Audio Transcript

Published: November 25, 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, November 25). Ep. 29 Making science engaging [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education.
https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/making-science-engaging/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Dr Simon Crook: A former colleague of mine had this phrase “engage me or enrage me.” So if they’re engaged, you’ve won out. You’re not going to have to deal with as many classroom management issues.

[00:00:11]
Announcer: And it’s with that frame of mind that Dr Simon Crook went about founding Crooked Science, a STEM education consultancy that works with schools right across Australia. No wonder he’s on the hot list for the Educator Magazine 2017.

[00:00:23]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:39]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome back to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. This week we are speaking with Simon Crook, who used to be a senior e-learning advisor for the Catholic Education Office Sydney. He’s an ex-high school science teacher of 15 years, by the way, but nowadays he is running Crooked Science, which takes him right across Australia to help out schools teach science and especially with the new syllabus coming up in HSC Physics and others.

[00:00:59]
Ben Newsome: Now Simon is an accomplished author. He’s written over 50 articles in national and international journals, and you find a lot of his work being featured in various national media outlets such as the ABC and so on. So with all that, plus he’s an honorary associate of the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, you bet Simon Crook’s got a lot to say when it comes to STEM education.

[00:01:28]
Dr Simon Crook: Thank you Ben. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:31]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, considering that you’ve just done a big mission back up from Albury only recently, your work takes you all over the place.

[00:01:37]
Dr Simon Crook: Yes, it does at the moment. So I’m running Crooked Science as a STEM education consultancy. That gives me quite a variety of work. When I started out just under three years ago, it was when the new Science and Technology syllabus came out in primary schools, and there was a lot of need there for support for primary teachers around the new syllabus and the greater accountability. There’s a lot of desire there among primary teachers to make science fun in the classroom.

[00:02:13]
Dr Simon Crook: So I was particularly starting out about three years ago doing a lot of work with primary schools in and around Sydney, but also across New South Wales. And now this year, the new HSC Physics syllabus has come out and physics is my background. There’s a big need by teachers across New South Wales with preparing for this new syllabus. So yes, again, this is taking me on the road. So Albury, Gunnedah, Kelso, Dubbo, Coffs Harbour, lots in Sydney.

[00:02:47]
Ben Newsome: And this is unsurprising considering it’s November 2017. Teachers are wiping their brows, just about done with Term 4, but hang on, you’ve got to plan for next year. And now they’re rolling a new syllabus out, that’s going to make it fun.

[00:02:59]
Dr Simon Crook: This is it. Teachers are busy, busy people and they’re going to have to start teaching this syllabus end of January, beginning of February next year. It’s interesting going around working with so many teachers. Some of them haven’t had time to plan. They haven’t had time themselves, they haven’t been provided with time. So there’s a massive need out there and I think anything I can do to help assist them and minimise any anxiety and to empower them, I’m trying to do as much as I can.

[00:03:33]
Ben Newsome: What’s the feedback with people with the new syllabus? What’s the feelings on the ground? Are they happy with it? Is it something they’re like, “You know what, could be better”? Everyone’s got opinions, let’s be honest. Just as a barometer, getting to see people face-to-face away from the brass, away from the leadership and just hearing from the ground, what are they thinking about the new one coming up?

[00:03:58]
Dr Simon Crook: That’s a really good question. I’ve actually written an article about this in The Conversation when it first came out. The overall response from people is people are very happy. Sometimes physics can be associated with a bit of intellectual snobbery. I see it as being more just attention to detail and being pedantic. But there’s a lot more mathematical rigour in this new syllabus, which a lot of people are very happy with. There’s a lot less of the social commentary that was in the current syllabus.

[00:04:32]
Dr Simon Crook: That’s probably the overall feel. However, it’s not as straightforward as that. There were some unfortunate comments. I think it was Michelle Simmons from UNSW labelled the current syllabus as being “feminised.” We shouldn’t be apportioning gender, particularly in a derogatory fashion, to a syllabus. That’s possibly taken out of context, but it was reported widely in the Sydney Morning Herald and places.

[00:05:01]
Dr Simon Crook: At the same time, we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The current syllabus has a lot of context and a lot of narrative. I know the Science Teachers Association are conscious that we don’t want to lose that. Experienced teachers will continue that into the new syllabus, which has less context within the way that it’s written. But for any new teachers coming in or training teachers who won’t know any other syllabuses, they perhaps might not have that narrative and the context and bringing things together with a storyline.

[00:05:29]
Dr Simon Crook: So I would implore any experienced physics teachers to get training new physics teachers under their wing to really encourage them to maintain that. It’s not like the current syllabus is diabolical. It’s things that had to change. At the same time, there are still some things that are being ironed out in the current syllabus. There are some changes that were made early doors. NESA had a lot of pressure to get so many syllabuses out in a short space of time.

[00:06:01]
Dr Simon Crook: I’ve heard various stories in terms of what funding they may or may not have been given to assist with the proofreading and quality assurance and the like. So they have made some amendments and published some errata, and I believe there’s going to be a few more coming out soon, which would be ironic for those people that have done a lot of work in terms of writing the programmes if there’s a few things to change.

[00:06:26]
Ben Newsome: Well, the good news is school practice and curriculums and syllabuses, they roll and they change over time with feedback and research and all the rest. That’s a good thing. It always ruffles feathers here and there and makes other people happy, then they look at it and redo it and go again. I understand that you’re involved in physics education research back in the day and actually you’ve only just really just finished, haven’t you, on the research side?

