Mar 10 2008
Welker’s Wikinomics celebrates its 1st birthday with exciting new features for Economics teaches and students
Published by Jason Welker at 11:29 pm under
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WikipediaWelker’s Wikinomics – the Universe
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Exciting things are happening here at Welker’s Wikinomics. In February the blog and wiki had their first birthday; it was one year ago that I launched the wiki as a tool for extending the AP Economics program beyond the classroom and into the world of Web 2.0. What started as a small experiment in learning the wiki way has expanded into an online learning environment encompassing multiple Web 2.0 technologies.
Between the wiki and the blog Welker’s Wikinomics has welcomed over 70,000 visitors since June of 2007! Besides SAS students, the wiki and blog are visited by readers interested in economics from every continent!
Since September, two new exciting features have been added to the online learning environment here. First, the SAS Economists Blog, written by AP Econ students, which has seen dozens of posts, had thousands of readers, and enjoyed comments and feedback from people around the world.
Most recently, Welker’s Wikinomics Universe was launched using the Netvibes platform. This website, linked from the home page and in the menu bar above, is a resource for anyone who wants to read economics news and blogs, listen to econ podcasts, follow the progress of our student wiki and blogs, or find links to valuable resources for teaching economics. The page integrates RSS feeds to keep readers posted on the latest news stories, blog posts, and podcasts from leading media sources and economics bloggers. The site serves as an excellent research tool for students needing articles for their classes, or those simply interested in understanding how economics relates to the real world.
Finally, another technology I’ve been lucky to use here at SAS over the last year is the digital Smartboard, which has enabled me to save every lesson and lecture from each unit of the AP syllabus all year. Lately I’ve been refining these pages, and have created .pdf files for each unit from the AP syllabus, assembled them as a study guide, and uploaded them to make them available for all AP Econ students to use as review for the upcoming exams (2 months away!). These documents can be found in the “AP/IB Exam Prep” page, linked from the menu bar above. They are not intended as a stand-alone study guide, rather are meant to accompany the class wiki, which contains far more comprehensive information on the details of the AP Econ course.
I sincerely hope that the resources here in Welker’s Wikinomics World have proven useful for Econ students and teachers. I sense that students here at SAS seem to benefit from these tools, although I suppose we’ll know for sure when their exam results come back at the end of the summer! Good luck, students, in these final few weeks before your AP exams!
About the author: Jason Welker is a teacher at Zurich International School in Switzerland, where he teaches Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Economics. Jason was an international school student in Malaysia before studying economics at Seattle University then earning his Masters in Education. He calls Seattle and Northern Idaho home. In addition to maintaining an economics wiki and this blog for economics student and educators, Jason also gives presentations on using Web 2.0 tools in education at workshops and conferences around the world. His economics wiki won the 2007 "Best Educational Wiki" award from the "EduBlog Awards". Related posts:
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Congratulation Mr. Welker. And good job on the online tech stuff haha.
I think it is pretty good and a good way of learning what is actually going on in the world and not just in our textbooks.
Yes, yes congratulation on the magnificent wiki and blog. I especially like the Welker’s Wikinomics Universe. Bye.
Congrats! It’s great how you managed to put all this together in such a short time! Thesedays, whenever I read a certain economy-related news article and find myself referring to certain concepts that I have learned from AP Econ, I really feel like an Economist myself!
It is great how the number of visitors are gradually increasing. More people from all over the world are learning from our wiki. Keep up the good work guys!!!
Well actually the wiki is mostly information we paraphrase off the text book… but anyways, congradulations Mr. Welker. You’ve done a splendid job on the wiki and the blog.