opengecko

Photo from flickr.com by Androfire (Some rights reserved)

From the IGCSE syllabus:

Describe the conditions required for the development of
coral reefs.

Describe
•  fringing and barrier reefs
• atolls

Describe the location of coral reefs, and the necessary conditions for their development:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0125204/about/coraldist.swf

http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/coral/where.htm

http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/coral/habdiscr.html

http://www.starfish.ch/reef/reef.html

http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/04benthon/crform.htm

Understand and make brief notes on how coral reefs operate as an ecosystem:

Make notes on the different types of reef and how they are formed. Sketch diagrams to add to your explanations. Make sure you focus on fringing reefs, barrier reefs and atolls. For each, you should be able to give a named example. :

http://www.jochemnet.de/fiu/OCB3043_39.html

http://www.starfish.ch/reef/reef.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll

Fringing reef:

Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs025-02/

Atolls:

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ulithi-atoll.gif

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_atoll_formation_animation.gif

Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs025-02/

Describe and explain the human threats posed to coral reefs, and try to give named examples:

http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/coral/threats.htm

http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/04benthon/crform.htm

Research some of the possible solutions to these threats.

http://www.nature.org/joinanddonate/rescuereef/explore/help.html

Photo from flickr.com by mikebaird [Some rights reserved]

The IGCSE Syllabus requires us to understand this:

Describe and explain the landforms associated with these processes. You should study the following coastal landforms:

□ coastal sand dunes

The action of wind in shaping coastal sand dunes should also be understood.

Here are four good websites to help you achieve this understanding:

Coastal Sand Dunes on Offwell Woodland and Wildlife Trust

BBC Scotland Higher Bitesize on Sand Dunes

The Geography Site on Sand Dunes

Geo Resources on Coastal Sand Dunes

How are people using the rainforests?

You need to choose one of these groups who are using the Amazon rainforest in some way:

a) Amazon indians (e.g. Kayapo Indians)

b) Miners of Iron Ore (e.g. at the Carajas Iron Ore Mine)

c) New Settlers (also known as colonists or colinistas tehse are farmers who were given land by the government this happened a lot ion the 1980s)

d) Cattle Ranchers

e) Conservation Groups

f) The Government responsible for Transport (e.g. the Trans-Amazonian Highway)

g) Loggers

h) The Government responsible for Energy (e.g. new Hydro Electric Power Stations)

Your mission is to create a truly awesome slideshow with an absolute maximum of three slides and a minuimum of one slide to explain:

1) How these people are using the rainforest and why they use it this way.

2) Examples of where these people are using the rainforest and for how  long – maps / satellite images would obviously help

2) Difficulties this might have caused

3) Possible solutions for the future

The slideshow has to be very visual with images, facts and figures – you are using the slideshow software to its full potential. We are not interested in text heavy information. This will be shown at the start of a lesson. You can include hyperlinks to websites if people want to learn more.

Obviously you will need to research this thoroughly, and the internet is an obvious resource.

[Image: nDevilTV  Some rights reserved]

The Cambridge IGCSE syllabus requires us to have a good understanding of the following:

describe the principle of profit maximisation as a goal.

We have seen useful videos on YouTube before, particularly MJMFoodie’s very visual explanations (which are often aimed at higher stages of education, such as IB). One of her useful videos (on fixed and variable costs) is here:

Another useful video by MJMFoodie gives an introduction to the topic and explains the idea of the law of diminishing returns.

A great idea for a learning activity to really understand this topic is for you to work with one other person towards producing your own video, MJMFoodie style. It should be simple – create a PowerPoint (or similar) with images. These images can be your own that you have drawn on the computer, scanned into the computer, or other images produced by other people. It is obviously preferable to use images that are not copyrighted, so some good places to visit for non-copyright images are here:

http://www.everystockphoto.com/

http://search.creativecommons.org/

As you assemble your slideshow, make sure you are working on your script to go with each slide. Later on you will want to record your voiceover while playing the slideshow. In that case, planning the video out is essential and you should start with your partner by story-boarding the video.

Your video should summarise this theory on costs, revenue and profit as outlined in the syllabus above. It should summarise it in a highly visual and accessible way. Your video should ideally last somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes.

A good starting point is to consult the relevant chapter in the text book you are using. A good text book is this one, which introduces the idea using Sue’s Teddy Bear Firm.

