Greg Mankiw’s Blog: Take Out Your Pencils 2

Harvard’s Greg Mankiw just keep them coming! Here’s another micro problem from the esteemed professor and textbook author’s blog. Several readers enjoyed challenging themselves with his last Micro problem, so I will re-publish Mankiw’s test question here to see if people can solve it in the comment section on this blog (sorry Professor Mankiw, you have comments turned off on your blog, so how are your readers to know if they have solved it correctly?)

The town of Wiknam has 5 residents whose only activity is producing and consuming fish. They produce fish in two ways. Each person who works on a fish farm raises 2 fish per day. Each person who goes fishing in the town lake catches X fish per day. X depends on N, the number of residents fishing in the lake. In particular,

X = 6 – N.

Each resident is attracted to the job that pays more fish.

a. Why do you suppose that X, the productivity of each fisherman, falls as N, the number of fishermen, rises? What economic term would you use to describe the fish in the town lake? Would the same description apply to the fish from the farms? Explain.

b. The town’s Freedom Party thinks every individual should have the right to choose between fishing in the lake and farming without government interference. Under its policy, how many of the residents would fish in the lake and how many would work on fish farms? How many fish are produced?

c. The town’s Efficiency Party thinks Wiknam should produce as many fish as it can. To achieve this goal, how many of the residents should fish in the lake and how many should work on the farms? (Hint: Create a table that shows the number of fish produced—on farms, from the lake, and in total—for each N from 0 to 5.)

d. The Efficiency Party proposes achieving its goal by taxing each person fishing in the lake by an amount equal to T fish per day and distributing the proceeds equally among all Wiknam residents. Calculate the value of T that would yield the outcome you derived in part (c).

e. Compared with the Freedom Party’s hands-off policy, who benefits and who loses from the imposition of the Efficiency Party’s fishing tax?

I’ve recently added two new great tools for Econ teachers to this blog that I think can really benefit teachers who decide to use them. Both of the following resources can be found in the sidebar to the right of this blog.

First, I have created a Diigo Group for Econ Teachers that is open for anyone to join. A Diigo group essentially is a social network for people with shared interests. The Econ Teacher group will be a place where Econ teachers can share bookmarks to online resources for use in the classroom. More than just a bookmarking site, however, Diigo allows users to annotate, highlight and leave sticky notes on articles, blogs, and other websites posted to the group, which can then be seen by group members, and further annotated. A website such as the CIA World Factbook, the BLS, or BEA, or an article from the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal thus becomes a shared document for discussion and reflection amongst any and all teachers who find it useful.

Diigo groups also have discussion forum features, so the Econ Teacher Group will become a forum for sharing collective research and resource ideas, as well as a forum for discussing how technology and the web can be used to enrich economics education. Join the Econ Teacher Diigo Group now to help grow this new social network for Econ teachers! (Once you’ve joined Diigo, I recommend adding the Diigo toolbar to your browser to make bookmarking and annotating sites to the group easy!)

Secondly, I am happy to endorse my friend and colleague Mike Fladien’s entrepreneurial endeavor aimed at helping high school Economics students prepare for their exams, “EconExamCram”. EconExamCram is an iPhone or iTouch App for sale in the iTunes store for $1.99. From the app’s description:

This app is available for download on iTunes. I intended this to aid students in preparing for tests in microeconomics. It’s a comprehensive review of 80% of the concepts covered in a micro class.

I believe that students today want to learn using today’s technology. Today’s technology is iPods, Smart Boards, audience response systems, flash animation and more. When I developed this app, I developed it for the on-the-go student who values appearance too. The student I envisioned was one who had a challenging schedule and one or more after school activities. They will carry an iPod with them, but not a five pound textbook. The student I envisioned was one who studied in “micro sessions” of 10 or 15 minutes. The touch was a natural tool for these students.

Congratulations to Mike on developing this app and making it available to us and our students to help prepare for the AP and IB Exams. Do your kids a favor and give them all the link to this app so they can start reviewing for your tests on their phones today!

