Robert Morris Economic Teaching Conference

You can still register to attend the RMU Teaching Economics Conference sponsored by McGraw-Hill, February 15-17. Mark Eschenfelder and his staff do a nice job each year and the preliminary program is online. I have scanned the concurrent presentations and a few stand out to my tastes. These caught my eye for one reason or another.

• Principles of Macroeconomics: Technology and Student Performance, Marcelo Arbex, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Real World Data for Economics Principles: Use of PCs in Teaching, Jui-Chi Huang, Harrisburg Area CC
• Designing Synergies to Avoid "Death by PowerPoint" in the Economics Classroom (a practical demonstration)John Winn Shenandoah University
• CPR for the Economics Classroom, Kay Strong, Bowling Green State University

The paper by Arbex speaks of technology and I am at once tempted and irritated by the question: "What technology?" Still he links it to student performance which is attractive. What technology improves performance? I do want to know. Huang addresses something I have been thinking about a lot, how to integrate PCs (and in my case Tablet PCs) into the classroom. Perhaps in this paper is a good idea I can use. On the last paper, Dan Talley and I have written about this in our latest paper on Tablet PCs in a wireless environment (see previous post). I am always interested in ways to avoid the "death." Kay Strong must think so as well -- great title Kay.

It should be an interesting conference again. If you go, let me know what you think as well. I will post the interesting ones.