[00:06:52]
Dr Simon Crook: Yeah, I did. Just very quickly on the syllabus before talking about my research there. One of the strengths of being in education today compared to the turn of the millennium, which is when the last syllabus came out, is we do have modern technology. So things can change, and I do know that some senior people in NESA were very keen to almost have a dynamic syllabus. So that is a real strength.

[00:07:20]
Dr Simon Crook: Some of the other things that have come out that are really strong are things like depth studies where students actually get to potentially follow their real areas of interest for their lines of inquiry. So there are some quite new and novel things there which are quite interesting. With regards to my study, I began my PhD in physics education research through the School of Physics at the University of Sydney back in 2010 with Professor Manjula Sharma.

[00:07:52]
Dr Simon Crook: I was investigating the impact of technology on teaching and learning in the sciences. That was a part-time PhD, so I finally graduated April of this year. So I was over the moon to do that. It was a hard slog, but it’s an experience that I cherish in terms of the skills I’ve picked up along the way and just the exposure to a new world in terms of academia, getting published in academic journals, and working with academics.

[00:08:24]
Dr Simon Crook: I graduated from uni back in 1994, so I’m certainly a mature age PhD student. So it was a wonderful experience, but I’m very happy that it’s now over.

[00:08:35]
Ben Newsome: I bet. We’ve got a number of people finishing off their PhDs at work at our place and that’s pretty much the same way. We’ve got a few people taking some gap years and bits and pieces and I don’t blame them. It is a hard slog. You certainly got a lot of stuff to do. Once you’re done, it’s a good thing to look back on. But actually now that brings up the point, there’s plenty of people listening who have all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of studies they’ve done. What made you fall into science in the first place?

[00:09:12]
Dr Simon Crook: I go around so many schools and particularly in primary schools, kids ask that question quite a bit. I do remember distinctly, my dad was an industrial chemist but I didn’t know what that meant when I was a kid. But I do remember distinctly at about eight years old, my aunt got me a book called Discovering Earth. It had loads of things in there about geology but also about space and just general aspects of kids’ science. I just found that fascinating.

[00:09:46]
Dr Simon Crook: Then once I got into high school and started doing science, I had an excellent science teacher from the equivalent of Year 7. I loved science all through high school, then went to the senior years, which is in a sixth form college back in the UK. That was really rigorous science and I absolutely loved it. So I chose all the sciences and maths and extension maths. I’m not quite into biology, I get grossed out quite easily, so I shied away from that quite early on.

[00:10:21]
Dr Simon Crook: So I did physics and chemistry and maths and extension maths. Then went on to uni and I did straight physics at Manchester University. I would have walked the same halls of Brian Cox at the same time, but I never knew him. I sent a speculative fanboy email to him a few weeks back because I knew he was coming out here, mentioning that I would have gone to uni with him, but he never replied. Never mind.

[00:10:50]
Ben Newsome: He is somewhat busy these days.

[00:10:52]
Dr Simon Crook: Yeah, I was kind of guessing that. Whilst I was at uni, I’ll be honest, I’d found school quite easy, but uni with all the distractions of freedom and sport and girls, I guess, I found uni a lot harder. Then during my second year I was thinking, with my limited life experience, what work experience did I have in terms of choosing a career? I thought, finding school easy but then finding things harder at uni, maybe being a teacher I’ll be able to empathise with both the very able kids and those kids that struggle.

[00:11:27]
Dr Simon Crook: I thought I’d give science teaching a go, so I did a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at Warwick University. Then got my first job in 1994 in Coventry in the UK. Taught at a couple more schools in the UK and then went backpacking around the world. Was only meant to be in Australia briefly, fell in love with Australia and then met my wife, it was in that order actually. Taught in Australia for eight years.

[00:11:54]
Dr Simon Crook: Then I got some work with the Catholic Education Office Sydney around e-learning. I’d been using technology all through my teaching, but this was explicitly about the use of technology across all curriculum areas, so not just in science at all. But I was still maintaining helping out schools with science, and that’s where my exposure to the need of primary schools really came about, because there was no one supporting primary schools with science and those supporting high schools were stretched to the limit.

[00:12:25]
Dr Simon Crook: We actually made representation to get people to help primary schools and we kept getting knocked back and people were saying, “Well, why don’t you do it?” So after a while I thought, I might do it, but if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it on my own terms so to speak. So I thought I’d take a chance and step out and worst case scenario, if I fell flat on my face, as a physics teacher, I wouldn’t be out of work for long. But I haven’t looked back.

[00:12:53]
Dr Simon Crook: I’m loving the sheer variety. I’ve had some bizarre days of kindergarten in the morning and then Year 12 physics in the afternoon.

[00:13:02]
Ben Newsome: Oh, I completely know that feeling. I distinctly remember running a preschool workshop on five senses and yes, we have eyes, ears, nose and all the rest like you do, and then doing a DNA extraction with Year 11 two hours later. You do get that strange thing and then doing a university lecture afterwards in that evening, it’s crazy this type of work.

[00:13:24]
Dr Simon Crook: That’s right. But just the sheer variety of people, I think that’s what I really love. So I’m working with kids of different ages, but then adults of different ages and different experiences and abilities and confidences. Country people, city people, and from all sectors, so government schools, Catholic schools, independent schools. Then I’m still maintaining my relationship with the uni as well.

