OCR AS & A2 Economics Schemes

For what it is worth here are the schemes of work I use at my school as an Excel Spreadsheet which can be edited for two staff

• A2 Economics OCR SoW
• AS Economics OCR SoW

Explainer Videos in the classroom

Explainer videos are short, conversational and informal 90 second animated videos which generally educate, entertain and explain. The free Adobe Voice app for ipads looks wonderfully effective and easy-to use. Watch this video to get a feel for its potential.



There are also alternatives such as Powtoon which I find a little clunky. I use Camtasia Studio to create videos as it gives so much control over elements although the just launched Snagit 12 also from TechSmith has video creation capabilities - Camtasia Lite

Potential use: asking students to create 90 second explainer videos may well prove a popular homework

Office Mix for Flipped Learning and Class Projects

Office Mix is a new, free PowerPoint 2013 add-in from Microsoft:

Turn your PowerPoint presentation into an interactive online lesson. We call this a mix. Everything you need to create and share your mix is included. Add audio and video of yourself giving your presentation, write on slides as you talk to them, insert quizzes, practice exercises, and more – all from within PowerPoint. It’s like a screencast, but better. All you need is Office 2013 and the free Office Mix add-in.  

For me, the big advantage Office Mix has over screencast software such as Camtasia it is relatively intuitive and has a low learning curve for anyone familiar with PowerPoint - which is pretty much everyone.There is also the option to insert quizzes. See these Office Mix how-to videos for an overview of features

Here is blog post from a user who spent 20 minutes creating an Office Mix from scratch without prior experience

However, I will be sticking with Camtasia because it is so much easier to do post production edits eg cutting out voice over errors. In Office Mix this requires re-doing the entire  commentary for a given slide.

Over the Summer term I may ask my Economics class to create an Office Mix video on a topic of their choice eg explaining a concept such as elasticity or a multimedia review of a country. They all have free access to Office 2013 as part of the school's Microsoft Student advantage subscription and Office 365 scheme.

Recommended Online Glossary

I use a number of online glossaries to check definitions of key terms. I find myself using Encyclo more and more