift of market demand to the left, we can also assume that as technology becomes more efficient global production has increased slowly at each price level.

The diagram above shows the link between the domestic and world markets. NZ producers milk at a low price due to the it’s comparative advantages. This means that suppliers see an attractively higher price available on the international markets. Assuming free markets NZ farmers will sell their milk products in global markets at higher prices. They therefore also charge New Zealand milk consumers the same high world price as there is no incentive to offer the quantity of milk to NZ consumers at a lower price. The main loser in the trade situation is the NZ family who has to pay more for milk. As you can also see when the world demand increases, the world price rises also forcing the NZ price to rise to NZ consumers to reduce consumption of milk. (shifting left along the demand curve)

Articles from Fonterra explain the upwards price forces currently working in the global milk market…

“Looking forward global food prices are expected to remain strong. This is not just an issue for dairy or just an issue for New Zealand. There has been a fundamental change in supply and demand for food internationally which has pushed prices to their current levels.

“While these prices are good for food exports and the New Zealand economy, New Zealanders are feeling the effects of this in their shopping trolley.

Should Fonterra morally sell milk to NZ consumers at lower prices?

Economically there is no incentive for them, but morally maybe there is and this is why the NZ government has stepped in and ordered and euquiry to how milk prices are determined. Fonterra voluntarily froze milk prices recently which seems like an odd policy from a company. Maybe firms are also motivated by factors other the profit, see comments from the above Fonterra press release here…

”We recognise milk is an important part of the diet in New Zealand and we want to ensure that future generations of New Zealanders grow up enjoying it every day. It would be great to see retailers getting in behind this commitment for the benefit of New Zealand consumers.

Fonterra Brands New Zealand Managing Director Peter McClure said: “Global price increases will continue to impact the price that dairy manufacturers like ourselves pay, however, we want milk to remain an every day part of the Kiwi diet so we’ve made a commitment to absorb any extra costs for the rest of the year.“

Morally maybe the company should offer milk at lower prices, milk is known to be a positive externality for children and adults. The company also used New Zealand’s natural resources to produce the milk. It is also a cooperative so the owners of the company are the farmers who sell the milk to the Fonterra factories. They also want to maintain profitability even if only 5% of the companies production is sold domestically.

To me this is an interesting case study. Firms who trade internationally face an interesting dilemma on the impact on domestic customers but generally this is considered an acceptable downside of trade. Fonterra in NZ after much public and political pressure have gone down a different track.

Infographics for Development – UN against Corruption

Andrew McCarthy — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:57:59 +0000

I stumbled across a nice series of UN videos this week about corruption. The UN is good for making videos and resources, but not always so good for sharing and publising their work. Anyway here is a nice resource that would be a good conversation starter for your students, or a blog post for your students to comment on.

Exciting times – small fish, big pond.

Andrew McCarthy — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:29:07 +0000

This blog has been a little bit quiet lately as my career has been undergoing a little makeover. In the last couple of months I have jumped from one school in Singapore to another, and I have felt like a little fish jumping into a very big pond.

I have shifted from being a classroom teacher of Economics to becoming a full-time Digital Literacy Coach (Technology Integrator) at United World College of South East Asia. The change has been both positive and challenging; and also represents what might be a unique part of my career. I joined the college at an exciting time to help lead the implementation of the technology initiative entitled iLearn which is putting laptops in the hands of over 2000 students at our two Singapore campuses. My role is to support teachers to make the best use of digital tools to support teaching and learning.

Overtime this blog might contain a little less Economics, but I will still share ideas and resources that I have been working on, plus some interesting Economics material from Singapore and New Zealand.

An Academic Screen Saver

Andrew McCarthy — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:44:04 +0000

I came across this great idea at a recent workshop conducted by Kathleen Ferenz, from Apple. Some of the best ideas are in hindsight the most obvious and this is a good example. This is perfect if you are working in an immersive 1:1 laptop environment, or if you have lots of black empty screens in your computer labs.

Within Systems Preferences on the MacBooks students can create Screen Savers from any collection of images. Usually these are photographs, but what if these were images from a particular class or lists of a visual vocabulary list? I quickly made a Geography screen saver by doing the following.

