Explore your memory

Stretch your memory with fun challenges like Explore your Memory. Your answers will help University of Edinburgh experimental psychologists with their research.

Most people will not be able to get everything right. People with normal memories can have low scores.

Duration: about 20 minutes
Professor Robert Logie of the University of Edinburgh helped design this test. Please note, you will need Flash 7.

Explore your Memory gives you feedback which is for demonstration purposes only and cannot diagnose memory disorders.

Business Innovation Factory

The Business Information Factory has an annual conference where they invite creative thinkers and, like TED Talks, they put the videos online for viewing. They look pretty interesting.

For example, here’s one from Daniel Pink, What Motivates Us?

Dan Pink is author of several bestselling books about the changing world of work. He is also a crazy-cool, insightful provocateur whose latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, uses 40 years of behavioral science to overturn the conventional wisdom about human motivation and offer a more effective path to high performance. Dan is also the author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future and Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself.

Dan joined the BIF community on March 29, 2010 for a unique opportunity to talk about the his newest book and his many adventures pushing against anecdotal and outdated wisdom about why we humans do what we do.

Sixty-second lectures

Every spring and fall, SAS (University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences) faculty take a minute out on Locust Walk to share their perspectives on topics ranging from human history and the knowable universe, to fractions and fly-fishing. They are the sixty-second lectures.

You can watch and listen to dozens of sixty-second lectureds in the archive, many of which have a transcript at your disposal.

The story of Scrabble

This is the story of Scrabble narrated by Liz Dubelman. Just click on the picture below and click on click here to play on the ensuing screen.

My favourite place to study

The Indiana University of Pennsylvania YouTube Channel has tons of videos about both academic and students' everyday life on campus, which can provide endless hours of listening material for advanced English students.

As you may well image, the videos are unscripted, and the sound is live, which is sometimes an obstacle for comprehension, but all in all, the videos give us the opportunity to get to know what university life in the US is like while listening to native speakers of English.

I have selected a few videos here from season 1. I hope you enjoy them. If you do, why not subscribe to the IUP YouTube Channel?



My day by the hour



My favourite place to eat on campus

Our motivations

What drives us to do the things we do?
Do you feel more motivated by reward or by punishment?
Which factors contribute to a better performance in the workplace?

This RSAnimate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.



You can read a transcript of the talk here.

Top 10 quotable movies

To mark the 25th anniversary of the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which was a 1986 box office hit starring Matthew Broderick, and famous for its memorable quotes, TIME has grabbed the opportunity to publish a special and look at other movies with eminently memorable lines.

Here's the list of the ten films TIME has selected:

10. Napoleon Dynamite
9. Clueless
8. Glengarry Glen Ross
7. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
6. The Wizard of Oz
5. Top Gun
4. The Godfather
3. Casablanca
2. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
1. The Big Lebowski

Visit the TIME website and watch extracts of the ten films, together with some explanations for their quotes.