Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover

Product Information

Highly recommended for any science-curious children and any rover-obsessed grown-ups (like myself)! I like it when a book teaches me new things. I really like it when it expands my sense of possibility, and whets my appetite to go deeper (epistemic-me). I love it when a book can unsettle me enough to allow for growth to happen. The ability to stimulate curiosity, on the other hand, can save lives, as Scheherazade experienced in the 1001 nights she told cliffhanger stories that needed to be finished before she was ready to die. Obviously, as a mother and teacher, I focus on stimulating curiosity, rather than punishing it, as it is part of effective learning. That's the theory, anyway. Curiosity is the story of the famous Mars Rover sent to the red planet to discover just what it is really like. The book explains that whilst men have walked on the moon and lived in space, at the moment Mars is too far to send humans, so robots are having to do the discovering instead.

Epistemic curiosity is the "good" form of curiosity (again in the opinion of the author). Epistemic curiosity is the pursuit of understanding and knowledge. Three misapprehensions about learning: 1) children don’t need teachers to instruct them (they do) 2) facts kill creativity (feeding it it with facts, like Shakespeare and Darwin) 3) schools should teach thinking skills instead of knowledge (long term memory is the source of our intelligence insight and creativity) There are two types of curiosity: diversive and epistemic. There are actually three types of curiosity with the third being empathetic, but the author barely gives empathetic curiosity airtime. Curious is a book that defines the place of curiosity in our lives today. Where it comes from, why we have it, what we do with it, while making the case for why we need to resurrect it. The author combines the results of research with anecdotes to provide an illuminating volume on why curiosity is so important to lifelong learning and our advancement as a global society. He examines the risks inherent in some current technological trends, such as smart phones and internet searches, and how to overcome them. He looks at what arouses curiosity and what quenches it.Una dintre primele expresii pe care le învățăm în copilărie este "de ce". În parte pentru că vrem să aflăm ceva despre lumea misterioasă în care am intrat fără să o dorim, în parte pentru că vrem să înțelegem cum funcționează lucrurile în această lume, și în parte pentru că simțim o nevoie ancestrală de a interacționa cu ceilalți locuitori ai acestei lumi, și după primele noastre bâlbe începem să întrebăm: "De ce?". Și nu ne oprim niciodată. În curând descoperim că această curiozitate este rar răsplătită cu răspunsuri semnificative sau satisfăcătoare, ci mai degrabă cu dorința crescândă de a pune mai multe întrebări și cu bucuria de a conversa cu alte persoane. Așa cum știe orice interogator, afirmațiile tind să izoleze; întrebările, să unească. Curiozitatea este o modalitate de a declara alianța noastră cu comunitatea umană. While some educational theorists have argued that filling children with facts stifles creativity (it's the basic message of TED Talks' most popular video, by Sir Ken Robinson), neuroscience has demonstrated that true creativity depends on being able to make novel associations among many different facts and concepts, and that a knowledge-based education is critical for that.

Be a thinkerer. Like Benjamin Franklin do both the experimenting and the thinking and the tinkering. In a world where inequalities in access to information are being leveled, a new divide is emerging - between the curious and the incurious. “The internet is making smart people smarter and dumb people dumber.” Oh, the guilt will never go away, and ten years have passed since then. But I haven't learned anything from it either. The other day, while I was reading this book and taking notes, my 10-year-old daughter came in and asked me something. My horrible answer: Dante’ye eserinde Vergilius ve Beatrice rehberlik eder, bu kitapta ise Manguel’e Dante ve eseri rehberlik ediyor. “İlahi Komedya”yı okuduktan sonra eserde üzerinde durulacak 17 konuyu irdelemiş yazar. İlk bölüm kitaba da adını veren merak etmek üzerine. Şöyle diyor Manguel; Var olmak için hayal ediyoruz ve hayal etme arzumuzu beslemek için merak ediyoruz. Dante de yapıtında cehennem-araf-cennet yolculuğunda karşılaştığı lanetli ya da kutlu ruhlarla diyaloğa girerek, merakının onu hedefe götürmesini dile getirir, yani ölümlü Dante ölümlülük tecrübesini yaşamış olanlara sorular sorar. There are different types of curiosity: (shallow) diversive curiosity, (deeper, more disciplined) epistemic curiosity, empathic curiosity (about thoughts and feelings of other people). Diversive curiosity distracts; epistemic and empathic curiosity are forces that deepen the bond between the individual and the world, add layers of interest, complexity and delight to her experience.Do you remember when you were young and put everything you touched in your mouth? Endlessly annoyed the living hell out of every adult within earshot with a barrage of ‘but whys’? And flat out just refused to accept, ‘because I said so”, as a suitable or worthy response. Well Ian Leslie, the author of Curious - The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, is hoping you have not left that precocious and inquisitive little bugger behind.

Forage like a fox hog. “T-shaped knowledge” deep skills in a specialty (vertical axis of the T) and a broad understanding of other disciplines (horizontal axis, big ideas).It was, however, in the last chapter that I felt myself on the verge of unsettling an idea I have had shelved since my teens - that I will need to have interesting experiences to write interesting things. Of course, the robot's story is primary, from the whys and hows of development, to interesting details and complications involved in the launch, to the tension of the final moments of Curiosity's arrival on Mars that was witnessed by people around the globe. And all this still manages to stay within the realm of understanding of a young elementary-aged child.