STP welcomes Dr. Steven Lloyd to the position of e-Conference Director. Steven teaches and conducts research at North Georgia College & State University. His term as e-Conference Director will be from 2013-2015. We're delighted to have Steven in conference planning!

STP is delighted to tell you that Dr. Natalie Kerr Lawrence of James Madison University is the incoming Director of the Best Practices in Teaching conference series! Her term will be from 2013-2015. Welcome, Natalie!

Best Practices Conference dates

Happy Monday, colleagues! The dates for the 2012 Conference on Best Practices in Teaching Statistics and Research Methods will be October 12-13 in Atlanta, Georgia. Check the STP Conference link soon to see keynote speakers, and please start thinking about your symposium or poster submission!

Best Practices Conference, 2012

Hello from the STP executive committee meeting in New Orleans! We are eating lunch and working, working, working. I wanted to share with you that we have a topic for the Best Practices in Teaching Psychology annual conference sponsored by STP. The topic for this October in Atlanta will be teaching statistics and research methods! I just wanted to share that with you so you could start thinking about a poster or talk proposal for the conference. Now back to work -- Happy Saturday!

What's new in TOPIX

I use Delicious (a social bookmarking service) to bookmark psychology-related links.  In the "In the News" section of TOPIX, I've linked to those bookmarks.  For example, on the "Neuroscience in the News" page you will find my most recent 15 bookmarks that I've tagged "neuroscience."  When I add a new bookmark with that tag, it will be added at the top of the list and the bottom one will roll off.  Click on the link at the top of each list of bookmarks to go to my Delicious page where you can access the entire list.

What's New in ToPIX

Each week TED sends out an email highlighting new talks available on their website.  I had a backlog going back to August of psych-related TED talks.  I finally added them to ToPIX as well as a couple other video links I had lying around.  If your favorite TED talk isn't available in ToPIX please consider adding it.

By the way, TED has made it easy to download their videos if you don't want to rely on your classroom's internet connection.  See this blog post.

Neuroscience Videos

• Allan Jones on mapping the brain.
• Paul Zak on oxytocin's role.
• Iain McGilchrist on "the real differences between the right and left halves of the human brain."

Sensation Video

• Todd Kuiken on the next generation of prosthetics -- those that connect to the nervous system.

Emotion Video

• Pamela Meyer, author of Lie Spotting, on how to detect lying.

Development Video

• Alison Gopnik on the information babies take in.

Gender/Sexuality Video

• Amy Lockwood on how one should be more thoughtful on how one markets free condoms.

Social Video

• Derren Brown recreates one of Milgram's obedience studies.
• Philip Zimbardo on why boys are faring less well than girls.
• Lauren Zalaznick on how television "reflects who we truly are."

Language Video

• Mark Pagel on how language evolved to foster cooperation.

ToPIX: What's new?

We have all kinds of new stuff over on ToPIX.

If you're a user of Eric Landrum's APA-style and SPSS videos, you may have noticed that those links were recently disabled.  Eric was kind enough to provide video files that will be stored on the ToPIX website, so no more broken links on those.

Xin Zhao continues to do amazing work on the books section of ToPIX.  If you have other book suggestions, please add them to the page, or if you'd rather you can just add them in the comments section at the bottom of the appropriate page.

A special thank you to Joe Melcher who discovered some broken links on the Psychological Disorders in the News page and provided us with some alternatives.

For those who are following the Dutch scandal, Jeremy Houska added a link to the NY Times article on the Research Methods in the Classroom page.

Jeremy also added a Pinky and the Brain video at the bottom of the Neuroscience Video page.

In the this-isn't-the-news-I-wanted category, it looks like all of our embedded YouTube videos aren't working.  They're now fixed on the Neuroscience Video page, but it's going to take some time to fix on the other pages. If I don't catch them all, please let me know.  In most cases the YouTube URL is there, so you can get to the page; the videos just aren't embedded on the page.

Kit Nast has added some content to the newly-created Careers Video page.  Be sure to check out that page. He also add a video of an interview with a clinician on the Therapy Video page.

Michael Britt added his "Finding Little Albert" activity to the History in the Classroom page.  If you've used the activity, please feel welcome to add comments at the bottom of that page on how it worked for you and any suggestions you have for others.

Finally, if ToPIX has been a useful resource for you, consider adding your resources.  If you're interested in helping to maintain the pages, like when the embedded YouTube videos stop working, please drop me an email (sfrantz@highline.edu).  I'd like to add some assistant editors to ToPIX.  Looking forward to hearing from you!