The last great resource I have added to my sidebar this week is an RSS feed to a YouTube channel I’ve recently discovered. Jacob Clifford, an AP Economics teacher in San Diego, has recently begun producing and publishing a series of review videos for the AP Economics student. He calls them “Economic Concepts in 60 Seconds”.

Jacob is an enthusiastic, energetic young Econ teacher whose lecture style is fast paced and easy to follow. An since the lectures are on YouTube, students (and teachers!) can watch them over and over until his explanations of econ concepts is clear. In each video, he illustrates the concepts on a whiteboard while clearly (and quickly) explaining them in a fun and entertaining way. So far he has only produced videos up through perfect competition in the AP Micro course, but he promises to keep adding more throughout the school year.

You’ll be able to follow Jacob’s latest video posts by checking the RSS feed on my sidebar when visiting the blog. I’m hoping to team up with Jacob somehow in the future to get his videos a wider audience through this blog or in some other collaborative way.

At this point in the course, you may find yourself asking, “what is the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics?” It has been a long time since we first defined these terms at the beginning of the course. The purpose of this post is to introduce some basic Macro concepts help clear up the confusing and not so obvious differences between these two areas of economics.

A teacher of mine once explained the difference between micro and macro using the example of a tree and a forest. Microeconomics is the like the study of an individual tree, standing in a thick forest of thousands of individual trees of different species. A microeconomist might study the systems that make an individual tree function efficiently, providing it with the sustanence it needs to thrive in the forest. A macroeconomist, however, will take a broader look at the forest as a whole, and observe how the thousands of trees work together in conjunction with the sun, the soil, the oxygen, nitrogen, and H2O in the environment that make the entire forest function efficiently as one giant organism.

Put literally, the tree is like an individual market. This may be a product market like the market for apples, or a resource market like the market for apple pickers. Microeconomists will study the characteristics of an individual market: the firms and their costs, tradeoffs, challenges presented by competition or the inefficiencies that result from a lack thereof, and the buyers in the market: the alternatives and trade-offs they face, the utility they receive and the decisions they make based on these factors. Microeconomics concerns itself not with the health of the economy as a whole, rather with the individual markets, firms, and consumers within the economy, and the challenges of efficiency and resource allocation faced by those markets.

Macroeconomics, on the other hand, studies the health of the economy as a whole. Macro deals with aggregates, or “collections of specific economic units treated as if they were one. ” For example, instead of studying price of a product, as a microeconomist would, a macroeconomist looks at the price level in the whole economy. Whereas a microeconomist looks at supply and demand in a particular market, a macroeconomist studies aggregate supply and aggregate demand, assessing the collective marginal benefit of all consumers and marginal costs of all producers. Instead of quantity supplied, the macroeconomist examines aggregate output, or gross domestic product. Instead of underallocation and overallocation of resources, the macroeconomists concerns himself with unemployment and inflation.

When it comes to the role of government, macroeconomics has a lot more to say about the role a central government should play in managing the economy as a whole. One major theme of microeconomics is that competitive markets, when left alone by government, tend to achieve efficient allocations of resources. You’ll find that in Macro, however, the government often plays a central part in stimulating and slowing down the level of economic activity in the economy, using tools such as fiscal and monetary policy.

Also in macroeconomics, we’ll study in more depth the role that comparative advantage plays in the economic exchanges that take place between nations. International trade also involves the exchange of foreign currencies, which we’ll try to understand by studying exchange rates and the role that governments play in manipulating and controlling the values of their currencies.

Macroeconomics will prove to be particularly relevant to the events going on in the recent turbulent global economy.  If have listened to the news lately you’ve heard world leaders, political pundits and commentators from all political and economic leanings use words like “bailout”, “fiscal stimulus”, “monetary easing”, “deficit spending” and others; all concepts having to do with macroeconomics. In the next few months, you will begin to see the forest through the trees as we take on the exciting  and challenging field of macroeconomics.

