A virtual free lunch?

Alright, so we all know that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that is increasingly true of the Internet. Sites that used to be completely free like the Financial Times archive are starting to charge subscriptions for the premium content of the site. This seems to be the route down which many sites are currently heading: offering a wide range of free content and charging for the premium stuff. Perhaps at last they have found a business model that works for the Internet.

So what freebies are there left in the Virtual world of the web? Well, there is still a lot of useful information that is free, but in this article I will focus on some tools that may be useful to us as economics and business educators.

Searching is something that we do all the time, and the more efficiently we can do it, the less frustrating surfing is likely to be. One tool that may help this is the Google toolbar. Google is widely recognised as one of the best of the search engines, and the Google toolbar makes it even better. The toolbar is downloadable from the main Google site (1) and it adds a bar to your main browser. This bar (see the screenshot below) adds a search box from which to search Google, and means that you don't even have to go to the Google site to do a search: you can simply search from the page you are on. You can also use this toolbar to search within the site you are on at the time if the site doesn't have a search engine of its own. A useful little tool for finding the useful web sites in amongst all the chaff (which may be a polite way of putting it).

A slightly different tool is the Navidata software. This is a free piece of software published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The functionality is a little limited and the interface a little clunky, but it can nevertheless be a very useful way to access ONS data. Navidata (2) can be downloaded from the ONS site and, once you have the software, it is possible to download all their time-series data (3) in Navidata format. For example, you can download the whole of the Economic Trends book, or the whole of Regional Trends or perhaps the whole Monthly Digest. Once you have saved these back to your hard drive or school/college network, you can use Navidata to browse through the data and select the series you want.

Once you have selected the series you want (Figure 1), you can use Navidata to edit or analyse the data and you can also use it to graph the data (Figure 2). You may find it easier, however, simply to export the data in csv (comma separated values) format. Then you can load the file straight into Excel or your spreadsheet package of choice.

Another package that is free for educational use, and which has been mentioned in this column before, is Hot Potatoes (4) (Figure 3). This is a suite of programs that enable you to develop online crosswords, quizzes and a range of other interactive questions. The package perhaps needs a couple of hours of practice to get fully to grips with it, but it comes with a basic tutorial and, with just a little time spent, you should be able to generate some interesting and slightly different activities for your students.

A final freebie that may be of interest if you have a PDA like a Palm may be the AvantGo (5) service. You can register for this service and choose a series of channels including CNN, the Economist, The BBC, the Guardian and Reuters. Then every time you synch your PDA with your computer, it will automatically download the most recent versions of the channels you have selected. This is a great way of getting hold of business news, sports news or a wide range of other news, though it does work best over a network or broadband connection.

So there are still some useful freebies out there, but they take a little looking for!

WEB REFERENCES

(1) http://www.google.co.uk/options/

(2) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/tsdnavidata.asp

(3) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/tsdintro.asp

(4) http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/

(5) http://www.avantgo.com

BUSINESS STUDIES

The EBEA has long lobbied the BBC about creating some digital resources for business studies and economics teaching, specifically offering short video clips of case studies and supporting teaching notes.

So I am delighted to see Working Lunch has responded by putting together a series of 'Lunch Lessons' on topics such as Promoting Products and Raising Finance. Most of the lessons have a short 3-minute video clip which give a context, and the support notes edited by Jenny Wales are pitched at exactly the right level. http://news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/programmes/working_lunch/education/default.stm is a 5- star resource.

ECONOMICS

For economists grappling with A2 and the welfare effects of tariffs, quotas, and trade creation and diversion effects, I can strongly recommend the International Trade site at http://www.firststep.com.au/econ. The strength of this site lies in its interactivity. Complex diagrams are broken down into stages, and students can see the effect on price, output, and consumer or producer surplus built up incrementally. Some of the sections are well beyond A level but elements that are suitable for A2 include

http://vuww.firststep.com.au/econ/small_country1.html

http://wwvu.fipststep.com.au/econ/plain/quotas.html

www.firststep.com.au/econ/int_benefits.html.

Finally having researched the Economics of Europe, the pages listed below are relevant and useful:

Copyright Economics and Business Education Association Summer 2003
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