Audio Transcript

Published: 23 September 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, September 23). Inspiring critical thinking with Living Maths [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/inspiring-critical-thinking-with-living-maths/

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]
Steve Sherman: I already see this kid, the eyes are lighting up because I am now speaking about something that interests them. And I would say, you know, he invented a wave pool to then have the perfect surf. So you can actually get onto your surfboard and get the perfect wave because this machine constantly is making the perfect wave. And this kid was like, “What? Really?” And I said, “Well, why don’t you go on YouTube?” And this kid spent the whole afternoon learning about the wave, how the machine actually works, why they were doing it, and the next day when they came to class, their level of participation increased significantly. And that means they felt like they had a stake in that class. So it doesn’t matter what you’re teaching. As long as the students, if you can identify what areas interest them, use that to your advantage.

[00:00:57]
Ben Newsome: That was Steve Sherman, an incredibly passionate educator who for the last 20 years has been teaching kids how to problem solve using everyday thinking and logical reasoning. This really is a masterclass in how to empower students.

[00:01:12]
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.

[00:01:25]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed episode. This week, as said before, we’re speaking with Steve Sherman, who is an educator in maths, but more importantly, he’s all about empowering students. He’s a TEDx speaker, and Living Maths does an incredibly great job in getting kids all over the globe enthused with science with his Google Hangouts programmes with NASA astronauts, which, by the way, we’ll get into. But let’s be honest, because he’s so passionate, he’s got a lot to say, and as such, this is a bit of a longer interview, but well worth your time. I hope you enjoy this. Let’s dive right in.

[00:01:56]
Ben Newsome: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. Steve Sherman, welcome to the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:02:03]
Steve Sherman: Oh dear, we were all professional here, no matter what happens. How have things been?

[00:02:08]
Ben Newsome: Things have been busy, to say the least.

[00:02:11]
Steve Sherman: But you know, when someone asks me, you know, when you refer to the word busy, what do you actually mean by the word busy? Because for me, what I do is not really work. It’s, you know, I get to do all the cool things that I’ve always wanted to do, and it just gets busier because there are so many more things for me to do. So I’m very blessed that there’s no shortage of things for me to do, and the nice thing is that I get paid to do what I do. So I do feel quite privileged that I have a position or a job where I get to do what I love to do and I get paid to do it as well.

[00:02:51]
Ben Newsome: And just there is exactly why I wanted you on this podcast because you feel exactly the way I feel. Yes, I believe I haven’t worked for many years. I just spend a lot of time doing no work, might be the way to think about it.

[00:03:04]
Steve Sherman: Don’t get me wrong. There are many hours involved. I mean, I probably work a 20-hour day, if you want to measure the metrics and you want to look at how many hours I spend online and how many hours I spend in the classroom. So it is a long day, but very fortunate for me, I don’t have to have that much sleep. So if I’m averaging on four or five hours of sleep in an evening, it means I’m getting some good stuff done, which is awesome.

[00:03:36]
Ben Newsome: Which is unreal. And look, you’ve been doing this for a long time. I mean, over 20 years doing lots of maths outreach and all sorts of things. What got you into this in the first place?

[00:03:46]
Steve Sherman: That’s a great question. You know, I think that when I was at school, I wasn’t the greatest student. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t do the content or work through the material. I was just very bored. I had a lot of questions. And in those days, teachers were not fond of questioners because questioners slow down the class and it means that you can’t get through curriculum, and that’s not always a good thing. And when you become bored, you tend to start looking at things that are a little bit destructive, maybe a little distracting to other people in the class.

[00:04:24]
Steve Sherman: And my motivation was never to be a great mathematician or a scientist. It really was just about finding answers to these questions that were running around in my head. And you know, I got to do summer camps in America for a couple of years when I finished school. And I realised, you know what, I really do want to work with kids, but I want to do it in an informal setting. Because when you go to school and the teacher teaches you, generally the kids retain only a certain amount of information. But when you come in as an extra-mural or it’s a fun activity, they remember everything.

