Common Sense Economics

Common Sense Economics is a website with many free resources for economics teachers.  It's designed to accompany a text by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, Dwight Lee, and Tawni Ferrarini but it would work well with any text.

It has practice questions, reading guides, and more on: 
(1) Twelve Key Elements of Economics
(2) Seven Major Sources of Economic Progress
(3) Economic Progress and the Role of Government
(4) Twelve Key Elements of Practical Personal Finance.

http://www.commonsenseeconomics.com/

Language of Business

The University of Texas at Austin presents LINGO: the Language of Business, a series of YouTube videos illustrating economic and business concepts.  Many of the terms are critical for understanding current events: Debt Ceiling, Systemic Risk, Sovereign Debt, Moral Hazard.  The videos are short, lively, and accurate.

https://texasenterprise.org/series/lingo

Internet resources for education

Box of Tricks provides A – Z Internet Resources for Education. While not specifically about economics, this list links to dozens of free online resources that can be used in the classroom.


http://www.boxoftricks.net/internet-resouces-for-education/

European Union lesson plans

The European Union has free downloadable lesson plans on a wide variety of topics, including a substantial number of economic lessons.

The high school lesson plans include PowerPoints and pdf lessons on topics such as the euro, immigration, the environment, and the single market.
http://www.eurunion.org/eu/European-Union-Lesson-Plans-Secondary-Level.html


The K-12 lesson plans include geography, language, and social studies (including economic topics like currency, environment, and prices.)
http://euce.org/education/k12plans.php


The Teachers Corner organizes lessons by age group:
http://europa.eu/teachers-corner/index_en.htm

Monetary Policy Game

"So you want to be in charge of monetary policy? Think you have what is takes to steer our country's central bank? See how it works by taking charge of a simulated economy."

The San Francisco Fed has an online game to explore monetary policy. The player sets interest rates to try to keep unemployment and inflation at their target levels. Assorted shocks, like a tax cut or an oil crisis, create turmoil and the Fed can respond by raising or lowering interest rates. A round takes about 2 minutes to complete and the game can be replayed (different shocks will appear in different rounds.)

The game also has a "learn more" section that discusses the Fed's policy tools, has a series of short videos on past policy, and includes a glossary of economic terms.


http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/chairman/index.html

Thanks to Philip Mulder for sharing this resource.

Economics and Art Webpage

Purdue University's Michael Watts is developing a website on using art to teach economics.

https://intra.krannert.purdue.edu/sites/econandart/Pages/Home.aspx

Several slideshows are already online, including: "Natural Resources and Agriculture," "Capital Resources and Technology," and "Money, Banking, and Financial Crhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifises." Each slideshow uses paintings and drawings to illustrate the economic concepts. The last slide of each show presents a list of discussion questions relating the pictures and concepts.

More slideshows are planned in coming months, as well as more information on the concepts, artists, and individual artworks.

Music for the recession

Marketplace reports on music for the current economy.

"Musician Ry Cooder explores a number of genres on his new album, which was inspired by the current economy and the protest songs of the past. This is an interesting take on our current economic situation."

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/08/29/pm-ry-cooder-on-the-protest-songs-of-today/


Thanks to Katy Gustafson for sharing this.

European debt graphic

The BBC has a great interactive chart illustrating the European Debt interdependence.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696

The chart summarizes a lot of complex data into an easy to grasp visual.




thanks to Nigel Willmott for pointing to this resource on the CEE discussion forum.

Third World Farmer game

3rd World Farmer is a free online simulation game. Players make decisions on planting crops & purchasing tools & buildings. Unpredictable events-- drought, fire, disease-- are common. The goals are to survive and to improve the family's material well-being. Both are challenging.

The interface is easy to use & the game itself is fairly engaging.



From the developers' press release:

"3rd World Farmer is a new kind of game. An experiment in the genre of Serious Games, it aims at simulating the real-world mechanisms that cause and sustain poverty in 3rd World countries.

In the game, the player gets to manage an African farm, and is soon confronted with the often difficult choices that poverty and conflict necessitate. We find this kind of experience efficient at making the issues relevant to people, because players tend to invests their hopes in a game character whose fate depends on him. We aim at making the player "experience" the injustices, rather than being told about them, so as to stimulate a deeper and more personal reflection on the topics.

We think the game has the potential to be an eye-opener to people who have become accustomed to the ordinary means of communicating third world desperation. Our aim is to have everybody play the game, reflect, discuss and act on it. The game is well suited to start off discussions about 3rd World issues, so we also encourage teachers to use it in their classes"

Play the game: www.3rdworldfarmer.com

Read more about it at: www.gamesforchange.org/main/gameprof/663

Visualizing unemployment

The American Observer shows the dynamics of unemployment during this recession:
The Decline: The Geography of a Recession




http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

Banking crisis

"This American Life", from Chicago Public Radio, has an excellent show explaining the current banking crisis. They illustrate it using a dollhouse loan that goes bad:

"Mark to market, that's another phrase you might have heard. And it applies to exactly the situation Adam is in right now. He's got a dollhouse on his books for 100, but if he had to sell it now, he could only get 50 - that's the market price, what he could get right now. Marking it to market means Adam would have to enter the market price - 50 dollars - or 20 dollars - or whatever it really is - into his books.

And the bankers have all been saying 'please don't make me do that,' because if you do, I'll be declaring bankruptcy."

You can hear the podcast or read a complete transcript of the program at their website.

The Credit of Crisis visualized

Here's a clear explanation of the foundations of the financial crisis by Jonathan Jarvis

Saving

Saving Money in Plain English is a simple introduction to savings and compound interest.

Can learning about the Federal Budget be fun?

Budget Hero from American Public Radio's Marketplace lets students adjust spending and taxes in a colorful interactive budget game. It's available free at
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/