Assignment: Using your economics text, attempt to complete the table below. On the left are microeconomics concepts you have already studied as part of the course. In the right column, brainstorm and identify the macro concept that corresponds with each of the micro concepts. For example, in microeconomcis a when there is a decrease in demand price falls and quantity decreases. In macroeconomics, when there is a decrease in AGGREGATE demand, _____________ and _______________ change. See if you can fill in the blanks! If you get stumped, Mr. Welker’s completed version of the table can be viewed by clicking here.

Council for Economic Education | 2009 Council for Economic Education / NAEE / GATE Annual Conference.

Next week, I will be travelling to Washington, D.C. to the Council for Economics Education Annual Conference on Capitol Hill. In addition to attending the board of advisors meeting for the Global Association of Teachers of Economics, I will be presenting a workshop to Economics educators titles Harnessing the Power of Web 2.0 in the Economics Classroom.

In the spirit of collaborative learning, I thought I’d post the PowerPoint presentation I’ve been working on recently for my workshop here, and solicit feedback while I still have time! I am alloted only 50 minutes for the workshop, followed by a 10 minute question and answer session. So, here is the presentation! Please leave any feedback or advice you may have in the comments!

YouTube – jodiecongirl’s Channel.

Jodi Beggs, aka “econgirl” is a PhD candidate at Harvard where she teaches introductory Microeconomics to Masters students. She has a great blog written for econ students and casual readers called Economists do it with Models. She also produces a series of mini-lectures on topics from Greg Mankiw’s textbook Principles of Economics (a text widely used by AP Econ teachers).

In Jodi’s own words,

I’m offering up these lectures either as a complement to your current economics course or as a substitute for what you didn’t learn the first time you took economics

Another great resource for high school economics teachers! I had my students watch the videos on the Demand Curve and the Determinants of Demand today, while jotting down in their notes the topics they already knew, did not yet know, and the questions they had based on Jodi’s videos.

Thanks, Jodi! I hope more econ teachers like myself find ways to put your great resource to use in our classes!

Next Test – Value of $125,000-a-Year Teachers – NYTimes.com

More on the New York City charter school that is experimenting with paying teachers nearly triple the national average salary of public schools.

So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year?

An accomplished violist who infuses her music lessons with the
neuroscience of why one needs to practice, and creatively worded instructions like, “Pass the melody gently, as if it were a bowl of Jell-O!”

A self-described “explorer” from Arizona who spent three decades honing her craft at public, private, urban and rural schools.

Two with Ivy League degrees. And Joe Carbone, a phys ed teacher, who has the most unusual résumé of the bunch, having worked as Kobe Bryant’s personal trainer.

“Developed Kobe from 185 lbs. to 225 lbs. of pure muscle over eight years,” it reads.

They are members of an eight-teacher dream team, lured to an innovative charter school that will open in Washington Heights in September with salaries that would make most teachers drop their chalk and swoon; $125,000 is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, and about two and a half times as much as the national average for teacher salaries. They also will be eligible for bonuses, based on schoolwide performance, of up to $25,000 in the second year…

The school received 600 applications. Mr. Vanderhoek interviewed 100 in person.

It’s amazing to me that a school in NYC that pays $125,000 a year and expects teachers to work year round gets so much attention, while international schools are paying teachers nearly as much to work a regular school year, yet 99% of American public school teachers seem totally clueless about the career opportunities available at international schools! Teachers can make $100,000+ at at least four international schools I can think of right now… including the one I’m working at currenty!

I am by no means saying that because of what they pay international schools employ more qualified teachers than a typical American public school. On the contrary, it makes me wonder why if excellent pay can attract 600 applicants for 8 positions in a NYC school, why do so many international schools paying more than twice what American public schools pay still find it difficult to recruit teachers?

When are highly skilled American teachers going to realize that they can earn incredibly competitive salaries by teaching overseas? Maybe the best of the best will just wait for another charter school offering $100,000+ to open up so they can compete with hundreds of applicants for a handful of teaching positions. OR they could go to the next ISS international recruiting fair and accept a job in London, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Zurich, Dubai or a handful of other cities where international teachers regularly make in the $100,000 range and be lavished with offers from schools in exciting, exotic locales from all corners of the globe!

