Website design

Teaching website design can be done in two ways. The easy way is to use one the the many, very good, software packages. Adobe Dreamweaver is a fairly popular commercial package, while Mozilla’s SeaMonkey (from the creators of Firefox) is a free, open-source alternative.

The longer way to teach web design, which I prefer, is to start with HTML and CSS and build a fundamental understanding of how webpages work.

Chakita J., who teaches technology at the Hazelwood School District in St. Louis and shares my approach to the subject recommends , “The Complete Reference HTML” by Thomas Powell.

The Wiki

One of the most significant developments of the information revolution has been the creation of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the software that makes it possible. Wikipedia has democratized the creation and sharing of information. Anyone can edit the encyclopedia, and anyone can access and adapt the information by observing simple and free license. And the information in Wikipedia is remarkably accurate, comparable to the Encyclopedia Britannica (Giles, 2005).

The democratic creation and sharing of information shares much with the ethos of Montessori. There is a respect for the participation of anyone who wishes to contribute, contained within strong mechanisms for self-correction.

The basis for this success is the Wiki website software. There are quite a number of stand-alone or software suites that allow the creation of wikis. Wikimatrix, (2010) provides an extensive list, as well as questionnaires that offers suggestions about which wiki would best meet different users’ needs. Mediawiki, the software used by Wikipedia, is designed to be open and allow easy editing, while others give users and administrators greater control of what anyone can see and change.

Wikipedia uses the Mediawiki wiki software.

Based on its reliability, as proven by its ubiquity on the internet, its cost (free) and its ease of editing, I have chosen to use Mediawiki for my middle school wiki. The only significant difference from the standard Wikipedia installation is that I have password-protected access past the front page of the wiki to anyone not in the class. Once past the front page, a world of creation and community sharing opens up.

I have been using the wiki extensively for the last two years, and it is the central point of reference for my class. Students write their assignments on the wiki, they can find out what’s on the study-guides on the wiki, they often use it to communicate with their peers, and they have access to all the information and presentations created by their peers so they have a database of knowledge directly relevant to what we’re studying in the class.

Navigation bar for the middle-school wiki.

As a teacher, I believe our class wiki is one of the most powerful additions to the classroom community. It has been a great organizational aid for myself as well as the students. Presentation notes, video, reading assignments are all linked directly to the relevant study-guide. It drastically reduces the amount of paper necessary to hand out and to keep organized, which is especially important with our two-year cycle of work.

Yet, as with any type of new technology, it is important to get other, independent perspectives on the efficacy of the wiki. There are potential issues. Reaching the diversity of learning styles is an important element of teaching.

Assessment is, by necessity, an ongoing project. I will start by surveying my students to investigate how they use the wiki perceive its utility. The outcome of this investigation should provide guidelines for how the wiki needs to be adapted to be most useful and guide future research.

Classroom Activities in Economics: Resource Guide Plus

From the Federal Reserve System.

I’ve had a number of posts based on stuff I learned this summer at the Fed. Most of it has been about the resources and tools they have available on their website and it can be a little intimidating trying to figure out how to actually use all of this data.

So the Fed has created Resource Guide Plus, a collection of activities, simulations, publications and tools for the classroom. The activities have pretty good instructions and use the resources available on the Fed’s website. They were kind enough to post the math and economics activity I worked on at the meeting (also posted here) in their Tips and Tools section.

The activities are searchable and geared mostly toward middle and high school though there are some elementary ones in there too.

Stress, pressure and performance

How well does extrinsic motivation help us perform? NPR recently had another interesting interview with Dan Ariely where he talked about how rewards, cash bonuses in this case, affect performance.

It turns out that while bonuses increase people’s desire to perform better, people actually perform worse, probably because of the increased stress.

Jonah Lehrer actually suggests that this also applies to negative rewards. He suggests the engineers trying to cap the oil leaking beneath the Gulf of Mexico should take more time off because pressure from powerful incentives reduces our ability to think creatively.

So think about what this implies for high-stakes testing.

Liber8 economic newsletter

The Liber8 online newsletter from the St. Louis Fed is designed for non-economists (librarians to begin with) and has some wonderful articles explaining economic thought and issues in the news. “How Would Modern Macroeconomic Schools of Thought Respond to the Recent Economic Crisis?” is a great introduction to the different perspectives on managing the economy. It may be good preparation for, or alternatively a followup on, the great Keynes vs. Hayek video.

The Ledger

The Boston Federal Reserve Bank publishes (occasionally) a newsletter with easy-to-read articles on economic subjects. Themes include: Immigration; Economic Resources on the web (as 2008); Coping with economic change; Varied Perspectives on the Global Economy; Are We Better Off Than We Were?; and, The Economics of Entertainment.

It’s a very informative, easy read.