Engineers hit local schools during British Science Week | Engineering Our Future blog on Engineering in Society – new module for engineering citizenship Politics Science Education Housing Immigration Criminal Justice Silicon Valley Forum The California Report And even writing-center-led writing retreats, which provide quiet, focused time to make progress on a project, are made productive by mutual interest. Each being interested in our own thing together feels different than being interested in your own thing alone in a library cubicle. Never has a[n] [audio]book resonated with me so strongly and heavily. The only thing school taught me about science was that it wasn’t me for me - I hopeless at it. And so I let myself believe that. I’ve always been fascinated by space and the stars, but filed that fascination away into the “not for me” drawer in the mental filing cabinet.

The Importance of Being Interested Robin Ince – The Importance of Being Interested

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institutes of Health. Paul Silvia of the University of North Carolina has researched interest deeply. He highlights how interest gets us exploring and interested in new things, but also how it focusses our attention rather than being distracted by the huge number of possibilities and things going on around us. Robin Ince is an English comedian, actor and writer. He is best known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox. Every chapter introduces a "mindf***" concept from the world of science (largely cosmology) and prompts the reader to muse on its implications for the big questions of life through a series of humorous vignettes and dialogues. It encourages you to adopt science not just as a means to an end, but as a religion that can bring depth and inspiration to your life. While there's no explicit atheist agenda, it does assume that the reader - like the writer - is interested in gaining the comforts of faith through science. In and of itself, the attitude is admirable and the reasoning sensible, but I find some passages, in which faith and science are presented as competing forces, to be rather one-dimensional. And being interested can be powerful even in difficult tutoring situations, when a writer is under stress or even at a crisis point. The other day, for example, I met with a writer who was quite unhappy with both her course and her assignment and was telling herself (and me) that there was no way she could write this paper. Though she had not started drafting, she was quite knowledgeable about the topic of the course and had been doing a lot of reading. I kept asking her questions, and—despite her conviction that she could not write the paper—the writer began explaining her ideas about the role of apocalyptic rhetoric in the fall of Constantinople. (Really interesting.) As I continued asking questions, she interspersed her explanations with negative pronouncements about how she couldn’t write the paper less and less often. She started writing things down. She came up with an outline. My interest in her ideas and her situation as a writer had helped break down the negative messages she was telling herself by tapping into a powerful resource—her own interest in the topic. Curiosity across the curriculum

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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).

The Importance of Being Interested – Another Word The Importance of Being Interested – Another Word

The clincher for me was the comment, "I would hope that those private companies that are now financing space missions have not build up their fortunes needed to become extraterrestrial by skimping on tax or employee rights and benefits", that's exactly what they've done - it's well documented. 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 […] Whether it’s about conspiracy theories and questioning our information, on the topics of science and religion, the vastness of the universe, aliens or about our place in the universe, there’s definitely something in here for everyone to get your brain firing and your curiosity peaked. The chapter about life and death was so beautifully written and so well done. About the Author: Robin Ince is co-presenter of the award-winning BBC Radio 4 show, The Infinite Monkey Cage. He has won the Time Out Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, was nominated for a British Comedy Award for Best Live show, and has won three Chortle Awards. He has toured his stand up across the worl Smith JL, Wagaman J, Handley IM. Keeping it dull or making it fun: Task variation as a function of promotion versus prevention focus. Motivation and Emotion. 2009; 33:150–160. doi: 10.1007/s11031-008-9118-9. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar]

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Really? Even today, within a given country, let alone around the world, lust and jealousy, never mind the structures around them, can vary an awful lot. Would an Egyptian marriage be so very recognisable to us, or ours to them, when our own relationships are strange enough to each other to keep Channels 4 and 5 in large chunks of regular programming? At several points reading this, my wife asked me what interesting facts I'd just learned and my reaction was usually "Erm..." Engineering in Society – new module for engineering citizenship on Engineering in Society – new module for engineering citizenship