[00:05:10]
Steve Sherman: And I’ll give you some practical examples of what I mean by that. If you’re going to teach your students about not taking drugs, the minute you bring in a teacher from the school who starts giving you all the details on why drugs are not good for you, they see it as a school activity and they tend to switch off. But when you bring a guest speaker in who was a past drug addict and they then tell you their life story, these kids hang on to every word. So I saw value in coming in as an outsider as opposed to being from within.

[00:05:48]
Steve Sherman: And generally, you know, when opportunities started coming up, you know, someone said to me, “Listen, you want to work with kids? I know this programme that is offering the chance to do brain teasers and problem-solving with young kids.” I thought, well, I’ll give it a go. And after doing it for a couple of months, I said to them, “You know, you guys have got such a nice idea, but you’re not doing it properly.” And they said, “Well, here’s a salary, why don’t you do it properly for us?”

[00:06:24]
Steve Sherman: And after running it for a couple of months, doing it properly for them, I said, “Well, why don’t I buy it from you?” Then the rest was history. I bought it from them and I realised that that programme needed structure. You can’t just have different teachers going into different classrooms presenting different content. You need maybe a curriculum that they can all follow and you need some sort of system where you can manage all of that. And by putting it all in, it was the journey, the beginning of my journey as an edupreneur. Looking at different educational projects and how we can generate an income but also reach as many people as possible. And sometimes it doesn’t make money, but we still get to reach many people and that’s always a good thing too.

[00:07:01]
Ben Newsome: Well, roll it forward, I mean, Living Maths really has been the embodiment of outreach in South Africa and beyond. I mean, you’ve really nailed it, even just looking at your website right now as we speak. I mean, you’re not just doing outreach programmes into schools, you’re doing sleepovers, birthday parties, the lot. You’re certainly making maths shine.

[00:07:20]
Steve Sherman: Well, absolutely. And not just maths. I mean, we do look at STEAM related content, that’s the science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths. Sometimes people throw in entrepreneurship where the engineering should be. I think that we’re looking at education with a little bit of a focus on STEM and STEAM, but at the end of the day, we try to make learning interesting. We do a lot of workshops for teachers where we give them handy tips on how to make maths exciting within the school, the philosophy on how to approach maths.

[00:07:59]
Steve Sherman: I mean, the most obvious thing is that in primary schools, many of the teachers are generalists. They’re not specific focus maths teachers, they are just teachers who teach three or four subjects. And if maths is not their favourite, they’re certainly not going to pass on that passion to their students. Whereas by the time they get to high school, they’ve had a teacher that’s been teaching them in primary school that wasn’t a big fan of maths and didn’t get them excited about it, and then all of a sudden, they sit there at high school going, “Well, I have to do it because I need to get this particular degree,” and they’ve lost their passion and their love for mathematics and science. And hopefully, we’re going to start a revolution and get people excited again.

[00:08:43]
Ben Newsome: I really hope so. I mean, one of the things that I love about what you do is you make maths credible and tangible for the everyday kid and they get to do things, which is very, very important in my world, very much so. And one of the things I was thinking about as I was listening to that was, I wonder what it’s like as a 13-year-old sitting in one of your classrooms, watching you present and knowing there’s things coming up and they know they get to do things. How often do they sort of put their hand up and go, “Sir, why do maths? My mum, my dad, my grandmother, grandfather, they don’t do maths. Why do I have to do this? This is just toys.”

[00:09:19]
Steve Sherman: Oh, I love students like that. You know, when you play volleyball and someone hits the ball up into the air, they set it for you to give it a spike, that’s what happens when kids ask that kind of question in my class because they give me that opportunity to give the spike. So the first thing I always do is I tell them that, okay, let me break it down and go to simple building blocks. So if I ask students, “Do you like mathematics?” to begin with, most of them say no. And then I ask them, “Do you like music?” and they all say yes. And then I say, “Well, then you’re a hypocrite.”

[00:09:57]
Steve Sherman: And they go, “But why?” And I say, “Well, because if you like music, does that mean you like opera?” and they say no. “Do you like rap music?” and they go no. “Do you like classical music?” and some might say yes, but most say no. But yet you still like music. So just because you don’t like doing many problems or doing sum after sum after sum, doesn’t mean you don’t like mathematics, it means you don’t like that part of mathematics. And it’s very important that they get exposed to the other parts of mathematics and maybe they might realise that there’s a lot more to it.

[00:10:36]
Steve Sherman: So then I take that analogy one step further and I ask, “Do you think that you could get someone to fall in love with art if you make them paint a brick wall for two hours a day?” and the answer is obviously no.

[00:10:51]
Ben Newsome: It better be the best wall you ever saw.

[00:10:56]
Steve Sherman: Correct. How are you going to get people to fall in love with maths if all you’re going to do is make them do sums at school and then they go home and do homework? That’s not really going to get them excited. So what we try to do is find things that would show students that maths is not only about sums. There’s a lot more to it than that. There’s problem-solving, and problem-solving happens without numbers. You know, when you’re on the playground at school and there are issues, you have to solve a problem. If you are at home, you’ve got to work out issues between you and your parents and your siblings, those are problems that you need to solve. And sometimes you need to think outside of the box and sometimes you need to be creative.

[00:11:39]
Steve Sherman: And I think that if we had more mathematicians and fewer science deniers in certain countries that start with U and end in SA, I think that maybe we might have better peace prospects in more countries around the world. And I think they’re probably nodding their heads too. I mean, it’s, you know, certain things require a certain level of thinking. So you know, you can problem-solve, you can be creative, you can be sensitive towards other people’s feelings, and that all involves problem-solving in a sense.

[00:12:20]
Steve Sherman: So I like to introduce students to that aspect of mathematics. I also like to show them the wonders of technology and science because, and I don’t need to convince you that if you tell students that mathematics is important, they might not be so convinced until you take them outside, you give them a skateboard and you give them a plank and you say, “Let’s go and ramp that skateboard over the plank and see how far you can go.” And they will realise that by adjusting the height of the plank or maybe adjusting the length of the plank, they could fiddle around with what we call the gradient or the slope and that would obviously affect the result of them sliding along that plank and seeing how far they can go.

[00:13:13]
Ben Newsome: You just reminded me of an experiment that my maths teacher did, I think it might have been in Year 11. We were looking about parabolas and that type of thing. And what he did was he had us have Matchbox cars and ramps, and our job was to jump the jump and have it land on the ramp on the other side and see what angle it had to be at, release height, and the height when it leaves from the ramp. How far apart could you get these ramps and still allow this particular Matchbox of X amount of weight land the jump every time? And it still sticks to this day. I mean, we’re talking like over 20 years on now, but it’s you’re right, the chance to actually see it viscerally in person is so much better than putting it down on paper.

[00:14:01]
Steve Sherman: Well, you hit the nail on the head. You got to put the science in your hands and you got to experiment. And it wasn’t about “let’s look at the theory and now let’s prove it,” it was “let’s try something and what does this mean?” And you gave it context. So that’s what, you know, I always tell teachers that if you’re going to start off teaching any concept and give the terminology and then give examples, that’s the wrong way to do it because then people don’t see the context.

[00:14:36]
Steve Sherman: You know, I was saying that if I was going to teach gradients or slopes in a class, the first thing I would do is tell the kids that tomorrow morning we’ve got a guest speaker coming to the school and they happen to be in a wheelchair. How are we going to get them up on the stage to come and speak to the whole school? And the students now have to start thinking, oh, that’s a good question. We can lift them up? Oh, it’s an electric wheelchair, it’s very heavy. Hmm. Maybe we can, and then you always get that one bright spark who goes, “We could probably put a piece of wood on the stage and let it go down to the floor and then they can kind of drive up that plank.”

[00:15:20]
Steve Sherman: And then you go and put the plank there and you ask them, “Do you think you could travel up that plank on a wheelchair?” And they look at it and they go, “Well no, it looks quite steep.” So how are we going to fix that? Well, some of them realise that you could adjust the height of the stage, which is probably not practical, you can’t really chop out a chunk from the stage. Some of them say, “Well, if you extend the length of the plank, then it does certainly affect how steep the actual plank is.” And then you start talking about well, how do we measure that? What are we going to use? What sort of tool could we use to measure that?