[00:13:44]
Dr Simon Crook: So I’m now an honorary associate and with the new syllabus, that’s actually been quite timely because being at the coalface, so to speak, I can actually advise the School of Physics as to what is actually happening and what teachers do need. So they’re developing a lot of resources to support teachers. So I do enjoy the variety there.

[00:14:07]
Ben Newsome: So balancing your time is probably a bit of an issue, I suspect, because you’re needed in different ways.

[00:14:13]
Dr Simon Crook: Balancing the time, there isn’t too much balance at the moment. I’m trying to learn those skills. As we record this at 9:30 at night, by the way, of course. So far this evening, I’ve worked at a school today and then this evening I’ve just proofread someone’s course that I might be subcontracting to do some professional development for me. I’ve just set up another one of my own courses and just various administration.

[00:14:49]
Dr Simon Crook: No rest for the wicked in that regard, but I enjoy my work, I enjoy working hard and I guess in a way I’ve been in the right place at the right time. And with that comes just a lot of work, so to speak, if you’re working for yourself in that regard.

[00:15:04]
Ben Newsome: Very much so. If you jump on crookedscience.com, just check out the collaborations that Simon’s been doing. Seriously, check it out. If you just go up the top, go to the “About” and then drop down to what are the collaborations that’s been happening with Simon, they are substantial and all over the place. Everything from ABC Splash through to Inspiring Australia and schools out as far as the road will take you. It must be a lot of fun.

[00:15:31]
Dr Simon Crook: It’s loads of fun. I have to update that, actually, it’s going to get longer. I’m hoping that Fizzics Education, your company, is in there, and if it isn’t, I will add you guys shortly.

[00:15:43]
Ben Newsome: Look, the way I see it though is everyone here, and this is the beauty of it and why I’ve really enjoyed about doing this particular podcast series, is just finding out that everyone does this cool stuff in different areas. And to be honest, we’re all almost in some ways singing from the same songbook, we just happen to have different notes. What I mean by that is we’re all trying to look after kids in different ways.

[00:16:07]
Ben Newsome: But in essence, we all bring different skills to the play, and that doesn’t just mean people who happen to be providers to schools. There are some enormously amazing school innovators who work within the classroom, and it just comes down to that we’re all trying to do the same job.

[00:16:23]
Dr Simon Crook: Absolutely. And like you, I love that variety of working with lots of different people. But when you start talking about the people in the classroom, I think that’s where I particularly get a strength of feeling in terms of I really want to advocate for these fantastic teachers in the classroom. In some schools, they’re getting all the support and more and they are thriving with it. But then in other places for various reasons, maybe within the school or bigger than the school or whatever, they’re perhaps feeling a bit stifled or underappreciated.

[00:16:58]
Dr Simon Crook: So where possible, I try to advocate for them and help them out and perhaps connect them with like-minded people so they can help each other.

[00:17:07]
Ben Newsome: Wherever. These PLNs, these professional learning networks, are so critical. You can jump on Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. Actually, you just bring up a point. I was chatting with a bloke and I’ve got to be really careful how I place this, of course, for obvious reasons, but I was speaking with this amazing innovator around STEM. STEM is very broad, let’s just say it’s yet another label, but this particular bloke is rocking it and rocking it at a state level.

[00:17:35]
Ben Newsome: Lots of people are really involved in what he does. And I asked was, “Geez mate, your school must be just loving your work,” and he gave me this look going, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” And I went, “Oh, I wonder, geez, I wonder what that nerve is.” But I dived a little bit deeper without trying to cause any trouble, just sort of, “What does that mean?” He goes, “Well, I’ve got a couple of friends there, but it’s this, I don’t know, it’s this…”

[00:18:01]
Ben Newsome: I wonder, and I’d love to know, there’d be listeners listening in who this might be striking a chord with. I’d love to know, I don’t in any way have a solution to this, but I must say, and you would see the same, Simon, going to many, many, many, many schools. This is not an isolated thing that you see occasionally. It’s kind of a little bit sad sometimes, but at the same point, other ways you’ll see these wicked schools, these awesome schools that are clearly collaborating not only within themselves but with whole groups.

[00:18:45]
Ben Newsome: I mean, one of the ones that reminds me right now, sorry as I want to interview you, but I’m just remembering these particular stories. There’s this awesome group, I want to do this shout-out to this group out at the Snowy Mountains. So those people overseas, we have a mountain range, occasionally Australia does have snow every now and then. We call them the Snowy Mountains and maybe you might laugh because there’s not much to do with some sort about snow, but anyway, we have Snowy Mountains.

[00:19:13]
Dr Simon Crook: Yes, absolutely. And I’ll be honest, that’s one of the reasons why I like working so much in the country is, particularly in the country, people are literally so isolated. They professionally and physically need these support networks. So where they do work cohesively, they’re fantastic. And where they don’t exist, I really try to encourage people to set them up. But it’s interesting, I’ll run some PD up on the North Coast, and there’ll be people who travel five hours to attend it. And sometimes in years gone by, I’ve run things in Sydney and people will complain about having to travel out of the Eastern Suburbs.

[00:19:56]
Ben Newsome: Oh mate, well we did this programme, we did this day, and you’re a tech education guy so you’d be loving this. We did this robotics programme for PD at Condell Park Public School. There you go guys, if you’re listening, Condell Park, you’re rocking it. They had schools from the local area but they also had a school from the Riverina area. They actually flew in for this day. And not only were they doing PD, teachers teaching teachers and the like, but they brought some kids along.

