On 26 Mar 2004 at 16:29, Lenore Frigo wrote: > April Fools day is coming soon and I'd like to liven up an 8:00 a.m. > introductory level course with a bit of a trick. Any suggestions for > an appropriate April Fools trick that could be turned into a bit of a > psychology lesson? Something along the lines of critical thinking > would be good.
This may be of limited value because you'll need to have web access in the classroom. But last year I used Google's inspired April Fool's claim to have made use of Skinnerian techniques to train pigeons to select the best websites. Their real technology uses something they call "pagerank". They turned this into "pigeonrank". The Google creators clearly must have had a psychology course or two in the their background. When I showed it, the class bought it big time ( at least for a while, anyway). it could certainly be used to deliver an apt lesson about not believing everything you find on the web, and about the need for critical thinking. I just checked, and it's still up, although there's no guarantee they won't replace it with a new one this April 1. It's at: http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html Stephen ___________________________________________________ Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips _______________________________________________ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