[00:16:00]
Steve Sherman: And what are the, what’s the word I’m looking for? You know, in capacity you deal with litres and volume is litres, and when you’re dealing with distance it’s millimetres and centimetres, and obviously for the US then it’s feet and inches, but what do you do when you’re measuring how steep something is? So what you do is you give them the context and then you fill it with the tools. And it makes absolute sense to them because they’re always going to remember someone trying to go up on stage in a wheelchair before they start thinking of all the fancy terminology.

[00:16:41]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, that reminds me, I think we actually use one of those apparatus, I think it’s called a clinometer. We use it in working out how high is your building. And the idea is, it’s like a simple trigger mechanism, you press the button, a little arrow will point downwards because gravity will make it point downwards. And when you let go of the trigger, it holds the angle that the arrow was pointing at relative to what you were looking at in terms of looking up to the ceiling. And what the kids do is they work out their height from their eyeball to the ground, then they look at their distance from their eyeball to the wall, and then they look at the angle from their eyeball up to the ceiling and they add the two together with a bit of trigonometry. They can do it, but it’s just interesting how to describe such a thing on audio.

[00:17:25]
Steve Sherman: But you know what I would have done? I would have gone one step simpler and I would have said, you know, Newton had this wonderful equation that distance or height is equal to a half gt². And what does it actually mean? Well, we know that gravitational pull is obviously constant, so we know that that’s 9.9 so we just make it 10, and a half of 10 is 5. So basically we simplify to height is equal to 5 multiplied by time, multiplied by time.

[00:17:56]
Steve Sherman: And what that means is that if you go stand on top of that building that you’re trying to measure and you drop a ball and you time to see how long it takes to hit the ground. As soon as it hits the ground and you push the stop on your stopwatch and it takes let’s say 10 seconds, you would say 5 multiplied by 10, multiplied by 10, and you would get the approximate height of that building. And we would get the kids to go up on balconies and drop tennis balls and what they noticed is that human beings working with a stopwatch sometimes are not as consistent as they think they are.

[00:18:34]
Steve Sherman: And then we introduce the concept of an average time because one has to be fair, you can’t use the slowest and the fastest because that’s going to alter the height of the balcony or the building by at least five or six metres. And that makes a big difference. So they get to learn a whole bunch of real-life mathematical concepts and they have to do that through playing. And I think when you do that, the concepts stick in your mind.

[00:19:04]
Steve Sherman: And another example, and I love giving examples because then people can relate to it. You know, there’s a lovely system in our country called tax, I think you might have it in your country too, where you have to pay a nice large chunk of your money to the tax person, male or female, whoever they may be. And sometimes you feel, you know, that’s a lot of money because I work really hard and I don’t feel like giving all of it away. And some people, they are very innovative in the way that they produce their numbers, the metrics for their business so that they get taxed a little bit less.

[00:19:45]
Steve Sherman: And what happens is they’ll ask a question, you know, here is a guy who employs 10 people and they ask him what is the average salary in your business? And he says something like $50,000 a month. And you think to yourself, you know, this is a factory and factory workers are earning on average $50,000 a month, that is unbelievable. So he’ll get certain rebates because he’s paying his staff so well. And someone goes, wait a second, why don’t we apply a little bit of due diligence and explore mean, median and mode?

[00:20:23]
Steve Sherman: And sometimes people have no idea why we even learn mean, median and mode at school because how often do people even talk about it? But the reality is that if you took the average salary, the mean salary, it will be $50,000. But when you take the individual salaries and place them in a long, long line from the smallest to the largest, the number that comes up most frequently is $1,000. Now you think to yourself, why would $1,000 come up frequently? And then of course that was the mode because you find the most frequent number. The middle-ish number is the median, and it also turns out to be $1,000.

[00:21:14]
Steve Sherman: And what you discover is that by applying a very simple mathematical formula, you discover that the person was earning let’s say a million dollars and when he divided it between his employees, it made it look like they were earning a much higher salary. But actually, he was underpaying them dramatically and he should have been sent to jail for that. So you know, and maybe the numbers were not 100%, I was just making them up as I went along, but you get the idea that actually there are some people who use mathematics to defraud the taxman. There are some people who use mathematics in advertising, and they’ll say something like, 3 out of every 5 doctors recommend this headache tablet.

