ICT resources rewiews

Biz/ed update

This academic year has been a particularly busy one for everyone with all the new specifications and other changes, and things at Biz/ed have been no different. Some new funding from various sources has meant that we have been able to expand the team working on the project. It has also meant my moving out of the classroom after 18 years in order to play on the Internet for a living - quite a culture shock! More people on the project has meant that we have been able to develop various new areas of the site which we hope will be useful. The results of some of this work are immediately available on the site, but some others will take a little longer to get there.

One of the major new features is the Virtual Developing Country (1). This is a case study based on Zambia and has a variety of resources. The site is mainly based around a series of "Field Trips". These look at some of the key issues facing developing countries including aid, reliance on primary commodities (copper in the case of Zambia), agriculture, trade and tourism. For each field trip there is a variety of material including relevant theories, case studies and explanations. All of this is backed up with data, a development glossary, worksheets and a background section giving an economic history and geographical information on Zambia. Wherever possible the principles are illustrated with photos from Zambia (a tough assignment which unfortunately the Biz/ed team didn't get to do!). This should be useful to those who are doing the development modules in the new specifications.

There is also a variety of other smaller features. We have introduced a new Accounting section which has various resources in it including downloadable spreadsheets, interactive worksheets and a glossary. This section is set to grow significantly over the rest of the year as more resources are generated. It is targeted at those doing A-level Accounting, but should also be useful for many areas of Business Studies.The accounting section is available as part of the Learning Materials (2) area of the site.

The new emphasis on Key Skills started us thinking about how we could help with this and we thought that some materials on spreadsheets and the use of spreadsheets may be helpful. We have therefore put in a new section called (after much discussion) "Between the Sheets". This is available in the Economics Business and Accounting subject areas of Learning Materials (2). For each subject there are downloadable spreadsheets that all follow a similar format and are all ready for using directly in the classroom. Each sheet has explanations, examples and questions for students to try. For example, the demand one allows users to input different values and see the effect on the demand curve and elasticity straight away. There are a variety of other sheets including costs, break-even, gearing, mark-up and margins, balance sheets and income statements and so on.

Another essential skill that we want students to develop is "selection". This is perhaps even more important in the context of the web as we are all well aware that something being available on a screen does not add up to a stamp of quality. However, students do not always see it that way and will enthusiastically cut and paste long before they have engaged their skills of critical analysis. So how can we help them evaluate the resources available on the web? One new way is to use some of the Virtual Training Suite tutorials (3). These free tutorials take users through how to evaluate web sites and give a variety of the very best web sites for each subject area. There are two particular ones of value to us and they are the Internet Economist (4) and the Internet Business Manager (5). Each one has a variety of features including a links basket to collect useful links as you go through, a glossary of useful terms and interactive quizzes to reinforce the principles being looked at. You may also like to let colleagues know about all the other subjects covered including History, English, Politics, Sociology, Law, Psychology and even Aviation. A further 27 tutorials are planned for May 2001.

The new specifications have also seen objective testing on the agenda and the supported answer type of question has been a new departure. In association with two major publishers Biz/ed has made an Economics question bank (6) available. This has 39 different tests available on most topics and each test has between 5 and 20 questions. The questions are interactive and in many cases have hints and feedback on each answer. There are also explanations of each answer. While not completely supported answer questions, these may be a help to students as they prepare for their first modules. We are hoping to follow up this question bank with one for Business and Accounting as well.

To help keep students and others up to date we have also extended and updated our Chronologies (7) section. There is now a daily newsfeed from the Guardian and a searchable database of economic and business events.You can even find out who the Chancellors have been since 1782, who has won each election since 1800 and the key economic events since 1700. So whatever you want to know from 1700 to today, try the Biz/ed chronologies.

To help support teachers and students in preparing for modules we have also extended what used to be called the exams section. To reflect its much wider brief this has undergone a rebranding and brand positioning exercise and is now called the "In the Know" (8) section. There is a monthly question with a guide response, a special teacher's column, a monthly feature, a general column on various economic and business issues, a careers column and a movers and shakers column looking at some of the key people and policies that are changing the economic and business environment. There is also a special feature on development, explanations of all the command words used in exams and details of the assessment objectives. This section is well worth exploring around - there is already a mass of really useful material and it grows monthly. It is written for us by a senior examiner and author.

To save you the trouble, we have drawn all the common economics and business diagrams and put them in a searchable diagram bank which is also integrated with an updated glossary for economics, business and accounting. Each diagram has full explanations and there are even theory trails that you can follow through the diagrams. The glossary is also fully integrated with all this, so that any search in the glossary will give other related glossary terms and any related diagrams. There is even a searchable Acronym finder linked to the glossary for all those little letters that you've never been sure what they stand for!

Case study material is always really useful for illustrating economic and business principles and one of the best sources is the Financial Times. To help you avoid scouring the pink pages every day, we are doing it for you and will be putting one article a week from the FT on the site. We will also add some questions and issues that arise from the articles and any areas of the Biz/ed site that may be helpful in relating theory to the real-world issues raised by the articles.

Finally - Wanna Argument? A call commonly heard around our cities on Saturday nights, but in this case another new Biz/ed feature (9). In this feature we look at the economics and business issues behind an argument. A running dialogue on the page is interspersed with links to the underlying economics and business theory. At the time of writing there are six different arguments on rail privatisation, tax and spend policies, the fuel tax debate, the Euro, farmers' incomes and climate change. We will be updating these as other topical issues arise. Why not try starting an argument with your students?

1 http://www.bized.ac.uk/virtual/dc/

2 http://www.bized.ac.uk/lean/ learn.ktm

3 http://wwm.vts.rdn.ac.uk/

4 http://www.economics.itsn.ac.uk/ interneteconomist/index.htm

5 http://www.sosig.ac.uk.vts/ business/index.htm

6 http://www.bixed.ac.uk/stafsup/ options/qbank/

7 http://www.bized.ac.uk/dataserv/ chron/

8 http://www:bized.ac.uk/stafsup/ exams/

9 http://www.bized.ac.uk/stafsup/ options/argument/

Copyright Economics and Business Education Association Spring 2001
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