Nuffield Economics and Business ICT investigations (CD-ROM)

SOFTWARE

Nuffield Economics and Business ICT Investigations (CD-ROM) available from Statistics for Education, 5 Bridge Street, Bishop's Stortford, Herts. CM23 2JU

This CD ROM is worth buying even if you do not teach the Nuffield course. It will run on your PC from the disk and therefore requires little in the way of computer memory. Even older computer set-ups should cope. At L29.50 +VAT/ post and packing, it is astonishingly good value - the price of a couple of textbooks.

For this outlay you can load the program onto a school network or as many individual PCs in the school as you like. So if you want, you can run it on one old machine from the CD or copy it onto a school intranet. Students may even load it on their own home computers! Even if you offer only business or only economics this resource is worth serious consideration. If your school is not well equipped with IT facilities it is possible to print all the material for classroom use. The CD-ROM allows the contents to be viewed as either web pages or within Microsoft Word with ease. Any student with an acquaintance with Word, Excel and web-browsers will navigate the software without much trouble.

For business students there are number of case studies. If used with a web-browser rather than Word there is the added benefit of beautiful graphics. For example, the study of Perkins Engines' shop floor really helps to bring to life concepts such as lean production. For those with the luxury of electronic whiteboards or projectors, the way to use this might be to go through the case study on screen and then hand out the written word copies in order to complete the exercises that accompany each case. Alternatively, students could be left to navigate and complete the exercises alone on individual PCs.

There are another 11 case studies covering topics such as efficiency and cost-benefit analysis. Some case studies require calculations like break-even charts, or final accounts to be completed. For these, spreadsheets are used, and the seamless way in which Microsoft Excel links to the cases is most impressive. Once again these calculations can be done on the PC or printed off and done manually.

At first sight the Economics case studies appear sparser.

However, the disk contains data sets similar to the SECOS data sets and programs that many teachers are familiar with. The value in allowing students to select data countries etc. and the ability to graph these quickly is valuable, yet this reviewer gave up on data sets a few years back because of the time required to master the software. On this disk the task takes a couple of minutes at most.

With projectors and electronic whiteboards this will be an incredibly powerful teaching tool. The ability to graph different economic indicators at a touch of a butto, for a whole class to see, could transform your teaching. Without the luxury of projectors the data can still be used individually or even printed out. The data sets alone justify the price and there are sets for the UK, Europe, Business and World Development. Each set contains tables for dozens of indicators from GDP and inflation to trade union membership and foreign aid.

For Economics, I particularly liked the unit on Globalisation, which is extremely well balanced. There is factual and emotive information gathered together with structured questions. Teaching Globalisation can end up as a mess of value-laden and unsubstantiated argument. I feel that this unit allows the topic to be taught in a more scientific manner. Business students would also benefit from this unit.

One case study on the car industry initially looks like a business case study. However it contains a wealth of data and could easily be used to teach concentration ratios, structure of industry, oligopoly etc.

I might quibble a little with a couple of the exercises. The Costs of Production spreadsheet exercis, for example, is available for free elsewhere and will be in many people's teaching notes already, but it seems disingenuous to complain about such things given the price.

A full list of the contents can be found at www.statsed.co.uk where the CD can also be ordered. If you have an electronic whiteboard then this resource is a must. If you have a classroom equipped with PCs or access to one, then you need to investigate having the CD loaded on the hard-drives or your server. If you don't have these facilities this type of resource is a very good reason why you should.

For those poor souls having to justify themselves to OFSTED inspectors via teachers' notes listing the relevance to curriculum, keyskills, lesson plans and so on-each case study comes with teachers' notes listing all of this information.

Like any resource the material requires the teacher to think about how to use it. Ten years ago the amount of time required to understand the software must have put many teachers off using IT.

Compared to then, however, the state of technology and material available is so much better that the time needed to get this working is minimal.

So if you gave up on IT perhaps now is the time to take a serious look at what is available.

Chris Rodda, Oxford High School.

Copyright Economics and Business Education Association Summer 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved