NCEE Distributes Virtual Economics® CD-ROM to Every School District in the U.S.

New York, NY (PRWEB) November 27, 2006

The National Council on Economic Education (NCEE, http://www.ncee.net) today announced the shipment of over 14,000 Virtual Economics 3.0 CD-ROM's to every school district in the country. Through funding provided by the U.S. Department of Education, the NCEE is providing every school district with one complimentary copy of Virtual Economics as part of the No Child Left Behind "Excellence in Economic Education" program. The CD-ROM's will be addressed to district-level curriculum directors or superintendents.

Virtual Economics (http://store.ncee.net/virtualeconomics.html) is a lesson planning and professional development resource for K-12 teachers. It contains a searchable database of over 1,250 activity-based economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship lesson plans from NCEE's extensive library of more than 80 publications and websites. There is also a 500-term glossary and 51 interactive multimedia demonstrations of key concepts.

In addition, every lesson plan is correlated to each state's content standards in economics.

"Every school district in the United States now has access to the teaching tools that will give their students the skills to compete - and excel - in the global economy," says Robert Duvall, NCEE President and CEO. "Curriculum directors and superintendents can use Virtual Economics to integrate economics into their K-12 curriculum; give their teachers the real-world lesson plans and content to confidently teach economics; and most importantly, make sure their teachers are using lesson plans that are aligned to state content standards in economics."

Virtual Economics as a Lesson Planning Resource

K-12 teachers can use Virtual Economics as a trusted source of daily lesson plans for infusing economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship into their classrooms. The lessons are accessible via a searchable database, permitting teachers to find lesson plans based on grade level, keywords, publication, or state content standards.

Drawing from NCEE's collection of curriculum guides, teacher resources manuals and student workbooks, this lesson plan database gives teachers the freedom to find lessons that support and supplement their curriculum and meet their teaching objectives.

The keyword search functionality also allows teachers to integrate state standards-based economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship lesson plans across other disciplines, such as math, language arts, social studies, business and marketing.

Virtual Economics as a Professional Development Resource

To ensure teachers are comfortable with economic and personal finance concepts, Virtual Economics includes 51 multimedia demonstrations of key microeconomics, macroeconomics, international economics and personal finance concepts.

Each demonstration includes an in-depth explanation of the concept, teaching tips, related lesson plans, a hyperlinked glossary, and a multimedia clip that explains the concept with interactive video, audio and text.

Teachers can explore the concepts to improve their understanding, and then print out related lesson plans that help them implement and teach the concepts in their classrooms. They are also useful for projecting via an LCD as an anticipatory set before introducing the concepts to students via hands-on activities and simulations.

There is also an extensive glossary with over 500 key economic and personal finance terms, helping teachers expand their vocabulary and increase their comfort level with economics and personal finance terminology.

More on Virtual Economics

To learn more and view an online demonstration, visit http://ve.ncee.net and click on the "Full Demo" button.

Professional Development Workshops for Virtual Economics

Workshops are available for Virtual Economics. If you would like to train your teachers to find, integrate and assess economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship content within your district's curriculum, please call 800-338-1192 or contact twhite@ncee.net

To Purchase Virtual Economics

To purchase, visit http://store.ncee.net/virtualeconomics.html.

About NCEE

The NCEE (http://www.ncee.net) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to improving economic and financial literacy. Both directly and through its unique nationwide network of state Councils and more than 200 university based Centers for Economic Education, NCEE's programs reach more than 150,000 K-12 teachers and over 15 million students in more than 70,000 schools each year.

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