From: Scott Wolla (misterwolla@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 17:12:28 EDT
Next message: Scott Wolla: "[Channel-talkeconomics] Video #7 - Monetary and Fiscal Policy observations"
Video #6 – The Building Blocks of Macroeconomics
I am teaching summer school this summer, which has
given me a perfect opportunity to try some of these
activities on students. I have warned them that they
are guinea pigs, they don’t seem to mind because they
really enjoy the activities and simulations. As a
result, I skipped from video #3 to video #6 because I
thought it might be the most relevant to where I was
in my summer curriculum.
I enjoyed video #6; in fact I have enjoyed all the
videos. This is the most practical continuing
education class I have taken hands down. The first
activity dealt with the “Econopost” newspaper.
Students were given headlines and asked to apply their
economics knowledge to the situation – I liked it.
The next activity was one that I do in my class, but
the teacher had a little different spin on the
activity by adding more visuals. The activity dealt
with what activities were counted as part of GDP
according to the definition. I find that is well worth
while to spend the time helping students distinguish
between all the different variables, after all I thing
of GDP as the king of macroeconomic indicators.
Next showed a class where the topic was unemployment
and the terminology involved. The lecture/discussion
did a wonderful job of helping students distinguish
between the unemployment rate and the employment rate
(those in the labor force who have a job, about 61%)
and how the labor force (people over the age of 16 and
not institutionalized) is determined. The activity
that was attached to this lesson played off the first
activity using the headlines – helping students
determine what type of unemployment they exemplify.
The next activity dealt with inflation. Students used
an inflation calculator to help them determine if they
were hurt or helped by inflation in a variety of
situations. It also touched on the difference and
importance of real and nominal indicators such as GDP.
The lesson wrapped up with how inflation is calculated
using a market basket and the index formula of market
basket value this year/ market basket in the base
year.
I have found all of these lesson very enjoyable partly
because I enjoy watching someone else teaching
economics to their class. It allows me to see new ways
of explaining concepts with students.
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