[00:20:25]
Ben Newsome: And this is where I thought it was so cool because all of a sudden they could just watch how the students could interact on a different idea. Now, this wasn’t anything to do with NESA and I get that, it’s not about endorsement. It was simply about what works. And let’s find out from the students themselves rather than thinking we can know and then find out and test later. And the students were teaching the teachers. I thought it was just a fantastic, fantastic programme.

[00:20:44]
Dr Simon Crook: Absolutely. Going back to those people who perhaps don’t feel appreciated locally, I think there’s probably a bit of tall poppy syndrome, which is quite big in Australia. But I think you read a lot about the industrial model of education and all the rest of this. I do believe that there’s room for a bit of disruption, shall we say. So just the classic model of the only education happens between teachers and students in a school.

[00:21:15]
Dr Simon Crook: Where particularly where you need subject specialism and expertise and we want equity of access for all students. I think there’s room for people who do things slightly differently. And without trying to sound… I don’t know what the phrase is here, but talking yourself up and talking my work up. There’s room for that. I mean, you only have to look at how busy we are in terms of the demand from schools.

[00:21:45]
Dr Simon Crook: I think perhaps institutions are being a bit slower to recognise that fact. We’re not undermining them, we’re complementing the work that they do. And to be fair, a lot of institutions have had their resources slashed. Their regional advisors and stuff.

[00:22:02]
Ben Newsome: Well, this is a real groundswell that’s getting some genuine momentum right now. I wasn’t able to attend, I was so disappointed, but Holly Kershaw from work was able to pop down to Melbourne for EduCHANGE. And EduCHANGE is run by Education Change Makers and ran a very interesting programme whereby they had all these people from all over the world just looking at what can they do to innovate.

[00:22:33]
Ben Newsome: And so it’d be worth just checking out, I know it’s Episode 23 of this podcast where it’s just quick three-minute excerpts not only from the speakers but from people on the floor who are doing these cool things at their local schools. And listening to the interviews, you could just hear that these people are innovators, yet they don’t even realise it. And they’re only just starting to realise that there’s these cool little networks that actually exist and it’s not always about the person in the limelight. There are genuinely people making huge differences, but they have a bit of the “Oh shucks, it’s just little old me,” but to be honest, they’re actually doing a fantastic job. It’s definitely worth checking that out because it’s amazing what’s actually out there if we got to know more.

[00:23:23]
Dr Simon Crook: Absolutely. And I think just on that front as well, and I know some of the people like Summer Howarth who work for them and she’s absolutely fantastic. But TeachMeets. When you go along to just a little TeachMeet, 40 people there, what you hear from perhaps an introverted teacher down the road who’s what they’re doing in the classroom, absolutely fantastic stuff. And often this stuff is better than what you see at great big massive conferences. I mean, there’s one conference that will remain unnamed, very heavily advertised, and they’re actually almost trying to—I’ve got to be careful what I say here—but people have been hosting TeachMeets at these conferences, and the conference has been benefiting from the TeachMeet more than the TeachMeet benefiting from the conference. So kudos to those people.

[00:23:53]
Ben Newsome: I agree with what you’re saying with these TeachMeets, because some of the best ones—I know there are people listening all over the world at different places having different meets—but I must say in Australia, and knowing what Australians are, some of the best TeachMeets frankly are in the pub, or in the local community centre, or in the scout hall, or in the school hall after school, where it’s just people taking off their school ties for a moment and just being normal. And I mean, obviously there are different ways of approaching it, and I’m clearly an informal person, but it’s when you break down those barriers and get away from the lectern that actual real learning happens.

[00:24:27]
Dr Simon Crook: That’s right. And if you chat to Ewan McIntosh, he’ll tell you that the very first TeachMeet happened in a pub in Edinburgh.

[00:24:33]
Ben Newsome: I was going to ask you about this, we went down a different rabbit hole, but I want to go back to this. I never got a chance to teach in England, and maybe I’ll get to do it one day. I certainly got to teach in summer camps in California and face-to-face in different ways to students all over the world using video conferencing, but I’ve never been in a classroom in England. Now you’ve had that chance and I’d just love to know, just compare and contrast. For listeners that may have never done that, what are the differences? What are the similarities? That type of thing.

[00:25:03]
Dr Simon Crook: Okay, well first of all, I’ve been over here now for 15 years, so I think things have changed a lot since I was there. It’s not that different, kids are kids. What I would say particularly for Australian listeners is things are more traditional here in Australia, more old school. For example, uniforms are a lot more daggy over here than back in the UK. The girls wear stuff, they wear the same as the boys, with a jumper, a tie, maybe a skirt or a kilt, but they could be wearing trousers like the boys. Whereas over here, particularly in New South Wales actually, and this is part of the history of Australia, but there are so many single-sex schools over here. Most things in the UK are co-ed.

[00:25:52]
Dr Simon Crook: Another big organisational difference is Catholic schools in the UK are government schools that teach religion, but the people who pay your wage are the local education authority, which is like the local council. Whereas here, they’re a very distinct, separate system again because of history in Australia and sectarianism and things like that. I found those things quite strange. In terms of kids, kids are kids, although obviously they can behave differently in co-ed settings to single-sex settings.

[00:26:25]
Dr Simon Crook: In terms of curriculum, this is where I haven’t really bothered paying attention to what it’s like over there now, and I do believe there’s been a whole load of fads in recent years which Australia seems to be following and perhaps shouldn’t be if you listen to the researchers. Certainly the curricula that I did at school and what I taught before I came here was quite rigorous and quite mathematical, talking about the physics. It didn’t quite have the social aspects that we currently have.

[00:26:52]
Dr Simon Crook: Then again, the flip side, there are some things in the HSC Physics syllabus here that I didn’t do until university. Special Relativity, I mean some people might be surprised to see that’s being studied by 17-year-olds in a school. I was 1, 2 years at university.

[00:27:21]
Ben Newsome: That’s difficult enough to teach to a first or second-year physics student sometimes. I’m going to get the quote wrong, I’ll probably go look it up. Carl Sagan was talking about how you can have people in a university course that still don’t quite understand the mechanics between the Earth, Sun, and Moon. There’s a more important quote than that, but I never remember quotes properly. The point is that you can never assume that the learner in front of you actually knows what you’re talking about.

[00:27:50]
Dr Simon Crook: Definitely. And that’s where we need to really work on things like critical thinking and problem solving. It’s not just rote learning facts and things; we need to be able to apply and work things out from first principles. So those skills are very, very important.

[00:28:09]
Ben Newsome: Those project-based learning things, this whole maker movement thing, anything where kids solve the problem and then ask you the question. It’s almost like they’re asking for, you know, if you’re working on an engine, you know that you need a particular tool to remove something or to add something to the engine. What I love watching is when learners are working on a particular problem and they kind of turn to you and go, “Look, I just need to know how to work out this thing. Can you show me how to give me this thing and I’ll go back to what I’m doing?”

[00:28:40]
Ben Newsome: What they’re really doing is they’re asking for a knowledge-base tool. They’re the ones who actually realise they might be deficient in this area, but more importantly, because they know they need it, they want to learn it. I just love how it’s not just, “Here, I’m going to ram this textbook down your throat for a little while.” It’s just this idea of students going, “You know what? I actually need this and I’ve just discovered that I need this thing.” It’s really cool.

[00:29:05]
Dr Simon Crook: Yes, and actually on that, you reminded me. I mentioned my work with primary schools around the new syllabus there and high schools. A lot of the work that I’ve been developing in the last couple of years has been around STEM, particularly with gifted students in kind of upper primary and lower secondary. That’s very much around identifying real-world problems that they want to solve. I was at a school this morning, a big shout out to St Ambrose in Concord West. With their—it’s called their Newman stream—we’ve got some Year 4 to Year 6 students and they’re actually going to be having a showcase of their work in two weeks’ time. Absolutely fantastic, just the actual process they’ve gone through in terms of identifying problems, looking at solutions, looking at a variety of solutions, whittling down to the best solutions, looking at what’s already out there, the competition. And there are some really, really fascinating ones out there.

[00:30:13]
Dr Simon Crook: There are some girls there, the school’s quite landlocked so to speak, it’s got houses all the way around it, and so kids are always kicking balls over into the neighbours’ gardens. So the girls are developing chips to go inside balls that work on Bluetooth to help you locate them. They’re even looking to extend it to almost like making it a bit like a Sphero within, so it can actually start rolling back to you via an app on your phone.

[00:30:52]
Dr Simon Crook: These are Year 4, 5, 6 girls who identified a problem that they’ve experienced. We certainly didn’t suggest it to them, but they’ve developed it. Their prototype that they’ve developed is fantastic. We’re not actually expecting in terms of products anything of particularly high quality because we want the actual process than just the “make” part of “design and make”, but they’ve actually made this cross-section of a ball and they’re labelling all the different parts in terms of where the chip is and the antenna, power source, and various things like that. Very, very good.

[00:31:30]
Ben Newsome: It’s brilliant. There are so many different examples. I remember I was talking with the team with Makers Empire out of South Australia. They run 3D printing courses via software and people can do all this kind of cool stuff on their apps and then get it printed either with them or with your printer at the school. They were telling me this story where the students came across a situation where a young daughter, I believe I’m trying to remember now, had this disability, and could they make something to help the child? That’s exactly what they did. Just jump on the Fizzics website, type in Makers Empire, I guarantee you’ll find the podcast somewhere. Just listening to this story about how kids in primary school were effectively being biomedical engineers. I’m just going, wow, that is cool.

[00:32:34]
Dr Simon Crook: Actually, I’ve got a very similar story. I’m doing another similar activity out at St Felix in Bankstown. That’s just with Year 5 and 6 students, but there’s a very gifted boy in Year 4 in a nearby school, Christ the King in Bass Hill. The principal heard about our programme and asked if he could join the programme. He’s been absolutely fantastic.

[00:33:04]
Dr Simon Crook: Now the problem he’s identified, his uncle has Multiple Sclerosis (MS). He’s seen the demise of his uncle and what goes first. He was just thinking about how to help people with MS, so he’s actually developing an exoskeleton for the hand and the forearm that could actually be linked up with electrodes to nerve endings that do work further up the arm in the upper arm. As you say, he’s a biomechanical engineer. It’s incredible.

[00:33:39]
Ben Newsome: That’s just awesome. It just reminds me, I guarantee there’d be listeners here and all the people we run into, they would have run into countless stories of this. It kind of gets me thinking, there almost needs to be a portal for these stories. I know that Brett Salakas from the Aussie Ed fame on Twitter, if you just type in #AussieEd I guarantee you’ll come across Brett. He set up World STEM so that people could share their experiments in a couple of minutes, almost like Alan Alda’s Flame Challenge in some ways, just without the challenge. But I kind of wonder just what is actually out there and literally it could be within your own suburb and you wouldn’t even know it. So for now, I just encourage listeners who know someone doing cool stuff, or even if you’re doing some stuff, let people know about it. It might actually change another child’s life.