[00:22:04]
Steve Sherman: But the reality is if you went to 100 doctors and you asked them would you recommend this particular tablet, you might not get the same stats. So now we start going into a whole thing on statistics and the reliability of that information. We look at the error margin. We look at voting for certain politicians, how do they know from an exit poll who is going to win the election? Because I can assure you that in the USA, the election polls, the TV stations, they all predicted a very different outcome, and they were completely stunned when Donald Trump came to power.

[00:22:43]
Steve Sherman: So someone either wasn’t doing the maths, or you could get someone who says well no, wait a second, if you were following Twitter, Twitter correctly predicted it. But not the systems that were mathematical and precise. So why were there such discrepancies? And maybe some people weren’t entirely honest with their results when they were reporting, and then that is misunderstood to be an empirical or a test based with integrity, but actually the results were fudged a little bit to sound different or better because if you tell people that certain people are winning, then other people might vote because they think well, let’s jump on the winning bandwagon because that’s the way it’s supposed to be heading. And that’s not how it turned out.

[00:23:30]
Steve Sherman: So maths in my opinion is unpredictable in certain ways, especially when you’re dealing with statistics. Science is amazing because you get to see practical implementation of certain things. And when you combine maths and science together, very exciting things happen. When you’ve got to try and measure the outcome of something, and sometimes, you know, you need mathematics. They had a case where in the US and Europe they combined their energies to work on the launch of a satellite, it was a billion-dollar project and they lost the satellite. And why? Because the Americans were dealing in miles and the Europeans were dealing in kilometres, and their calculations were completely wrong.

[00:24:20]
Steve Sherman: So you can imagine that these sorts of things are problems that we could solve very easily, but they show you that maths is not just something that you can confine to a textbook. These are real-life issues that affect so many people.

[00:24:34]
Ben Newsome: And this is what numerical literacy really is about. It’s understanding what your datasets are about, where they’ve come from, how you’re representing them, and are they relevant in the first place? And giving them the critical understanding and reasoning about it. And actually, I feel like giving the listeners a little bit of homework, go check out the barometer story, just type in the barometer story into Google. Maybe type in Snopes if you’re not quite sure, because it really is a bit of an urban legend of lots of different ways to use a barometer to work out the height of a building…

[00:25:05]
Ben Newsome: You can carry it down the stairs and unroll a bit of string all around the place, but that can give you an idea of the many different ways you can measure the height of a building. And I was just thinking listening when you were talking about when it comes to the owner of the factory and what not, this is the issue when it comes to how data is represented in magazines and newspapers, even by credible journalists who may not realise that even just messing around with the X and Y axes, they are effectively messing with the public perception of a given event.

[00:25:25]
Steve Sherman: What happens if you take an audience that are numerically illiterate or scientifically illiterate, and you feed them science mumbo jumbo? They won’t know any better. So people are literally producing fake news and writing articles about how there was an eclipse taking place in the US and you know, they might write that what could stop it is that there’s an asteroid flying around Earth that was going to crash into the moon and people were going oh my word…

[00:26:00]
Steve Sherman: All that preparation for the eclipse and now this asteroid could knock it out the way, and you think to yourself, how does someone with common sense accept that on face value? They should at least question it and say hold on, is there an asteroid flying around Earth that could block the moon and the sun? And maybe using a little bit of common sense, we could actually resolve those issues, but I fear that common sense is not as common as we thought it would be.

[00:26:33]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, there’s actually quite a bit of a large body of research coming out about the way people will reject a given set of knowledge if it doesn’t reinforce their own values. Um, what we now know as science communicators is the presentation of a given set of facts and just say that’s just how it is, is actually likely to reinforce the objector’s opinion even further. It’s really difficult issue to grapple with, and I might even actually after this interview throw together some information into the show notes about this, because it seems to be that the way that traditional science communication or in this case maths communication or let’s just call it STEM and be done with it… if we don’t carefully work with our crowd, the audiences listening, they can actually leave even worse than they started. It’s such a difficult line to walk.

