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Anne Goldberg Dances Her PhD
If you're a PhD student with mad dancing skills, Science and TEDxBrussels have the contest for you. Dance Your PhD is again offering $1,000 for the best video. This example may provide just the inspiration you need to create your own masterpiece: Anne Goldenberg Dances The Negotiation of Contributions in Public Wikis. According to Goldenberg, her dance and public wikis both utilize textuality, dialogue, and a participatory process. If you find Goldenberg’s wiki dance intriguing, you may consider writing a wiki on your own area of expertise as part of APS’s Wikipedia Initiative.
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Why Remember What You Can Find Online?
Where do you store important information? According to psychological scientist Betsy Sparrow, the answer isn’t always “in your brain.” Sparrow says that we allow ourselves to forget information that we are confident the people around us (our spouses and friends, for example) will remember. Increasingly, we rely on technology as well. This phenomenon is called transactive memory. To highlight transactive memory, Sparrow and her colleagues asked participants to type 40 facts — such as “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.” Half of the participants were told that the computer would save their lists and half were told it would not.