Economics: A Complete Course for IGCSE and O Level: Endorsed by University of Cambridge International Examinations

Other simple summaries of aspects of this topic are  found here:

Tutor2U – Simple Overview of Output, Fixed Costs and Variable Costs

Tutor2U – Simple Overview of Revenue, Costs and Profit

Tutor2U – Simple Overview of Average Costs and the Scale Of Production

The Cambridge IGCSE Economics syllabus requires students to describe (and therefore understand) the following as part of section 4.4 The private firm as producer and employer:

the type of business organisation in the public and private sectors: sole proprietors,
partnerships, private companies, public companies, multi-nationals, co-operatives, public corporations;

To start us thinking about some of these, we can refer to these youtube videos which essentially cover the same information.

1) Main Types of Business (by Yerlanstudent):

2) Accounting: Business Organizations (by Studio4Learning)

Notice that these videos are US based. Corporations are limited companies (but not all limited companies are corporations). We need to be able to distinguish between private and public limited companies.

The following websites are useful resources for understanding the differences between the different types of business organisation further:

1) Tutor2U: gcse economics – firms – types of business ownership

2) biz/ed: public liability (but also a comparison of business types) [more complex notes]

3) thetimes100: Types of businesses [note that the tables in boxes have overlap between the columns so need a bit of concentration]

Our eventual aim of this learning session is to understand (and know ‘like the backs of our hands’) the following diagram:

First we need to understand the difference between fixed and variable costs. This video by MJM Foodie handles this well:

This is a very good interactive exercise to consolidate your understanding of the different types of cost, and ends with a graph to show how their ‘curves’ will look. It introduces the idea of marginal costs and links changes in these costs to the theory of diminishing returns – crucial to understanding the shapes of the graphs. Read all of the text and work through the activities from start to end.

http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/COURSES/ECON/Cost/Cost.html

Now MJM Foodie begins to link us to the graphs more directly:

If you need another glimpse of how the product curve ‘translates’ to the cost curve so that the theory of diminishing marginal returns is transferred, see the first few slides of the following (after slide 3 , the slideshow gets too technical):

http://www.unc.edu/depts/econ/byrns_web/Flash/Chapter_8/8_2.swf

Back to MJM Foodie:

This link helps us understand how to achieve the graph at the top – work your way through these explantions very carefully:

http://www.reffonomics.com/TRB/chapter8/COSTS6.swf

This next link gives a useful summary of the different cost curves, and includes an interactive exercise to check your understanding on Average Total Costs

http://www.kmversteeg.com/mult/9_05.swf

This is very useful for understanding the shapes of each of the cost curves:

http://www.reffonomics.com/textbook2/microeconomics2/swiftfile/costofdoingbusiness/costcurvespart2.swf

Finally this interactive graph allows you to ‘play’ with the set of cost curves we see in the first image of this post, showing how labour prices and fixed costs can be altered to change the gradients of the graphs, but notice how their overall shapes remain:

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/007334365x/student_view0/chapter9/interactive_graph_2.html

These YouTube clips help us to understand some of the ideas to do with Market Failure. Some of the ideas in the first clip are not needed for IGCSE understanding (adverse selection and moral panic).

1) General understanding of Market Failure

2) Negative Externalities Explained

Note this uses Marginal Costs and Marginal Benefits curves. Marginal Benefits is the same as the Demand Curve. Marginal Costs is the same as the Supply Curve.

3) Public Goods

From flickr.com. Uploaded on April 2, 2007 by SideLong

Before starting to understand Price Elasticity of Supply, it is worth recapping Price Elasticity of Demand. Click on the following link:

www.business2000.ie provides an interactive quiz on PED

This site introduces the main concepts of Price Elasticity of Supply:

Slideshow from http://www.econ.ucsb.edu

This site gives a useful overview of PES:

PES from tutor2u.net

This web page details price elasticity of supply, but is a little complicated:

http://dotlearn.com/topics/Economics/1040/content/

This web page provides information on how time effects PES:

Welkerswikinomics on PES

This site gives a useful interactive demonstration of PES calculations:

http://www.college-cram.com/study/economics/presentations/619

Uploaded on November 25, 2005 by mknobil Some rights reserved

Create a case-study document about the crisis in Darfur using the following resources:

1) The Guardian – Photo/Audio summary of  the crisis.

2) Map-based interactive GIS to show the geographic situation.

3) An organisation called ARC show some possible solutions.

4) Geographyalltheway on the Sudan crisis

Good recap video:

Good overview video:

Activity: Recapping Factors Affecting Demand and Supply

Econedlink Site

Activity: Exploring changes in Supply and Demand

Ecedweb Site

Activity: How changes in Supply and/or Demand affect Market Equilibrium

College Cram Site

More sophisticated diagram analysis of teh same issue

Whitenova Site

Activity:

Activity: Changes in Supply and Demand Effect Equilibrium Price and Price Ceilings and Price Floors. Click here:

McConnell Brue Economics Site