[00:27:30]
Steve Sherman: Well, on that particular point, you know, I belong to quite a few international groups where these are science communicators and we share ideas and that type of thing. And there are people who are on a programme for kids and they will go and perform a science experiment and they will give the reason for this thing happening was, and their reason is completely unscientific and completely wrong.

[00:27:59]
Steve Sherman: And yet, the kids will watch this and go, okay, so that’s why we have the tides because the wind blows and moves the waves and that’s it. And then someone will say, well, did you not mention the moon? No, but what happens if it’s during the day then obviously there’s no moon so that doesn’t affect the tides. So I mean it’s… (laughs)

[00:28:22]
Ben Newsome: (laughs) You kind of get stuck, aren’t you? It’s like the power of the microphone should be able to work well for you but weirdly it can it’s just it’s tough isn’t it? Like, ’cause you know that if you’re presenting the correct facts in the correct way you should expect the audience to walk away with yes, I understand more stuff, and certainly most of them will. The problem is that some of the hardcore element, the flat earthers of the world and hello to all the flat earthers that are listening to a STEM podcast… (laughs) Good day. But the… it’s so difficult to crack that egg. But I think that the activities that you’re presenting and the way that they can start to understand the way you think in a way that really allows them to just explore their own understandings with hands-on materials, allows you to slowly break that down and bring them back to the real world.

[00:29:11]
Steve Sherman: Completely. I mean, we only, you know, it’s not just a classroom setting. As you mentioned, we do things like sleepovers and we get kids in a very informal setting to interact and have fun and solve problems and work together as team members and those are other skills that you need in the scientific process. You know, in the old days, Einstein and his peers used to meet and discuss ideas and they even had a name for the group of people who got together and they would argue and they would have rules that you’d have to listen to the other person and you couldn’t interrupt them and then, only then, could you challenge them. Nowadays, our scientists don’t want to say anything because they could jeopardise their research funding.

[00:30:00]
Steve Sherman: So they keep very quiet and then all of a sudden you read a newspaper article, this particular university has found a potential cure for cancer and the drugs go on trial, and if you look just below the line you might see the name of a particular company that has been funding the research and they are going to then take over this drug once it’s been shown to be successful. And you realise that a lot of the stuff that’s going on in the world is driven by money. And that’s very sad because then kids, you know, if you ask them what do you want to be when you grow up… this is an interesting exercise. If you go and ask young kids in the first five, six years of school, what do you want to do when you grow up?

[00:30:48]
Steve Sherman: And some of them will say oh I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a fireman or a ballerina or whatever it may be. But a lot of these kids are now saying I want to be famous. And I say famous for what? They said I just want to be on YouTube. So social media has such a large impact on these kids that if you put the wrong information on social media, people just share it anyway. And there are some charlatans out there who have got a reputation for sharing some very interesting facts, but what they really are doing is trying to get you to go to their webpage and buy their products. So they just do that sort of thing because it’s money-driven. It’s not even about spreading the good word about maths, science and technology, which is very sad.

[00:31:41]
Ben Newsome: Well one of the things I like what you’re doing is it’s not just about what Living Maths does, I mean you’ve got some fantastic partners who support you, but you’re also bringing in some awesome guests and they really have… like, seriously guys, jump on livingmaths.com. The interviews with some highly credible experts are amazing and in fact… I know you were just talking about the solar eclipse before, I mean you had a couple of real heavy hitters when it comes to astrophysics talk about what was going on only recently. Uh, tell us a bit about that.

[00:32:09]
Steve Sherman: Well, that was a fascinating exercise because, you know, we do a lot of work with well-known NGOs around the world that are involved with space, and NASA would be one of them. And one of my colleagues, her name is Wanda, she is a blind astrophysicist. And she decided she was going to do something that has never been done before. She built a little Arduino device that could measure the intensity of light. And she put it in the States, she came to South Africa because she was doing outreach over here, and we went to the school for the blind. And the team in the US, wherever they were in particular, I can’t remember which section they were, they were there for the eclipse and this little device was measuring the light.