From within either Keynote or PowerPoint, I can save the presentation as a collection of pictures, using either the export or save functions. This creates a folder of images, one for each slide. This folder can be saved in your pictures folder.
Then I went into Systems Preferences and clicked in the + button at the bottom to add a folder of pictures. Here I navigated the folder I had created in Step 1.
Then you can change the settings on how the pictures are arranged.
Done

Applications:

Classes could make the slides in Keynote and share collectively through a Picasa Gallery, or sharing functions in iPhoto.
Students could easily create different folders of screen saver images for classes,
Teachers could use this as a starter when students are entering your room up on your projector

Idle afternoon ideas for the Economics teacher on holiday

Andrew McCarthy — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:33:25 +0000

Most teachers never struggle to find things to do during the holidays. But if your are stuck for ideas, stuck in a plane or just stuck inside, here are some things I have read, watched and listened to over the last few months.

Watch: The Inside Job

This is a nice documentary movie about the Global Financial Crisis and meltdown that occurred during late 2008. Narrated by Matt Damon it is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of the issues and contained rafts of excellent interviews. It was pretty balanced and even a little humorous at times. If you are having a quite day you could add on the film Wall Street: – Money Never Sleeps as a nice prologue.

Listen: More or less: Tim Harford “The Undercover Economist”

Podcast Subscription – BBC Radio 4 (22 episodes)

Tim Harford is a excellent journalist who presents a weekly 30min show about Economics and Statistics on BBC Radio 4. The format is very easy to follow, intuitive and very educational. Each week the show goes into some depth about a recent economic issues and tries to dispel the statistical myths sometimes portrayed by the media or politicians. The format is canny and other the presenters are always humourous. Occasionally it can get a bit intellectually challenging, but the examples are excellent. Many of the topics covered would be perfect resources to use in the classroom. Some of the good podcast episodes are linked below.

How useful is GDP? 22 Apr 2011 – link
Youth Unemployment: 08 Apr 2011 – link
Big numbers and VAT taxes 07 Jan 11 – link

I would envisage using the podcasts as a homework activity and perhaps asking students to put the ideas into words and using the skill of summarising. This is also a good example of how students could podcast themselves from within the classroom and make a class radio station which analysed economic events. This could provide a nice foundation for thier internal assessment work.

Read: Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich

This is perhaps the easiest read I have had in a while and is a insightful look into the life of the wealthy in the US. It is written by a senior editor from the Wall Street Journal – Robert Frank, so therefore covers the economic impacts of the wealth boom by explaining income disparities and clever use of statistics.

The full review is below

Editorial Review – Library Journal vol. 132 iss. 11 p. 78 (c) 06/15/2007Wall Street Journal senior special writer Frank got the idea for this book when he stumbled across the statistic that the number of U.S. millionaire households has doubled since 1995. His research took a scenic turn when he made it his full-time focus to study the lifestyles of the rich and richer. These well-heeled folks make their homes in Richistan, a metaphorical land of nine million souls, inhabited by the nouveaux riches (a term Frank implies without using) who have made—not inherited—their fortunes. Their politics and lifestyles vary by their socioeconomic stratum within Richistan. Upper Richistan is where things begin to get interesting: on these lavish estates, each household is worth more than $100 million and spends an average of $182,000 on wristwatches each year. And we haven’t even visited the hamlet of Billionaireville yet. Overall, the author argues, the concentrated wealth of Richistan is great for the economy—and for the veritable army of workers hired to manage the complicated lives of some very conspicuous consumers. Cruising around in private jets and yachts, Richistanis size up one another’s assets and invite one another to their charity balls. Frank’s private tour of the very real inhabitants of the comical, magical land of Richistan will be popular in public library business collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/06.]—Carol J. Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater

Presentation Skills for IB Theory of Knowledge students

Andrew McCarthy — Wed, 04 May 2011 05:46:09 +0000

I offered to do a presentation a few months ago… about presentation skills. A little bit ironic I know, so I had to do a bit of research otherwise my presentation would have been a little boring. Anyway this is the presentation I made and showed to the Grade 12 TOK students, I will somehow share my verbal notes. The TOK students have to present an opinion piece for 10 minutes as part of their final assessment and after enduring a few last year, I decided to help.

