Considering the remarkable technological progress and the spread of social media in the last few years, it can be challenging to teach and involve students when using an old-fashioned lecture style. Shelving overhead projectors and boring PowerPoint slides, some professors have converted to “education 2.0”, integrating new tools and applications into their class format.
The Ecuadorian Journalist Albertina Navas wrote about her experience of teaching economics to non-economics students at the University of the Americas – UDLA (Quito) in the article La economía se hace más divertida con herramientas 2.0 (Economics gets more funny with 2.0 tools) posted on the blog Clases de Periodismo, a virtual school for journalist students from Latin America. To help familiarize her students with complicated economics definitions and formulas and to achieve active learning, she used digital tools such as Twitter, blogs, Pinterest, podcasts, YouTube, Google Docs, and goear, a service to stream and upload MP3s. Leaving space for creativity, students gave proof of enjoying the class and produced some interesting outcomes, like the video El rap de la inflación (The Inflation Rap) or this infographic about history of economics thought. Read more