Another unit of Welker’s Wikinomics Study Guides is now available for download on the W.W. Study Guides page of this blog. The latest edition is IB Unit 2.4 Market Failure and the Role of Government. Below is an outline of the unit. It can be downloaded for free as a .pdf or the .notebook file can be ordered if you are a teacher who uses Smart Boards to teach Economics. Enjoy!

Powell Center for Economic Literacy – AP Economics Teachers Conference

Tomorrow morning I board a plane from Zurich to Virginia, which in addition to being a key battle ground state in next week’s election, is home of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed is hosting the National AP Economics Teachers Conference from Sunday through Tuesday, and I am lucky enough to get to attend this year.

This biennial national conference offers a forum for networking with other AP Economics teachers from across the country, updates on topics of interest, demonstrations of effective teaching techniques, as well as outstanding keynote speakers.

Keynote speakers will include Tim Harford, Columnist with Financial Times and best-selling author of The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life; Federal Reserve Board Governor Kevin Warsh, appointed to the Board in 2006 and formerly Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Executive Secretary of the National Economic Council from 2002 until February 2006; and Dr. J. Alfred Broaddus, Past President, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

I plan to write a post for each of the four main workshops at this conference: “Demystifying macroeconomics”, “Demystifying microeconomics”, “Technology in the Econ classroom”, and “Understanding exchange rates and the value of the dollar”. Stay tuned for some great posts from an amazing professional development experience for economics teachers.

Now is that time of year when thousands of students across the world, from Zurich to Zimbabwe, will be taking their first economics course. Perhaps it will be a basic, high school introductory course or perhaps an even more challenging AP or IB course. Perhaps you are taking an introductory college course.

It seems like all economic text book authors seem make the point, usually in their chapter 1, that a primary benefit of studying economics is that it transforms us into more effective citizens by enabling us to better understand and conclude on the economic positions and promises of those running for public office.

I couldn’t agree any stronger!

In my classroom, I like to informally call the study of economics “the 180 degree science” because as the student studies this science for the very first time they often develop opinions and conclusions that are precisely the opposite of what they had originally believed before taking the course.

For example, here are 3 of my favorite “180 degree moments”, which are applicable to the United States’ economy but are generally applicable to all global economies, that you will probably learn in your first year economics’ course:

Ø Pre-Econ Course Citizen Quote: “We don’t make anything anymore in America. America’s manufacturing prowess is in a state of constant decline.”

Ø AP Student’s Response: “I disagree. The dollar value of manufactured goods in the United States, restated for price level changes so the comparison is accurate, is up over 50% in the last 12 years! Yes, it is true that the U.S. has lost several million jobs in manufacturing over that same time period, but that is primarily due to rising productivity (think machines & technology), where the U.S. can now produce more valuable manufactured products than ever before with many less people freeing those workers to be employed in more lucrative service-related businesses. Moreover, the US has maintained its share of global manufacturing product over that same aforementioned time period, whereas other manufacturing countries, such as Japan and Germany, have actually decreased their percentage share of global manufactured product. But, I think I understand where you may have gotten that mistaken notion that manufacturing in the U.S. is in decline; from the U.S.’s shrinking automobile industry, the lower employment in manufacturing due to higher productivity, and from the negativity inherent in the media and press which focuses mostly on the lost jobs.

Ø Pre-Econ Course Citizen Quote: “The U.S. government’s national debt of $9.6T is out of control. Imagine our country having to borrow $9.6T to pay its debts because it has no fiscal control!”

Ø AP Student’s Response: “The United States’ current level of national debt is both affordable and consistent with most nations. National accounting statistics show that the U.S.’s 67% national debt/national income percentage is average compared with other modern economies. Moreover, the level of U.S. national debt as a percentage of national income (67%) is at the same ratio as it was back in 1997 and 1992, and is much less than it was in 1950! The ‘”trick” is that debt must be benchmarked to income. It interesting that if someone knows that Bill Gates owes someone $10M they quickly can figure out that he’s probably fine, but if the guy at Starbucks finds out that the U.S. owes $9.6T they think the country is fiscally out of control!”

