James Murray

Pencasts for Introductory Macroeconomics

A 'Pencast' is a video of someone writing on a notebook page, while describing what they are writing. It is made with a special ballpoint pen, called a SmartPen and made by LiveScribe, that has a small video camera looking at the tip and a microphone to record audio.

The Pencasts below teach common material in Introductory Macroeconomics, covering nine topics from the course (each topic includes 2-8 Pencasts, for a total of 40 Pencasts). The style of these Pencasts are friendly and inviting, and emphasize intuition behind graphical modeling and problem solving, which is effectively taught by practicing problems with students. Each Pencast is short (2-9 minutes in length, most are 4-6 minutes) with a specific focus. Some focus on a specific aspect of a concept, like what shifts an investment demand curve; others describe a worked out example, like how to use and compute the expenditure multiplier.

These Pencasts can be used to complement face-to-face lectures or they can enhance an online class. Students in my face-to-face class reported appreciating that they could return to my lecture to listen again to worked-out problems that were tough to learn the first time. In my online class, I use the Pencasts to complement the readings and online quiz tools.

Jump to Considerations for Using and Creating Pencasts below.

Production Possibilities Frontier

Supply and Demand

Measuring the Macroeconomy

Loanable Funds Market

Productivity Curve (Economic Growth)

Short-run Fluctuations with the Expenditure Multiplier Model

Short-run Fluctuations with the Aggregate Supply / Aggregate Demand Model

Monetary Policy

Market for Currencies

How to create your own Pencasts: A Pencast is made with a SmartPen and special paper which are produced and sold by LiveScribe. The SmartPen has a camera looking down from an otherwise normal ink ballpoint of the pen which is used to record the pen's actions, and it has a microphone to record audio. The special paper is covered with tiny, light dots that are barely visible to the human eye, but visible to the SmartPen's camera so that it can tell where on the page and what page in the notebook the pen is writing. The SmartPen stores this information digitally, which can then be transferred to your computer using the software that is freely available from LiveScribe. Every page on the special paper includes recording "buttons" (record, pause, stop, play, volume adjust, etc) which you can simply tap with your pen to create Pencasts like those above.

Costs: As of January 2012, the SmartPen starts at $99.95. The base model includes more than enough storage capacity for an entire semester of content for several courses. The SmartPen includes a "starter notebook" of the special dot paper which is about 5in by 8in and 50 sheets (100 sides). Some users might find this sufficient, but I found it worthwhile to purchase a 3-subject notebook. As of January 2012, the 3-subject notebook is only $7.95, is 8.5in by 11in, and has 100 college ruled sheets (200 sides). The entire set of Pencasts above where created with the baseline model of the SmartPen, and used only 57 sides, or just over 1/4 of the 3-subject notebook.

Benefits: Pencasts have a number of benefits over traditional videos. First, they are more interactive. Students can click anywhere on a page to jump to that part of the Pencast. My students report it is useful to easily jump ahead or move back to an important part of the video which they did not completely understand. Secondly, Pencasts are useful for teaching applications for graphical models because the instructor can describe while setting up a problem what they are doing and why. Finally, this technology is easy to learn and Pencasts can be created quickly with some practice.

Drawbacks: The following are some drawbacks to using Pencasts:

1. The Pencasts above are seamlessly embedded onto this website, but LiveScribe requires the files actually reside on its own servers, and limits its free use of storage space to 500 MB. This is surprisingly sufficient, as Pencast file sizes are remarkably small compared to file sizes for similar length videos. The 40 Pencasts above amount to less than 60 MB.
2. Video editing is not possible with Pencasts. Once you have written or said something, it is part of the Pencast. If your mistake is significant, and near the end of your lesson, the only remedy is starting over (yes, this has happened to me a few times). For this reason, I suggest keeping your Pencasts short, limiting it to one page if possible, and limiting it to 4-6 minutes. Don not do too much work that you do not want to redo.
3. It is not possible to write on top of a printed document. Perhaps you would find it convenient to start a Pencast with a problem already typed out on a page, or a table, graph, or definition already printed on a page. This is not possible. The only content that can become part of the page is what you can write with the pen. I am someone who has sloppy handwriting when I am not careful, and I have no artistic ability, so at first I found this problematic. However, as a college teacher that makes frequent use of the whiteboard and/or document camera, in the end I did not find this drawback significant enough to prevent me from using this tool productively.