I feel like Robin Ince is the Bilbo Baggins of scientific adventures… he’s not meant to be there, he has a nice safe home in the arts, but due to the pestering of some long haired, ambiguously aged soothsayer, finds himself in the company over enthusiastic explorers all jovially on their way regardless of any likelihood of success… and yet, they’d all get nowhere without him 💖 If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us

The Importance of Being Interested – Atlantic Books

Second, your examples here orbit around some of the extraordinary graduate writers at UW-Madison who have made the choices in their lives necessary to allow them to write about topics in which they are deeply and fully interested. But how can we use curiosity to engage some of our wonderful undergraduate writers who may feel little or no interest in an essay they have been assigned? If curiosity doesn’t seem to be emerging on its own, there are ways to coax it out, as George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote in a classic paper, “The Psychology of Curiosity.” Curiosity arises, Loewenstein wrote, “when attention becomes focused on a gap in one’s knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the feeling of deprivation.” Still, I forgive a lot for the idea that of all the behaviours we've been told are uniquely human over the years, the relevant interviewee (and the book has many, including a few fairly big names) suggests that the only one really particular to us is the ability to contemplate multiple meanings of a single thing. Though even aside from my own example, which I would have liked to ask her about (not using tools directly, but using tools to make better tools), this does suggest depressing corollaries regarding the many people incapable of doing that, the regrettably numerous types who always take depiction for endorsement and assume all creators support their protagonists' actions. The Infinite Monkey Cage“. Предаването, което вече има над 100 епизода, обсъжда теми от всякако естество, с гости от най-различни сфери на познанието.via video conference or phone, about a writer’s work in progress. As in the Writing Center, curiosity and generosity are central to my approach. I listen carefully and ask questions. I learn from the […] Cultivating interest should not be an afterthought to the typical learning situation: Interest is essential to academic success. Interventions to develop students’ interest matter in any educational context, but may be most needed in academic domains that many students do not find initially interesting or those domains in which interest typically declines over time. For example, in middle school and high school, students’ academic interests decline, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects ( Brophy, 2008; Eccles et al., 1993). Engineers hit local schools during British Science Week | Engineering Our Future blog on Engineering in Society – new module for engineering citizenship

The Importance of Being Interested by Robin Ince - Signed The Importance of Being Interested by Robin Ince - Signed

In November, I helped lead a writing retreat that was co-hosted by the UW-Madison Writing Center and the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) graduate student group. It took place at the UW Arboretum; the twenty-five graduate students in attendance were from a variety of disciplines, but knew each other through CHE. We started by going around the room so everyone could say what project they were working on. After our four-hour writing session, someone said that, though he knew in general terms about the research projects of other CHE grads, it was great to hear specifically and concretely what everyone else was working on that day. Coots! The ramblings and musings of a non scientific mind on scientific topics. What is the point? There isn't one. Thoman DB, Smith JL, Silvia P. The resource replenishment function of interest. Social Psychological & Personality Science. 2011; 2:592–599. doi: 10.1177/1948550611402521. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] In this book, there's a whole chapter on how the mind works, complete with memory distortions, cognitive biases and false assumptions. Robin seems entirely happy to frame the world through the distorting filter of his BBC bubble, never once realising that the water in which he swims doesn't reflect about 50% of the population’s view of reality. The underlying message is that the world would be much better if everyone saw the world like Robin. Perhaps it would, for all I know.Explore some of the work from the talented students on our postgraduate science communication programmes in the Science Communication Showcase blog. Answers or seeking answers to questions can be dangerous for some people because the answer May destroy the person's reality, example, God, or free will. That’s why I think cultivating open-ended curiosity is so important—because I can only ask questions like that when I allow myself to remember that anything can be interesting. What it did give was some very interesting and personal viewpoints fromany different scientists in many different fields. Not just spewing facts but also going into philosophy and making you think about questions of mortality, life after death, religion, consciousness etc.

How the Power of Interest Drives Learning | KQED

And as for your second question about using curiosity to engage undergrads who might not be interested in the essay they are writing, I feel like it often happens that my questions give unenthusiastic writers (or even resistant ones, as I describe in the post) permission to grab hold of what they’re saying in a paper. But I’d love to hear more from you, or from others, about this—have there been times where your curiosity motivated a student? Or situations in which expressions of interest did not work to motivate a student? Reflections on writing center practice, research, and theory from the students, staff, alumni, and friends of the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Recent Comments Renninger KA, Sansone C, Smith JL. Love of learning. In: Peterson C, Seligman MEP, editors. Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2004. pp. 161–179. [ Google Scholar]With razor-sharp wit and insight, Robin slices into the biggest questions of our time. The Importance of Being Interested left me smiling and thinking more deeply' - Commander Chris Hadfield, astronaut and bestselling author I'm in a similar boat to Robin, in school I felt like I should enjoy science, but the way it was taight at the time (80s into early 90s) more often than not excitement and discovery were quashed. The moments where you were told to throw some element through a bunsen burner flame to see what colour it created, or got the people with the longest hair to play with the Van der Graaf generator, were too few and far between.