Ø Pre-Econ Course Citizen Quote: “International trade is hurting our economy as we have lost millions of jobs to lower wage countries. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement between U.S., Mexico, and Canada) has really hurt us by having million of American jobs being lost to Mexico.”

Ø AP Student’s Response: “I challenge you to find me a reputable economist who will tell you that NAFTA, or any other free trade agreement for that matter, has not been beneficial for the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Over the past 15 years, independent and numerous studies show that free trade agreements increase employment, incomes, and standards of living in ALL countries and NAFTA is no exception to this rule. Sure, free trade does cause certain industries to lose out to better competitors but, overall, international trade increases competition with the nation’s citizens benefitting through increased product quality, lower product prices, and increased incomes and standards of living.

I really hope you work hard in your economic course so that, you too, will see your nation’s economy, and our global economy, in a whole new light. As an AP Economics’ teacher in the U.S., I see it as an especially “sweet year” for a first time economics’ student due to a presidential election.

Let the YouTube video-analysis clips of Barack Obama and John McCain begin! Our “economic analysis” hats are on… and we are ready to apply what we have learned and conclude on their economic positions.

Today marked the first day of the 2008-2009 school year here at Zurich International School. It was a crazy day, where students rushed from class to class for quick introductions and syllabus distribution, barely having time to learn each teacher’s name before rushing to the next one. But if things were crazy for the students, they were just as crazy for us teachers.

Here’s a summary of the year ahead for me personally at ZIS:

• I have five sections of Economics this year, with a total of 77 students.
• One AP Microeconomics – 17 students
• One Year 1 IB Standard level – 6 students
• One Year 1 IB Higher level – 19 students
• Two Year 2 IB HL/SL classes – 35 students
• My 77 students come from around 30 different countries
• In one IB class I have 16 students from 15 different countries, including: Bulgaria, Greece, Switzerland, Scotland, Italy, South Africa, Germany,
  Guatemala, Finland, Romania, Australia, US, Mexico, England, and India.
• I am joined by two other Econ teachers at ZIS: Joe Hauet and Sarah Goudy, both who have vowed to join this blog as occasional contributors this year.
• I have abandoned paper texts this year, and we will instead use e-book versions of McConnell and Brue’s 17th edition “Economics”. Students all have their own Lenovo tablet PCs, which will allow them to read and take notes digitally.
• This blog will continue to be used as a resource for expanding the learning that goes on in the AP and IB Econ classroom. In addition to the over 140 Econ students here at ZIS, around 70 students will be reading and commenting on the blog from Shanghai American School, where my colleague Michelle Close plans to continue her occasional posts on this blog as well.

With that I will wrap it up for today. It has been a truly long and exciting day here in Zurich. Tomorrow I’ll start with the year 2’s and begin picking up where their last teacher left off, with International Economics, and begin the long trek towards external examinations in May of 2009.

Goodnight, and I’ll see you all in class very soon!

This blog has been quiet for some time. Summer will do that to a blogger; gets your mind off work, Economics, teaching, content, learning, all those activities that make up the daily life of a teacher for 10 months out of the year are blissfully absent from our daily routines during the summer months.

Alas, all good things come to an end, as does summer every year come mid-August. With the end of this summer, however, a new adventure begins as I find myself settling into a new school in a new city and country. So far, I have had an amazing two weeks in and around Zurich Switzerland with my wife, who is here for a while before heading back to Shanghai for one more school year.

