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The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) is a nonprofit organization, headquartered in New York City, dedicated to promoting economic and financial literacy. The mission of the National Council on Economic Education is to help all students develop the real-life skills they need to succeed: to be able to think and choose as knowledgeable consumers, savers and investors, responsible citizens, productive members of the workforce and effective participants in a global economy. NCEE conducts three core programs: EconomicsAmerica, for the nation’s schools; EconomicsInternational, for teacher training in other countries; and EconomicsExchange, for life-long learning.

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Virtual Economics 3.0

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Virtual Economics 3.0

•• 51 key economics concepts 51 key economics concepts illustrated with an overview, illustrated with an overview, a multimedia demonstration, a multimedia demonstration, teaching tips and featured teaching tips and featured lessonslessons

Virtual Economics: An Interactive Center for Economic Education is one of the most powerful instructional resources in any K-12 discipline in the United States. Virtual Economics consists of two primary components: “Browse Economics Concepts” and “Browse Economics Lessons.” The first component, “Browse Economics Concepts,” contains 51 concepts organized into five categories. Each of the 51 concepts contains an overview; a multimedia demonstration; teaching tips; and featured lessons for elementary, middle and high school. In addition, a glossary with over 500 terms and their definitions is available.

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Virtual Economics 3.0

•• 1,200 NCEE lessons 1,200 NCEE lessons searchable by economic searchable by economic concept, grade level, key concept, grade level, key word, national economics word, national economics standard, your state standard, your state economics standard and economics standard and publicationpublication

The second component, “Browse Economics Lessons,” contains approximately 1,200 NCEE lessons, both print and online. This section allows the user to search by keywords, publications and standards. The search can be limited to grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. The search by standard feature allows you to search not only by national standards but also by your state’s standards. You may view the top 25 lessons that most closely relate to the standard you have selected. This will allow you to customize your economics curriculum to the state’s standards while you use lessons that are aligned to the state standards.

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The opening screen of Virtual Economics allows you to “Browse Economics Concepts” or “Browse Economics Lessons.” Let’s start with “Browse Economics Concepts.” [NOTE: Virtual Economics is easy to start. Just place the CD into your computer’s CD drive and you’re ready to go. No installation is required as long as your computer meets the minimum system requirements. In most cases, the CD will automatically start. If it doesn’t automatically start, double-click on the “VirtualEconomics.exe” (Windows) or “Virtual Economics” (Macintosh) icon. The CD may take between 20 seconds and one minute to load.]

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“Browse Economics Concepts” contains 51 concepts organized into five categories: Fundamental Economics, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, International Economics and Personal Finance Economics. Here, we are selecting the Macroeconomics concept “GDP” for examination.

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Each concept contains a concept overview, a list of lessons which support student learning, two or three teaching tips and a multimedia demonstration. Other concepts related to the one selected are also listed and can be accessed from this screen.

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Within the content overview, key terms are highlighted. [CLICK NOW for animation] A glossary containing over 500 terms and their definitions is available. To view the glossary terms, click on the underlined terms in the concept overviews or use the glossary tab on the right-hand side of each concept screen. [CLICK NOW for animation] The definitions will appear in the box on the right. The list can be printed and kept for future reference, [CLICK NOW for animation] -- or deleted, [CLICK NOW for animation] -- or cleared out. [CLICK NOW for animation]

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To view a list of all 500 terms, click on “Browse Full Glossary.” [CLICK TWICE NOW for animation]

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A management bar at the top of the page allows the Virtual Economics user to locate a specific term alphabetically.

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“Lessons” accesses featured lessons that teach the concept at the high school, middle school and elementary school levels. An abstract of each lesson is provided. [CLICK NOW for animation] Use the scroll bar to view the abstracts. High school lessons are followed by middle school lessons and then the elementary lessons. Click on a lesson to obtain a printable pdf file of that lesson.

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“Tips” are quick teaching ideas that can help your students understand the concept better. They are not full-blown lesson plans, but ideas for introducing the concept. Some of the tips relate to content, others to teaching strategies.

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Each multimedia demonstration illustrates a concept and explores a particular aspect of the concept or provides an application of the concept. You may want to show these multimedia explanations to your students. Be sure the sound is on because each demonstration is narrated.