[00:34:32]
Dr Simon Crook: Absolutely. And I think it’s all that power of networking and collaborating, as you said as a PLN (Professional Learning Network), but you know, we could be talking parents, carers, and students. If they happen across such opportunities or ideas or experts or initiatives, whatever it might be, that would be helping them if there’s some kind of central place or somewhere of communicating and sharing things for everybody.

[00:35:13]
Ben Newsome: What’s always nice though when you share stories, people often think it’s got to always be about the good story. I tell you what though, there’s a lot to be said about, “Here’s what I messed up. Here’s what totally went pear-shaped. Don’t do this.” Pretty good idea, if you want you can try, you can find out it doesn’t work. I almost feel like I’m putting you on the spot here, but have you ever had like, when you think back through all your teaching years or even when you do professional development, it doesn’t really matter, has there ever been a time you’ve gone, “You know what? This lesson ain’t working. It’s not where I thought it was going to go.” Have you ever had like a genuine clanger and you go, “You know what? I won’t do that again.”

[00:35:51]
Dr Simon Crook: Yes, I have. I’ll have to have a think as to some big ones there. You just reminded me of a funny story, it is a bit of a clanger. When I was working in the Catholic Education Office, there were some renovations going on so we used to run our PD out at schools because the training rooms were being gutted. I remember one time I was doing an E-learning coordinators’ network along with the curriculum coordinators in schools, actually trying to get the curriculum leaders to talk to the technology leaders, which doesn’t always happen. So the lady responsible for the curriculum coordinators and myself, we co-ran this thing. The nature of meetings in Catholic schools is they might start with a prayer. Now I was running things through my computer and I had the PowerPoint, but she was in charge of the prayer and there’s music to go with it. So we played it, and my computer defaulted to iTunes.

[00:36:49]
Dr Simon Crook: So there’s this sombre moment and people are reflecting, and they played this little bit of music or whatever. And then there’s a lull and it’s the end, and then she starts and she had everyone’s attention. She was just there, I was at the back of the library because I wasn’t going to be speaking for about an hour.

[00:37:16]
Dr Simon Crook: I didn’t realise that iTunes was just going to continue playing and it was on shuffle. And I had 10,000 songs on my computer, and of all the songs to kick in just as we had this sombre moment, it suddenly goes, “Give it to me baby!” And I had to leg it from the back of the library. She’s looking around herself just trying to stop the computer. In terms of absolute clangers in terms of things I’ve done that have just gone absolute pear-shaped, I definitely have.

[00:37:47]
Ben Newsome: The tech side, look, there’d be plenty of people who resonate with exactly this type of issue. In fact, when you were describing that, I couldn’t help but picture an old ad where they’re at a funeral and then someone thought the thing to play would be AC/DC. Everyone looked at them funny, and then they realised actually this was the person’s song. I don’t know how you could actually make The Offspring actually fit with a sombre church moment, but things roll on and the world’s okay. I mean, I often measure the idea of if no one remembers two years later, was it really that bad?

[00:38:39]
Dr Simon Crook: I’ve just remembered a couple of things, one is more a case of just bad teaching as opposed to trying something new and it all went badly. In my very first year of teaching, you’re really shattered in your first year of teaching and marking isn’t why we signed up for the job, so to speak. I had a pile of Year 7s to mark and we’d just been doing sex ed and they had some sex ed homework. I think the way it was in that school, there was like a worksheet or something and it had loads of questions, a stupid amount of questions. There was just so much marking to do. So I was just a very bad teacher that night and I just basically ticked most things, just thinking I don’t want any blowback. Didn’t think anything more of it, gave all the work back.

[00:39:26]
Dr Simon Crook: Anyway, a few days later got a letter from a parent basically saying, looking at all the answers that I’d ticked correct that her child had answered which were totally incorrect. And she was actually being really nice, she’s saying, “Look, you may not know some of these things about the female reproductive system. I’m a nurse, perhaps I could tell you some of these things.” It was just like, oh god, this is awful. So that was just me being a bad teacher.

[00:39:55]
Ben Newsome: But you know what? What a great parent. I mean, she could have taken you to town, but she went, “You know what? I’m going to try and help this poor bloke.”

[00:40:05]
Dr Simon Crook: Yes, that’s right, she took pity on me. I used to have this extravaganza thing called a Wall of Flame, which I mentioned in passing to Derek Muller (Veritasium) because he was in our research group before he became really, really famous. And I believe he’s actually made a video of it.

[00:40:23]
Dr Simon Crook: It’s actually the whole notion of rates of reaction with surface area and why dust fires or sawdust fires are particularly dangerous. So what I would do is get a very long hose to the gas tap, get the Bunsen burner on the floor, stand on the bench—if you’re allowed to stand on the bench with your risk assessments—and you have a beaker with some Coffee Mate. Okay, so it’s just coffee whitener, it’s a load of carbohydrate, and you just sprinkle it. And it wafts down, ignites at the bottom, and with convection the heat is transferred upwards and it all ignites. It’s called the Wall of Flame.

[00:41:00]
Dr Simon Crook: There’s a couple of things that actually went wrong twice. The first time I did it wrong was I was in a school back in the UK and I didn’t quite realise that they had lower ceilings in this lab and I had a little bit too much Coffee Mate in there. So it sprinkled down, went up, hit the ceiling and then spread in every direction, including towards me. So I turned away and disappeared in a cloud of smoke, and then half the class were laughing their heads off and half the class were really worried.