Most of my inspiration is from Jesse Desjardins and I had a good look at his presentations and work on SlideShare. If you haven’t seen his work it is worth a look and gets you thinking. @jessedee on twitter. The majority of my pictures are from the Boston Big Picture website, which is still the best place to find current event images on the internet in my humble opinion. COLORlovers was my inspiration for the colour palette. I found out that you can save a colour palatte as an image, then choose to insert palette into the colour picker within either PowerPoint or KeyNote. This maintains the consistency throughout a presentation.

(sorry… some of the fonts are not working within slideshare eg. Winston Churchill Speech)

Development Economics – Resources

Andrew McCarthy — Wed, 04 May 2011 04:51:39 +0000

I enjoy teaching Development Economics as I used to be a Geography teacher and Development is taught across both the Geography and Economics IB syllabi. In the current curriculum, Development Economics is seen as the poor brother, for a variety of reasons, to the other topics of Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and International Trade. With the introduction of the new curriculum, the Development Economics section of the course will gain more importance and will be assessed as a compulsory data response element of Paper 2 for both SL and HL students. This means that teachers will likely reshuffle their units and will be looking for some new resources to revitalise the topic. Fortunately there is a plethora of excellent resources available which I highly recommend.

New Syllabus for Development Economics

Links to Geography

If you are new to teaching Development Economics, or need some inspiration, I would find the Geography teacher at your school and start a conversation about resources they use. The IB Geography teachers also have a new curriculum and the Development section from their syllabus is shown below. As you can see, there are some nice cross overs especially in the last section “Reducing Disparities” where students are asked to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies, such as trade, debt relief and aid.

Within the OCC there is a Geography Wiki with resources relating to the subtopic below. Have a look at some of the resources that have been suggested. IB Geography Wiki – Disparities, Wealth and Development

Case Studies for Development

Geographers tend to take a case study approach to teaching, and I think Economics teachers should try make extensive use of the same pedagogy to give students the examples and context required to understand the complex development issues. Here are some of my ideas for suitable case studies:

Haiti – rebuilding a nation from an earthquake

This would be an excellent case study for students to apply some of the ideas on how to help developing countries and the problems associated with the topic. I used this the year after the earthquake but you could adapt for more recent natural disasters such as the floods in Pakistan.

Here is the blog post that I wrote and used with my students Day Zero in Haiti
Handout for group projects and presentation – Development Project – Haiti Day Zero
Rubric for assessment of presentations – Rubric for Development Project – Haiti
New York Times – Haiti News
Boston Big Picture – Images from Haiti, one year on.

Ethiopia and the Coffee Trade

Ethiopia is an interesting case study of a nation which is overdependent on a narrow range of exports including coffee. Therefore the country illustrates the importance of International Trade, but also the problems that these less developed countries face and fits nicely into the new curriculum.

Black Gold: A film about Coffee and Trade, is a wonderfully insightful documentary about the plight of Ethiopian farmers who grow the sidamo coffee beans. The film begins by explaining the price farmers receive for a kilogram of coffee beans. The documentary follows the trade of coffee from the farmer, through the commodity markets to the multinational companies. The narrator explains his drive to improve the livelihoods of the rural coffee growers by promoting fair trade. I purchased the DVD from the films website. It arrived in my mailbox a few weeks later. The website also provides some good resources and a coffee calculator, which explains the travesty and oppression created by free trade.

The Asian Tigers – The Role of Foreign Direct Investment and International Trade

Four countries in South East Asia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea have been nicknamed the Asian Tigers for thier process of rapid economic growth in the last forty years. For many economists that are the example of why trade orientation policies are so important for development. In recent years the four countries have shown the impact of being too open to international FDI and the rapid decline in international demand for exports. The following articles are useful in teaching these ideas to your students and provide excellent context for evaluation and a discussion of market orientated policies.

