Read this article on smoking and the brain: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marina-picciotto/smoking-in-movies-think-smoking-looks_b_810561.html

Summarize the article. What are your thoughts on this piece? What is most interesting to you? Choose one aspect of the article that you want to learn more about and find out some more information about that. What did you learn? How does your understanding of concepts from chapter 3 help you understand this article? What does all this information teach you about the motivation to quit smoking?

Please choose the book you want to do your book report on. The options are here:

http://www.psychologicalscience.com/motivation_emotion/2010/01/books-general-readership.html

As a comment to THIS post (not the link above), indicate your choice, AND your TUESDAY due date sometime this semester excluding 5/3 and 3/15.

If you have a book in mind that is not on the list, email me the title and a description of the book and I'll see if it'll work for this assignment.

Book report guidelines and grading scheme are available under the course resources tab.

This week's topical blog will be devoted to your analysis of the movie Cast Away.

This movie has concepts from Chapters 1-4.

Watch the movie. Take notes.

Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook.  This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.

BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used.

Read Chapter 4

Summarize the chapter. What was the most interesting thing you learned in this chapter? Were their concepts or ideas you are unclear on right now? How does physiology and physiological reactions relate to motivation? What differentiates physiological mechanisms and brain mechanisms (from chapter 3)?

Read Chapter 3 of your textbook.

Summarize the chapter, then answer the questions. What information was most surpising to you? What information was most confusing to you? What information do you want to learn more about? How is your understanding of motivation changed now that you've learned about some of the biological/physiological bases of it?

This is your first Topical Blog. Topical blogs will allow you to learn and write about topics that interest you, be project oriented (something to do and report on), or focus on particular topic in motivation and emotion.

For your first one, I'd like you to browse the blog contents of our Motivation website. You can navigate by clicking on topics that interest you in the right hand column under 'categories.' This isn't about jumping to one topic and writing about it. Most of this assignment is about spending some time reading blog content (say at least 30 minutes).

Then, as a comment to this post, tell us about 3 or so topics you found interesting, and then report in detail about one particular post that you read.

Have fun!

Welcome to your first reading blog.

Read Ch1 in your textbook. Don't worry so much about your answers being long or beautifully written (yet!); focus on reading and understanding the material and then communicating that understanding to us when answering these questions.

From your reading, which topic(s) are most interesting to you?

If you had to describe to someone not in this class what Motivation is all about, what would you tell them based on your understanding of this chapter?

What was the most surprising or memorable thing you learned about in this reading?

Movie Assignments

Note: these are general guidelines that are intended to assist your writing. You may find it helpful to follow these steps and use these hints but it is not required to do the assignment in the way listed below. Find out what works for you and stick with it. You may also open this attachment to view and print this paper:

Steps I took:

1.       1) Review the movie by reading a summary about the film-this will give you a general idea of what the movie is about and what type of terminology it may contain.

2.       2) Go through the chapters and locate terms that you find interesting and note the terms that you think may be present in the film.

a.       Note: The majority of the terms should be from the chapters that are selected for the particular movie. However, some of the terms may be from other chapters. As long as terms are appropriately related to the film, their use will be accepted.       

3.       3) After deciding which terms you would like to include, write them down on paper or in a Word document on the computer.

4.       4) While watching the movie, take notes and write down the times of particular scenes where you feel that you observed particular terminology. This will allow you to review certain scenes when writing your assignment.

5.       5) After finishing the movie and taking notes, decide what you would like to include in your blog entry.

6.       6) Transform your notes in to a blog entry by organizing them in to categories. The majority of the terms relate to one another so it is not difficult to decide how to group your terms together to form paragraphs.

Hints and Reminders:

A.     A) Write your assignment in a Word document first then copy and paste it in to the blog. To prevent the loss of an assignment, save your document before submitting it. In the event that your blog entry does not post, you can open your saved document, copy and paste the entry, and re-post it.

B.      B)  It is unnecessary to summarize the movie and give your opinion on what you thought of the movie. However, it is necessary that you give your scholarly opinion on how you believe particular scenes or characters relate to terminology in the book. You will describe parts of the movie and/or the characters involved in it but do not need to summarize the entire movie.

C.       C) It may be helpful to pause the movie while taking notes so you can take necessary time to relate it to specific terms.

D.       D) Initially the comments are more broad and general. Eventually comments become more in-depth and discuss more specific terminology.

E.      E) Although this process seems complicated, it gradually gets easier and easier after each film.