[00:41:31]
Dr Simon Crook: When it subsided, I’d kind of singed my hair a bit. And then at my last school over here, very early on, I did this with a class. And you know, it’s not just showing off, there’s a lot of learning to be done here. I didn’t realise the spot I’d chosen to do it was directly under the heat sensor for the smoke detector. It’s a science lab but they had heat sensors, and so it set off the fire alarm. The whole school had to get evacuated, and that costs schools a lot of money, it’s hundreds of dollars per fire truck and several turned up. But fortunately for me, the principal was a science teacher and she was looking to raise the profile of science and she kind of said afterwards, “No one’s going to forget that one!”

[00:42:13]
Ben Newsome: That’s true. And just for the listeners at home, there is another way—we actually do a similar version of that experiment but which involves you not being on top of the desk. A way around it is if you have the flame coming out sideways, we usually have a volunteer in full PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) holding it. You have a hose in a funnel and angle the funnel in such a way that it doesn’t actually have the flame go anywhere near anyone, and it goes upwards and there’s no one above it.

[00:42:45]
Ben Newsome: The only issue is I completely agree with what you said. Risk assessments, people! And don’t do what Donnie Don’t does. When you watch someone running a science show presentation or you see someone on YouTube, hopefully and quite often, especially in a proper museum, it’s not their first day and they’ve had a lot of people go through different ways it could go wrong. And weirdly, of all things, the most dangerous part of that is the slipping hazard of the fine powder on the floor left afterwards. There’s your disclaimer. We’re all grown-ups, we know you can go Google this stuff, just think carefully about what you’re actually doing first.

[00:43:11]
Dr Simon Crook: Absolutely.

[00:43:14]
Ben Newsome: But it’s good fun. So just out of interest, obviously you’ve been doing this for many years and you’re helping out lots of people. If you had a cohort of brand new science teachers, you’ve got five minutes of their time before they walk into their classroom for their very first week of teaching. What sort of advice would you give these people?

[00:43:43]
Dr Simon Crook: Okay, well to those who are entering primary teaching, I would tell them they don’t need to be experts in the knowledge, they don’t need to know everything. But they do need to be very familiar with the skills. So here in New South Wales, it’s working scientifically, because if they are familiar with the skills, then they can ultimately design their own experiments or have a better understanding about how experiments work. Then they can impart those skills onto their students. So I think that’s one of the big things I do try to impart with primary teachers.

[00:44:25]
Dr Simon Crook: With high school teachers if they’re going in fresh, and I’d say this to all teachers primary and high school, make it hands-on and engaging. No student wants to sit there and just be spoken at and just to work from a textbook. Here’s the thing, if you’re going into high school as a new science teacher, chances are you’re not going to get the senior grades straight away because you might not have the experience and a lot of the more experienced teachers want to keep them for themselves. You’re going to get the junior grades.

[00:45:09]
Dr Simon Crook: New teachers can offer so much to those junior grades just with their dynamism and engagement. It is a problem in the Western world, and there’s a lot of research to back this up, that a lot of the students leave primary school, go into high school, they can’t wait to do science. They want to do Bunsen burners, they want to see all the glassware, they want to do experiments. Yet by the end of Year 7, and certainly by the end of Year 8, over half of them can’t stand science.

[00:45:54]
Dr Simon Crook: Now, that’s a sad indictment of lower secondary science education, but there’s various reasons for it. It’s quite intimidating when you’ve got a class of 30-plus 13-year-olds facing you. But a former colleague of mine had this phrase: “engage me or enrage me”. If they’re engaged, you’ve won out. You’re not going to have to deal with as many classroom management issues because it’s hands-on, because they’re going to be really enjoying it. So that would be my advice there.

[00:46:39]
Ben Newsome: I love that advice, “engage me or enrage me”. That’s just brilliant because I know we’ve taught in juvenile justice centres and even maximum security prisons. We’re talking some people who have been more than just a bit naughty, and yet if it’s engaging, it’s not actually as big a deal as it sounds. And so that is very, very true. Love it. Thank you very much. And again, thank you very much for popping in on this podcast considering that it is late at night and you’ve just looked over yet more papers and bits and pieces. Much appreciated. I know there’ll be some people who want to get in touch. How would they do that?

[00:47:19]
Dr Simon Crook: Okay, so you can go to my website which is crookedscience.com. There’s all kinds of information, as you mentioned before, in the “About” section and they can read about various things there. I’m also on Twitter as Simon Crook, I’m occasionally on Instagram as simon.crook, and there’s a Crooked Science Facebook page as well. There’s plenty of ways. I’m on LinkedIn and things like that and I’m sure people can track down my email address as well.

[00:47:50]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, throw it down.

[00:47:52]
Dr Simon Crook: Okay, so it’s just simon@crookedscience.com.

[00:47:55]
Ben Newsome: And that was very enigmatic and very hard to work out! But the good news about show notes is that we will link all those links in the show notes and you can definitely check that out. And look, much appreciated. No doubt you’ll be out at schools tomorrow and the next day—well, it’s the weekend coming, hey maybe you’ve got some weekend stuff. But look, I know that it is not quite a wind down for you as you come into the end of the year because frankly you’ve got a whole syllabus to help implement. And I know there’ll be physics teachers right across the state and beyond loving your work on that. So much appreciated and we’ll catch you another time.

