curiosity
Running A Curiosity Project
Merlin Mann stated that employees’ motivation increases when they get to “build a robot” once in a while. That is, do something creative beyond regular work. Can we do this at school? Offices have “casual Fridays,” can we have “curiosity Fridays?”
Experiment-Based Curiosity Project
How I’d build a curiosity project around an experiment rather than just research.
Curiosity 6: Recipes for Curiosity
As we wrap up our curiosity guide, I share three recipes to help you cook up curiosity in your classroom.
Curiosity 5: Curiosity Is Slow
We’ve been digging into curiosity, and now we come to curiosity’s big downside: it’s slow. Let’s look at how films take their time to establish an audience’s interest before revealing the real conflict.
Creating Cultures of Curiosity (Part 4)
The biggest factor in our students’ curiosity at school is us! Teachers can create (or kill) cultures of curiosity. We’ll look at four qualities and a couple experiments run by Susan Engel.
Curiosity 3: Curiosity Is Social
When we’re curious, we can enhance that curiosity by discussing it with others. Our mutual confusion takes us deeper into the experience.
Confusion Leads to Curiosity (Curiosity Part 2)
So how do we make kids curious? We’ll cover two aspects: creating information gaps and (yes) purposefully confusing our students.
How To Pique Curiosity
In part one of this curiosity series, we explore the connection between curiosity, anticipation, and dopamine and discover why we remember things better when we are allowed to wonder.
Delightful Math Data
I love collecting links to articles with fun math applications. Here are three of my recent favorites.
Puzzlement Tournament
Perfect to wrap up the year: a four-round puzzlement tournament.
Creating Better Research Questions
Once students have a topic they’d like to research, how do we help them form more interesting questions?
Long Term Success: Wondering About Math
Continuing our series on long-term success, we look at the art of wondering. Often our gifted kids wonder deeper and longer than others. But do they wonder about math?
Encourage Curiosity With Calculators
It’s easy to fall in love with chasing the newest technology to use in the classroom. But sometimes, the perfect tool is a plain old calculator. We’ll be using this tool to develop curiosity about math.
Start A Lesson With A Music Video
I love collecting intriguing images and videos – things that stop me in my tracks and pique my curiosity. I always figure that if it fascinates me, students would probably be interested also. Often, these visuals work as wonderful hooks for a lesson you need to teach.
Tickling Curiosity
Let’s look at a way to encourage and scaffold curiosity in our classes using a “Book of Unanswered Questions.” Begin by sharing intriguing objects or images and asking your own questions. Give kids a chance to find answers to their questions. Then encourage students to bring in their own intriguing conversation starters. Finally, move students towards curriculum based questions.
Mathematical Curiosities
Sometimes you encounter that math student who is simply interested in numbers. Here are some famous (and not so famous) sets of numbers that have curious properties.
5 Visual Paradoxes To Blow Your Students’ Minds
We’ve seen some awesome logic paradoxes, now let’s examine a few visual paradoxes that would make great mental warm-ups for your class! The penrose triangle, penrose stairs, impossible cube, the blivet, and the Möbius strip! Plus, download a powerpoint to share with your students.
Towel Folding Robot
Tell me your students won’t be fascinating and inspired by this video of a robot capable of folding hand towels.
The Original Puzzlement: A Zoetrope
As teachers, I spend a ton of time searching for inspiration to enliven my lessons. But sometimes, inspiration hits as soon as you leave the desk and books behind. Friday my wife and I took a trip to Disneyland and saw this unbelievable (literally, it seems like magic) intersection of art & technology.