In my short time in this amazing country, I have already had several ideas for future blog posts analyzing the unmatched economic efficiency I have observed in the daily routines of the Swiss people, buearacracy, transport and waste disposal systems, etc… Switzerland is the country with the highest Environmental Performance Index (EPI) rating, indicating that it best manages its natural and environmental resources, which as I have observed is the result of a well implemented system of economic incentives on multiple levels of Swiss society. From petrol tariffs to recycling schemes to half fair rail passes, all in a country with some of the lowest income taxes in Western Europe, Switzerland has somehow figured out the secret formula that so many developed and developing countries have yet to grasp: how to achieve a strong economy AND a healthy environment.

Throughout the coming school year, during which I will be teaching four sections of International Baccalaureate Economics and one section of Advanced Placement Economics, I will attempt to focus my posts to this blog on some of the issues faced by Switzerland and its European neighbors in the modern global economy. Additionally, I will attempt to unravel some of the Economic secrets that have helped make this city of 300,000 the world’s most livable city for three consecutive years.

I will be joined this school year by some new faces here at Welker’s Wikinomics. Steve Latter of Fairfax, Virginia, will continue to post articles, as will my former colleague Michelle Close from Shanghai American School. I am also hoping to recruit my new teaching partner here in Zurich, who may also be keen on using the blog as a means of extending the learning of his AP and IB Econ students.

For now, I will enjoy my last 10 days before classes begin full speed ahead here in beautiful Zurich, Switzerland. I will resume regular posts sometime later this month, so please stay tuned!

This blog was started in March of 2007 as a resource for economics students at the Shanghai American School, originally meant to accompany our class wiki. At first, the posts were written specifically for AP and IB Econ students at SAS, but over time readers from all over the world started visiting, reading and commenting on the blog. Other sites linked here, and our numbers steadily increased from rougly 40 visitors per day (mostly students) 12 months ago to an average of 200 visitors per day today. Since June of 2007 the blog has had over 60,000 visitors.

Welker’s Wikinomics Blog has changed in other ways as well. Teachers and students as well as other readers all over the world are reading the blog to learn how economics relates to the events going on around us in the world. Several times per week, a post is written with the purpose of applying basic economic concepts as they affect the world and explaining them in a way within the grasp of anyone seeking a principles level understanding of economics.

Recently, new authors have joined this blog, including Steve Latter from Fairfax, Virginia, who has taught AP Economics for nine years after retiring from his career as a CPA and a chief financial officer. Steve brings much real world experience to a blog that can sometimes be a bit on the academic side. Michelle Close, a fellow SAS economics teacher, continue to write the occasional post and has committed to writing regularly next year. In addition, I have recruited a few additional econ teachers from around the world to sign on as contributing authors, and I look forward to introducing them to our readers when the new school year starts.

Welker’s Wikinomics Blog has also been invited and has since joined the Forbes.com Business and Financial Blog network, an exciting opportunity that has further increased our readership and points to the credibility of what we write about here.

Right now, I am enjoying my second day of summer vacation. Two days ago I woke up in Shanghai and headed to the airport, tonight I sleep in my mountain cabin nestled in the rugged peaks of Northern Idaho. The serenity here seems like a different universe from the chaos from Shanghai. Over the next two months I will post only occasionally to this blog, but post I will… and readers can rest assured that when a new school year begins, and I once again start teaching Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Economics (next year I’ll be teaching at Zurich International School in Switzerland), daily posts will once again return to this blog.

For now I wish to thank readers for visiting this blog, and invite you to become not just readers or visitors, but contributors as well. Comments are always welcome, and if you are an Econ teacher or professor who is interested in becoming an Econ blogger, please send me an email and I’ll see about signing you on as an author. I can be contacted at welkerswikinomics@yahoo.com

Have a great summer. Be sure to return in early August to read more great posts from myself and my fellow authors here at Welker’s Wikinomics Blog.

~Jason

Throughout the year I’ve been developing SMARTBoard lessons for every topic in the AP Economics class. These lessons have now all been turned into .pdf files available for download in the “AP/IB Exam Prep” page of this blog. Check it out for links study guides for the nine units we’ve covered this year, as well as links to the wiki pages where the students have created their own, collaborative resource for AP exam preparation.