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Each concept contains the same components a concept overview, a list of lessons which support student learning, two or three teaching tips and a multimedia demonstration. Remember that other concepts related to the one selected are also listed and can be accessed from this screen.

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“Browse Economics Lessons” is the second major component of the Virtual Economics CD-ROM.

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inflation

Virtual Economics contains approximately 1,200 NCEE lessons, print and online. To access online lessons, you need a connection to the Internet. Your search can be limited to specific grade levels, print lessons only, or print and online lessons. You may search the bank of lessons by keyword. If the word is in the lesson or publication title, that lesson will displayed. You can also use the keyword feature to search by discipline such as “World History,” “Mathematics” or “Social Studies.” Use the grade-level boxes to limit your search. [CLICK NOW for animation] In this example, a search for lessons on the keyword “inflation” has identified 1,201 lessons. This search was too broad, tapping into print lessons for K-12 and additional online lessons.

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Unchecking the “online” function reduces the number of lessons for teaching about inflation to 32.

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Selecting lessons for grades 9 through 12 refines the search to 23 lessons. [CLICK NOW for animation] Let’s look at the second lesson on the list--Macroeconomics Unit 2: Lesson 3--Price Indexes and Inflation.

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This lesson is from Advanced Placement Economics, 3rd edition. [CLICK NOW for animation] If you would like to purchase the publication from NCEE, a link to the NCEE bookstore is also present. [CLICK NOW for animation] Here you can review the lesson by using the scroll bar to the right and the navigation keys across the top of the screen. The entire lesson may be printed.

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To continue with a refined search, check the 9-12 box [CLICK NOW for animation] and the online box [CLICK NOW for animation] which will result in a listing of 42 lessons on inflation for high school. Selecting the second online lesson on the list, “How Is Our Economy Doing?” will

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pull up a “warning” screen that alerts you to the fact that you are leaving the CD-ROM and connecting to the Internet. Click “YES” to proceed to the Web site “EconEdLink.”

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This online lesson from NCEE’s “EconEdLink” will appear in a browser window. The lesson may then be reviewed and printed.

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The “Search by Publication” function presents a list of 57 books available from NCEE. Use the grade-level boxes to limit your search. Here, the high school publication Learning, Earning and Investing has been selected.

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Here, the table of contents of Learning, Earning and Investing is presented. If you search by publication, the table of contents for the publication will appear. If you click on one of the lessons, that lesson will appear. This allows you to access PDF files of every lesson in every publication that is on Virtual Economics. [CLICK NOW for animation] You can purchase the book from the NCEE bookstore [CLICK NOW for animation] or review the lessons in the table of contents. [CLICK NOW for animation] Lesson 2, “Investors and Investments,” has been selected for review.

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This lesson from Learning, Earning and Investing may be examined [CLICK NOW for animation] and a determination made as to its applicability [CLICK NOW for animation] for the teacher’s use with students in his or her class.

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Virtual Economics can search standards in three areas: (1) NCEE Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics, (2) the Jump$tart Coalition’s National Standards in Personal Finance and (3) state standards in 48 of the 50 states. [CLICK NOW for animation] Here we are selecting a listing of the Florida state standards.

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Scrolling through the standards, this user selects a high school standard [CLICK NOW for animation] related to economic systems and institutions and then clicks on “Find lessons that meet this standard.”

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A list of 20 print and online lessons is displayed here. [CLICK NOW for animation] The lesson selected is “Lesson 5: The Gains from Trade,” a print lesson.

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After clicking on the lesson title, the user now views page 1 of the lesson from the [CLICK NOW for animation] NCEE publication Mathematics & Economics: Connections for Life--9-12. [CLICK NOW for animation] The lesson can be reviewed and printed.

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The opening screen of Virtual Economics allows you to “Browse Economics Concepts” or “Browse Economics Lessons.” Let’s start with “Browse Economics Concepts.” [NOTE: Virtual Economics is easy to start. Just place the CD into your computer’s CD drive and you’re ready to go. No installation is required as long as your computer meets the minimum system requirements. In most cases, the CD will automatically start. If it doesn’t automatically start, double-click on the “VirtualEconomics.exe” (Windows) or “Virtual Economics” (Macintosh) icon. The CD may take between 20 seconds and one minute to load.]

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