A story of a most valued student…

March 11, 2014

I just had to. Simply couldn’t help myself. Here, hastily and with minimum second-drafting, is a small story about one of my students. It’s 10:00 and Marie, one of my IB2 students now in the throes of mock exams, is sitting quietly in my room revising for...

Making the grade – ticking a few grade criteria for IA

January 28, 2014

It bears repeating that I am in no way an “official” for the IB in terms of IA but simply a teacher with a few years of experience dealing with this subject. The following is my way of going through the IA grade criteria with my students in order for them to achieve...

Everything you wanted to know about Internal Assessment…

December 11, 2013

…but were afraid to ask and/or simply haven’t been told. People, we are talking about 20% of your total IB grade in economics here. It would seem to me that your opportunity costs are quite negligible in putting in a few hours in writing good Internal...

Flight from the Indonesian Rupiah – Part II

October 28, 2013

The previous post dealt with the self-fulfilling prophecy – or “self-reinforcing feedback loop” – of negative expectations which, when acted upon, create the very situation that was feared/expected in the first place. If speculators/investors...

Singapore seeks answers to rising food prices

October 24, 2012

As the world population is growing and urbanization is speeding up, this  happens at a cost. More and more often we read in the news about rising food prices, and not only- we can feel it by the faster speed with which our pockets get empty. According to the United...

Global Food Prices on the Rise, UN says

October 6, 2012

UN Food and Agriculture Organization is concerned about the prices of food which are  again on the rise and are reaching levels similar to the levels in 2011 when high food prices and food shortages caused riots in countries in the Middle East and northern Africa....