If you download and use the .pdf files, all I ask is that you leave a comment on the page telling me where you are, what school you go to or work for, and how you plan to use the study guides as part of your review!

Thanks, and good luck in preparing for the upcoming exams!

Micro and Macro Graphs – Welker’s Wikinomics Page

Throughout the year, I’ve been saving the graphs we’ve learned in class on the Smartboard. Just yesterday Wetpaint, our wiki provider, added a new feature allowing users to create albums of uploaded images. I have created two albums (Micro and Macro), found through the link above, containing all of the graphs we learned this year.

Here’s the catch: the graphs contain no titles or detailed descriptions. That’s where YOU come in. Follow the link above, enter an album, and add any information you know about the graphs or images there. Of course, you as an individual don’t have to do more than one or two, but YOU as a group of AP Econ students need to complete all 60 or so descriptions before May 8.

Use your notes, the wiki pages, and text book to recall the important information for each of the graphs. By May 8, one week before your AP Exams, we should have one place to go to review all of the graphs you learned this year, full color images, titles and descriptions included!

Do you know what Twitter is? Probably not, neither did I until a couple of weeks ago. This is a cool program that lets you follow friends and people who have things in common with you in their online experiences.

Now you can follow Welker’s Wikinomics on Twitter. This is a test post to see if my blog posts show up as Twitter updates. If so, then anyone following me, Jason Welker, on Twitter will receive a “twit” whenever I’ve published a new article on this blog, linking you to the latest post. This is just one more convenient way to follow this blog, without having to visit the page to see if there’s been a new article!

Enjoy! – Jason

Utah lawmakers, fearing UN conspiracy, kill funds for International Baccalaureate program – Salt Lake Tribune

In Utah, law-makers fear the IB program, which they believe is a United Nations conspiracy to take over the minds of young, patriotic Americans and corrupt them with a global-perspective of the world.

Lawmakers decided against helping Utah schools pay for International Baccalaureate (IB) programs after one legislator called IB’s philosophy “anti-American” today.

“I’m not opposed to understanding the world,” Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, told members of the Senate Education Committee. “I’m opposed to the anti-American philosophy that’s somehow woven into all the classes as they promote the U.N. [United Nations] agenda.”

Remind me never to go teach in Utah. This is an absurd and frightening statement about America. I understand these legislators’ views don’t by any means represent any sort of consensus among Americans; in fact, the US graduates more IB Diploma students each year than any other country. That any law-maker would vote against a modest proposal to fund this program on the grounds that it “anti-American” puts on stark display for the world the insecurity, fear, and close-mindedness a certain, right-wing section of the American population.

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Welker’s Wikinomics – the Universe

AP/IB Exam Prep – Smartboard Study Guides

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!

Check this out guys! Tonight I got a message on our Wiki from Antonio, an Econ professor from Africa. Here’s what he had to say:

Hi Jason,
I am Lecturer at the Economics Faculty in Maputo, Mozambique. I have recently come across your wiki and am really enjoying and learning a lot with it. I am creating my own wiki for my class, and your wiki provides a lot of insight. If you do not know Portuguese my wiki will not be of any use for you. In any case, I am the one who needs to learn with you. Thanks for the insights!
Best regards
Antonio

There’s globalization and education in the era of Web 2.0 at its best! International, teenage, Econ students living and going to school in Shanghai are helping African university professors and students learn economics. If you’re not convinced that the wiki’s effective, have a look at this. Here’s a map showing the last 100 visitors at Welker’s Wikinomics Wiki:

That’s right, guys, your wiki work is being seen, read, studied, and learned from all over the world! How amazing! Congratulations on all the great contributions you guys have made to the world on online economics education! You truly are teaching the world economics! 

Shanghai American School Economists – A podcast and blog produced by AP Econonomics students at Shanghai American School

Sometimes I read something written by students and I can hardly believe what I see. Students who utter barely a word in class somehow manage to write like journalists when they know their words will be read by more than just their teacher. Sometimes students are afraid to write for an audience, but sometimes the very thought of doing so motivates them to create something special, challenge themselves, push the limits of their knowledge and skills.