[00:48:34]
Dr Simon Crook: Yeah, absolutely Ben. Thanks, I appreciate it.

[00:48:37]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

[00:48:54]
Ben Newsome: Well there you go, that was Dr Simon Crook from Crooked Science. And certainly he’s got a lot to say and share with schools, and certainly after travelling all over Australia, that is definitely the case. I’d love to know what you found out of that conversation. That’s why we chatted for so long because he had a lot to say and it was quite interesting listening in. In fact, from that I definitely got away three top learnings.

[00:49:19]
Ben Newsome: Number one for me: work with people who have different backgrounds. Work with people from the country, from the city, from regional or remote areas. Try and connect with people who have different opinions from you. It’s actually quite interesting because it doesn’t really matter so much if they’re highly experienced or less experienced. Sometimes it’s their own backgrounds that’ll help shape a conversation in a different way and you’ll be able to get more knowledge from that. And that’s certainly important.

[00:49:39]
Ben Newsome: Hey, number two for me was go to TeachMeets. In fact, that’s exactly where you can meet new people, funnily enough. Look up TeachMeets on the internet in your local area. I’d nearly guarantee there’d be something out there. And look, if there’s nothing hanging around in your local area, jump on Twitter, look up PLNs, look up professional learning networks that exist. Just type up #EdChat or #EdTalk or #EdSomething. Look all the different hashtags up. Many of them just go onto Google and type up hashtags for education, you will find them. This way you can meet up with people who—yeah, it’ll be great to speak with people of similar backgrounds, but it’s good to meet people with different backgrounds.

[00:50:11]
Ben Newsome: And finally, and this is something that Simon very much mentioned: if you can teach the fundamentals of how experiments actually work, how scientists actually work scientifically, it’s from there that kids will be able to make their own experiments. And you know what? That means that they really understand what science is all about, and to be honest, kids will love to do their own investigations. That’s actually what the syllabus and curriculum are all about. And you’ll know that you’ve done your job really, really well and the kids will have a lot of fun doing it.

[00:50:42]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. Sign up now for our fortnightly email newsletter. It’s loaded with details on new experiments you can do, STEM teaching articles, new gadgets, exclusive offers and upcoming events. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. Scroll to the bottom and add your email.

[00:50:58]
Ben Newsome: And that brings us to the end of yet another Fizzics Ed Podcast. However, there is still much, much more to come because we’ve been doing so many interviews as this year wraps up. We’ve just got to get them out to you and certainly in the coming weeks we’ve got Joanna Howes. If you haven’t met Joanna before, she is from SciHistorical and she happened to win Alan Alda’s Flame Challenge. And if you don’t know what the Flame Challenge is all about, go check out Flame Challenge Alan Alda into Google or your favourite search engine. You get to find out what that’s all about and she won it, which is going to be very, very interesting.

[00:51:42]
Ben Newsome: We’ll be speaking with Craig McGrogan from Reef HQ. That is from the Great Barrier Reef Aquarium up in Townsville. That’ll be quite interesting, as well as Margaret Shepherd from the Science Teachers’ Association of New South Wales and many more guests certainly. So until then, I hope I catch up with you next week. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. I’ll catch you next week.

[00:51:48]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are TeachMeets and how do they benefit teachers?
   TeachMeets are informal meetings where teachers share practical classroom ideas and experiences. Dr Simon Crook notes that these grassroots events often provide more valuable, authentic insights than large commercial conferences because they focus on peer-to-peer learning in a relaxed environment, such as a local pub or school hall.
2. Why does student engagement in science often decline in early high school?
   Dr Crook highlights a common trend where students enter high school excited for experiments but lose interest by Year 8. He suggests this is often due to a shift towards more traditional, textbook-based learning and the challenges of managing large classes of teenagers, reinforcing the need for highly engaging, hands-on teaching.
3. How can primary teachers teach science effectively if they aren’t subject experts?
   The focus should be on “working scientifically” skills rather than memorising complex facts. By understanding the process of designing and running experiments, teachers can guide students through their own investigations, allowing both the teacher and student to learn through discovery.
4. What is the “Wall of Flame” experiment mentioned in the podcast?
   The “Wall of Flame” is a demonstration used to show how increasing surface area affects chemical reaction rates. It involves dispersing a carbohydrate powder (like coffee whitener) near a flame. Both speakers emphasize that such experiments require strict risk assessments and proper safety equipment (PPE) to avoid accidents.
5. What does the phrase “engage me or enrage me” mean in a classroom context?
   This phrase refers to the link between engagement and classroom management. When students are deeply engaged in hands-on, relevant science activities, they are far less likely to become disruptive. Engagement acts as a natural tool for positive behaviour support.

Extra thought ideas to consider

• Informal Networking as Professional Development: The discussion regarding TeachMeets suggests that breaking down professional barriers in informal settings can lead to more genuine learning. Schools might consider how fostering low-pressure, collaborative environments can encourage teachers to share the “clangers” as well as the successes.
• Purpose-Driven STEM: The examples of students creating Bluetooth chips for lost balls or exoskeletons for relatives with MS show that science is most engaging when it solves a real-world problem. Educators can look for ways to link curriculum outcomes to community-based or personal challenges to increase student investment.
• Bridging the Primary-Secondary Gap: How can high schools maintain the “magic” of science that students feel in primary school? Moving away from a reliance on textbooks in Years 7 and 8 and focusing on student-led investigations might help prevent the significant drop in science interest seen in early secondary school.