The Importance of Being Interested by Robin Ince | Waterstones

Rotgans JI, Schmidt HG. Situational interest and learning: Thirst for knowledge. Learning and Instruction. 2014; 32:37–50. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.01.002. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] 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] But it is also the case that interesting things generally share a number of characteristics. The research of Paul Silvia suggests that to be interesting, material must be novel, complex, and comprehensible. That means introducing ourselves or others to things we haven’t encountered before (or novel aspects of familiar things), and calibrating their complexity so that these things are neither too hard nor too easy to understand. Understandability is crucial: as Silvia writes, new and complex things are interesting “provided that people feel able to comprehend them and master the challenges that they pose.” This is the second book I have listened to by Robin Ince and it was, yet again, brilliant. As a writer he has written a fascinating journey into science having had access to some amazing minds and also having a great gift for explanation. As a narrator he comes across as utterly fascinated and enthusiastic about his subject matter. This really is great on all levels. But in reading this book, it's very obvious that Robin is a good ninety degrees left of me! Before I go any further, I need to point out that I'm under no illusions of my own neutrality. I’m not a natural conservative (either with or without a capital C) and on the "political compass" test, I get as close to the centre as makes no odds, but my own biases are clear to me; I've got no time for identity politics or pandering to what I've come to think of as the Modern Left. I was rather surprised by Robin's rather obvious political bias, not because it exists (he’s entitled to his own opinions) but because he’s an author of a book on cognition who simply doesn’t seem to recognise his own biases.

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Høgheim S, Reber R. Supporting interest of middle school students in mathematics through context personalization and example choice. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 2015; 42:17–25. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2015.03.006. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] There is no such thing as a stupid question from an outsider because it may very well be that question helps solve the problem. I distinctly remember at this time lamenting to my personal tutor in the linguistics department that I was struggling with feeling like I should have gone in to evolutionary biology. I remember her considering this before asking me if I knew evolutionary linguistics was, in fact, a thing. The study of how humans evolved to communicate using language. I didn’t, but as soon as I was aware I was hooked and ended up doing my master’s degree in language evolution and ultimately a PhD on the topic. In that moment, I found my “thing”, and I can’t imagine my life without it now. In many ways, I think I only made the choices I did because of Robin Ince raising evolutionary topics into my consciousness at a time when it wasn’t too late. In science communication, we often talk about the objective of raising the “science capital” of children to try and get people to feel like science is “for me” at an age where it can still affect their subject and career choices. I feel like Robin Ince pushed me into that space at the very last second when it could have still affected my career. And now, here I am, a lecturer in science communication who researches, among other things, science comedy. 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 Brophy J. Developing students’ appreciation for what is taught in school. Educational Psychologist. 2008; 43:132–141. doi: 10.1080/00461520701756511. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar]

The importance of interest to achieving success and being The importance of interest to achieving success and being

The Infinite Monkey Cage“. Предаването, което вече има над 100 епизода, обсъжда теми от всякако естество, с гости от най-различни сфери на познанието. Michelle, I love so much about this post, but especially your observations about “Curiosity Across the Curriculum.” As you point out, “a conversation about student writing, the goals of the lesson, and the conventions of the discipline often turns into a conversation about the instructor’s own writing process.” This has often been my experience with Writing Center Outreach — there are so many moments in which I describe a writing principle or technique and the instructor says “oh, I do that all the time! I never really realized I was doing it, though.” Becoming aware of my own unconscious processes has been such a crucial part of my development so far as a writing instructor, and it’s wonderful to be able to share that experience with other teachers. At the same time, I feel so fortunate to get to learn about the fascinating things they’re doing in their classrooms and labs — on a campus like this where so much discovery is happening every day, there’s a lot to be interested in!

The Importance of Being Interested

How to write a research synthesis report (or how I conquered my batteries mountain) – Michelle Kilfoyle on How to write a research synthesis report (or how I conquered my batteries mountain!) This is more an homage to science itself, and more specifically how we should always stay curious and question.