Back in September of 2007, about six months into my own career as a blogging economics teacher, I created a website where my students could freely post their own economics pieces. I explained to students that the site was for their own use; anyone could register as an author, write whatever they wanted, and post it to the blog whenever they pleased. I promised I would only step in and edit were something inappropriate or grossly inaccurate to appear. So far, I’ve not had to edit a single student article. And the amazing thing is, the articles that appear on this blog are getting better and better as the year goes on!

As and econ blogger myself, I am starting to realize that what I do every night, when I write articles for my students’ benefit, is not that impressive, because the articles THEY are writing are just as good if not better than the ones I write on my blog! For example, kids are now beginning to read the news as if the ARE economists, and when they identify an economic principle in something they read, they are challenging themselves to blog it on their AP Economics blog. Again, these kids are not required to write articles for this blog, but for some reason, they just DO! I love it!

If you haven’t yet, check out the SAS Economists AP Economics student blog. Not only are there some entertaining and educational articles about economics posted, but over 25 student-created podcasts too (both audio and video) exploring the economic concepts we’ve studied so far in microeconomics.

A website that started out as a fun little experiment in student blogging has turned into a forum for students whose voices may be heard by few during class, but through the world of Web 2.0 can be heard by thousands over the web!

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It’s been a month since my last post; the longest I’ve gone since starting this blog without writing. My guilt is mounting, although three weeks of skiing in the Pacific Northwest has mitigated the guilt of not blogging somewhat, it’s now time to get back to work!

Here’s what’s coming up in the next quarter in my AP and IB Economics courses. First let’s start with AP:

• We’re 90% done with the Micro component of the course. Since we do both micro and macro here, the micro component requires about two weeks more than macro, since we teach the “basic economic concepts” unit first thing in the year. For that reason, we’ll carry over into the first week of the 2nd semester to finish up our final unit of micro, which is…
• Market Failure and the Role of Government. This is my favorite unit in microeconomics, although regretfully it is also the shortest. Only about 12% (6-8 questions) on the AP exam will cover market failure. In this unit we’ll learn about the misallocation of resources that results due to the existence of public goods and externalities (both negative and positive). This unit provides a brief introduction to the broad and quickly developing field of environmental economics. For students interested in learning more about this fascinating field, there’s a great blog written by Tim Haab and John Whitehead, two of America’s leading academic environmental economics, found here.
• In just a couple of weeks we’ll begin an entirely new course in economics, where we’ll focus on the macro side of the economy. Most of second semester will be spent learning about topics such as inflation, unemployment, economic growth, international trade, the money supply, the federal reserve and other big topics in macroeconomics.
• The AP exam date is officially set for May 15. All my students will sit for both the micro and the macroeconomics exams on the morning and afternoon of May 15.

Meanwhile, in IB Economics, my eleven higher level students have begun their final unit of this two year course. For the next 9 weeks we will focus our studies on development, including:

• The sources and consequences of economic growth and development,
• Barriers to economic development,
• Strategies for economic development, and
• the evaluation of economic development strategies.

Around March we’ll wrap up this final unit, and spend the 7 or 8 weeks before our May exam to review the concepts going back to our first IB unit from the beginning of last year, and review all our units up to this point, including:

• Basic economic principles
• Microeconomics,
• Macroeconomics,
• International Economics, and
• Development Economics.

Lots of exciting things will be going on in the world of Welker’s Wikinomics this year. In addition to all the topics we’ll be learning in AP and IB Economics, I personally have begun looking forward to the new teaching position I have accepted for the 2008-2009 school year. I’ll be leaving the hustle and bustle of Shanghai behind for the relative tranquility of the Swiss Alps, where I’ll be teaching both IB and AP Economics at Zurich International School next year.

In the mean time, hope you readers stay tuned to this blog, the wiki my students maintain as they progress through their studies, and the student blog, “SAS Economists”, for the latest from the world of AP and IB Economics here at Shanghai American School!

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