Nice Evaluation article – Losing Traction – Asian Tigers – Time Magazine
A video series by the Discovery Channel is a good introduction to Singapore Economic Development, some of the videos are available here in 10 min sections. Lion City, Asian Tiger – History of Singapore
Article from National Geographic – The Singapore Solution

Democratic Republic of Congo – foreign investment and selling resources

This is a topic I have stumbled across a few times. Recently China has been invested vast amounts of Foreign Capital into parts of Africa including the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is good introduction article I have read about the topic – Time Magazine – Africa, Business and Development – Time
Reading guide to assist your students critical reading of the topic – Three level reading guide – China in Africa

Other resources for Development

Statistics – explaining the disparities between countries

Gapminder and Hans Rosling’s resources have to be the holy grail for teachers to explain development statistics. There are a variety of different tools available but I always go back to simple flash animation as an introduction with my students.

Gapminder Worksheet to explain the differences between the developed and less developed parts of the world
Basic Instruction – GapMinder – instructions on how to use
Favourite poster – Development Indicators – Chosen 50- great to use as a game with students. Each students makes a paper hat with the country name and then the students get themselves into order according to the indicators. A good way for students to visualise the link between HIV infection and life expectancy and other correlations.

Millenium Development Goals

There is a lot of widely published material about these goals and the progress acheived. These goals have a greater emphasis in the new curriculum.

This report is perhaps the most comprehensive. I have captured many of the graphs and added them into my class powerpoints for the students to analyse. – Millenium Development Goals – UN Report 2011

Inkling + McGraw-Hill and Pearson = A Digital Textbook Future

Andrew McCarthy — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:55:49 +0000

In the past few weeks the future of digital textbook content has suddenly looked a lot brighter. For a long time it looked like the big book publishers were cautious to dip their feet into the digital market, but a company called Inkling may have set the future in motion.

The CEO and Founder of the Inkling Matt MacInnis spoke about this a month ago on the company blog

For universities, the Catch-22 around iPad adoption may finally have been broken. Many institutions have been on the sidelines waiting for quality educational content. They have been understandably underwhelmed by what they’ve seen before Inkling. Indeed, now that Inkling has a full line of textbooks for business school, medical school and undergraduate courses in production, institutions can move forward with confidence knowing there will be fantastic content available on iPad for all of their students.

This was announced after McGraw-Hill and Pearson, two of the worlds largest education publishers, invested an undisclosed amount of money into the Inkling startup. According to the press release the textbook companies are sharing content with Inkling, to allow them to publish the top 100 undergrad titles from the McGraw-Hill Higher Education catalog, along with other medical textbooks and the top undergrad titles from Pearson Education. Inkling provides the expertise to shape the content into a digital format that is accessible through their propriety app available on the iPad. Here is a promotional video for a biology textbook that is now available. (If this video looks like a little like an Apple advert you might be correct. The founder Matt McInnis used to work from Apple Education in Asia, before setting up the company.)

Inkling is a product which supports a pedagogical style of 21st century learning that lots of educationalists are striving towards. The Inkling app is interactive, crisp, easy to navigate and includes an aspect of social networking. If I choose to annotate a digital chapter, I can decide to share these annotations with others users who have also read the same chapter. There are some nice explanations in a blog post by one of the companies Content Architects, Nicolle Romero about the pedagogical power of Inkling.

From design elements that assist with comprehension of difficult concepts (1), to image enhancements that maximize the effectiveness of graphical aids, we have the learner in mind at each step. For example, in our layout, image thumbnails complement the corresponding text as organizational aids, a form of mental scaffolding that helps you organize the information within your existing knowledge of the subject matter (2). In addition, Inkling allows you to navigate easily between sections across a title, which facilitates the formation of cross-content connections that are key to meaningful learning.

I downloaded the free Inkling app onto my iPad and the preview chapter of the an Economics textbook – The Economy Today, By Bradley R. Shiller. You can pay per chapter for each book, much like the iTunes model of music distribution. Teachers overtime will be able to get students to purchase a exchange rate chapter from one textbook, and then a chapter about development from another author to create a library of resources for the class. It seems like the paradigm of buying an entire textbook from one author could be gone in digital world.

Here are some screen shots of me using the Inkling App and the Economy Today textbook.

clicking on words with the blue symbol brings up the definition

Lots of nice interactive features to click away at

Adding comments to the chapter, which peek in from the margins