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Study: Reading novels makes us better thinkers

Study: Reading novels makes us better thinkers
Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It’s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making. Fortunately, new research suggests a simple anecdote for this affliction: Read more literary fiction. A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist Maja Djikic, report that people who have just read a short story have less need for what psychologists call “cognitive closure.” “Exposure to literature,” the researchers write in the Creativity Research Journal, “may offer a (way for people) to become more likely to open their minds.” Djikic and her colleagues describe an experiment featuring 100 University of Toronto students. Afterwards, each participant filled out a survey measuring their emotional need for certainty and stability. Those who read a short story had significantly lower scores on that test than those who read an essay. Related:  School Libraries make a difference

guidedinquirycommunity [licensed for non-commercial use only] / FrontPage Figure 1.1 Guided Inquiry Design Process. (Kuhlthau, C., Maniotes, L and Caspari, A. 2012) Welcome to the Australian Guided Inquiry Community! On these pages, we present the theory and practice of Guided Inquiry, specially as it relates to the Australian Curriculum. Please contribute your experiences, units of work and scaffolds... Click on the following to navigate our site: We are actively seeking your contributions, so that we can together build up a portfolio of best practice in Guided Inquiry. Click on the icon below to chat with others who belong to this community, now numbering 621 people. Guided Inquiry: A spine for inquiry skills in the Australian Curriculum There are three ways to connect: 1. Sign up to participate in the conversation, ask questions and get support. 2.

xoJane Let’s talk about sexism in pop culture. Not sexist representations so much, although there are plenty of those, but the tremendous gendered imbalances in terms of who is creating pop culture, who is getting attention for it, and who is being heralded as a pop culture visionary. Because holy smackaroos, it’s a good time to talk about that right now. NPR’s Linda Holmes, who runs the fabulous Monkey See blog, wrote a great piece on Friday about the absence of women from the movies. Not the audience -- the actual movies. She noted that 90% of the movies showing in her area on Friday were about men or groups of men with women only in supporting roles, and that’s in D.C., a large metropolitan area with considerable cinematic diversity. That’s barely scratching the surface of an industry where there is a tremendous gender disparity in terms of who’s writing, directing, and producing. Jonathan Franzen: Big name male writer, also arbiter of whether sexism in publishing exists, apparently.

How to use search like a pro: 10 tips and tricks for Google and beyond | Technology Search engines are pretty good at finding what you’re looking for these days, but sometimes they still come up short. For those occasions there are a few little known tricks which come in handy. So here are some tips for better googling (as it’s the most popular search engine) but many will work on other search engines too. 1. The simplest and most effective way to search for something specific is to use quote marks around a phrase or name to search for those exact words in that exact order. For instance, searching for Joe Bloggs will show results with both Joe and Bloggs but not necessarily placed sequentially. The exact or explicit phrase search is very useful for excluding more common but less relevant results. 2. If exact phrase doesn’t get you what you need, you can specifically exclude certain words using the minus symbol. A search for “Joe Bloggs” -jeans will find results for Joe Bloggs, but it will exclude those results for the Joe Bloggs brand of jeans. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Fuck You, Men's Rights Activists Alright, I totally agree here (as a man) with your description of these reprehensible people. Fuck MRAs. They're reprehensible shits who hate women, and tacitly or actively endorse violence against women, and clearly have some incredible emotional issues they must contend with. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. I'm not sure any of those qualify as men's activists under the definition given here, but in the sense that they advocate for the rights of men, they might, and they probably shouldn't be subject to this sort of vitriol. Yeah, but fuck MRA's who fit under the definition given here.

20 Library & Librarian Blogs You Must Follow About ETR Community EdTechReview (ETR) is a community of and for everyone involved in education technology to connect and collaborate both online and offline to discover, learn, utilize and share about the best ways technology can improve learning, teaching, and leading in the 21st century. EdTechReview spreads awareness on education technology and its role in 21st century education through best research and practices of using technology in education, and by facilitating events, training, professional development, and consultation in its adoption and implementation. THE NATURE OF YOUR OPPRESSION IS THE AESTHETIC OF OUR ANGER: The Art of Crass I’m not sure what to make of seeing a young person with the Crass logo painted on the back of their leather jacket. I mean these days. What does it mean to them? Of course I knew what it meant and what it stood for back in the day. I lived in south London squats in 1983 and 84 and many of my er, squatmates were classic scruffy cliched Crass punks. I even saw one of the final Crass gigs, a miner’s strike benefit at the Islington Bingo Hall. When the band was actually together, the idea of what Crass offered was greater than the sum of its parts as well as something, frankly, that was significantly based more on the militant anarchist-vegan-anti-vivisection-pacifist-anti-religious pro-environmental stances they took, than the music itself. A big part of the appeal, like I say, were the ideas, the leafleting and sloganeering, but there was also Gee Vaucher’s brilliant graphic art and and Dave King’s iconic logo that went along with the Crass mystique.

Nik's Learning Technology Blog: 9 Generic activities for exploiting infographics Infographics are a great source of information and make reading information from the computer screen much easier, but just showing students an infographic and telling them to study it isn’t the most effective way to exploit the medium. Creating your own infographic tasks can be time consuming though, so in this posting I’m presenting a number of generic ideas that should work with a number of types of infographic. You can use these ideas with students to help focus their comprehension of the information and give them clear goals for engaging with the information in the graphics. I’ve used a selection of these tasks for the infographic based collection of lesson plans I’ve published for PeacheyPublications.com. The series title is - Lessons in Digital Literacy and I’ve used these lesson plans to help students develop critical thinking skills and their ability to carry out online research. Related links: Best Nik Peachey

Partners Swap Makeup Routines for Genius 'MADE UP' Project Fantastic campaign alert! Stop what you're doing and look at these photos from the MADE UP Experiment. Makeup is a HUGE part of gender performance - it's tied to femininity like blonde on a Barbie. We're taught to follow certain customs in order to be read as feminine, while men are taught to perform masculinity. These rigid gender roles limit self-expression and individuality, and lots of people are fed up with that. MADE UP is showing how the performance of gender is just that - a performance. The first set of portraits is taken of each couple in their typical date-ready makeup (or lack thereof). The couples' responses to the experience are also documented, which MADE UP says provides "insight into how these idealized concepts of gender and beauty affect relationships.” This experiment forces both subjects and viewers to examine ideas of beauty and gender roles as well as expressions of masculinity and femininity in their everyday lives. Thanks to madeupcampaign.com.

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