[00:32:59]
Steve Sherman: And as the sound started changing, we could tell that it was getting darker and darker. Now, these kids were blind so they couldn’t see the eclipse, but they could hear the eclipse. And I was very fortunate because I had another colleague we were streaming two separate streams and they were doing it at a slightly different time, we were able to watch the eclipse and hear the eclipse for those who had partial vision, they were able to see a bit of the eclipse. And it just, you know, it put things into perspective that, you know, this is the first time in the world that blind students got a chance to listen to the eclipse.

[00:33:38]
Steve Sherman: And then you ask yourself, well, hold on, how does Wanda become an astrophysicist if she’s blind? What is she studying? And what is interesting is that we don’t only use telescopes to view the night sky. We also use radio telescopes. And if you can take a radio wave and convert it into a sound, you can start to identify things if you’ve got very, very sensitive hearing. You can identify things that some people can’t even see. So she’s been able to bring a new set of valuable skills to the space world.

[00:34:19]
Ben Newsome: Her ability to understand the Doppler effect would be insane. And considering that the Doppler effect helped us understand the structure of the universe, wow, that’s a really powerful set of skills to bring into the world.

[00:34:32]
Steve Sherman: Completely. But now the thing is, when you’ve got someone like that, you want to democratise them and make them accessible to all. And that’s why we started our interviews. That we get to interview people who use problem-solving in their everyday life. And sometimes the problem-solving is science or maths, as in the case of Wanda. But then sometimes they’re slightly different. So for example, we interviewed Christian Picciolini, who is a former white supremacist neo-Nazi who had a change of heart and formed a non-profit to try and convince white supremacists that that is not the way to go.

[00:35:24]
Steve Sherman: Which is a fascinating story because when you find out where his roots were from and how he got involved and, you know, for me what was interesting is the problem-solving. How did he do it? What did he do when he was faced with this particular situation? And those were a different set of problem-solving skills to solving an equation. And it’s very important for kids to see that, you know, when we are using a mathematical approach to things, that we solve these things by asking, did we do this? Did we do that? No, let’s try the other one. Let’s think outside the box. So we are now using different mathematical problem-solving techniques to approach real-life issues.

[00:36:05]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s unreal. I mean, you couldn’t get in a lot of people’s minds more removed from maths than a former white supremacist. I mean, that’s some pretty heavy stuff. I tell you what, that’s going to grab their attention. Like, no matter who you are, that’s certainly a very strong topic. And then once you overlay the idea of actually, he’s about problem-solving, that’s a really good angle to really grab kids who want to just do exactly the opposite to what you’re doing right now. We’ll flat-out refuse to do maths because they say it’s not for them, and you go, you know what dude, it’s just about problem-solving. That is a really good way. I love it.

[00:36:38]
Steve Sherman: Absolutely. And also it’s about finding role models. So we interviewed this young girl, Amira Willighagen, she’s the Dutch winner of Holland’s Got Talent. And she did that a few years ago when she was like nine years old. And she came onto the show and she got the golden buzzer in the first round and she sang an opera song. And if you’ve ever watched on YouTube, if you go look up Amira Willighagen on YouTube, it was a flawless performance. But here’s the part that got me. They asked her how many lessons she had been to, and she hadn’t had a single singing lesson. And they asked, well, if you didn’t have a single singing lesson, where did you learn to sing like that? And you know what her answer was? YouTube.

[00:37:28]
Steve Sherman: So what I find fascinating is that a young girl can learn to sing from watching YouTube, and that brings us onto a new form of education. That kids and adults today, if your phone is not working and you want to learn how to fix it, you Google it. If you want to go and do a science experiment but you don’t have the equipment, you Google it. If you can’t solve a certain maths problem, you Google it. Everything now is available online, and you can teach yourself. Which means that you can also pick and choose the things that interest you, and you can get your head stuck into those things as well.

[00:38:08]
Ben Newsome: That’s it, it’s certainly changed since the 80s without a doubt. I mean, now it’s about guiding people through the wealth of information, and teaching them how to clinically choose which information you listen to in the first place.

[00:38:23]
Steve Sherman: Well, this is where the mathematical filter unfortunately is lacking for many people. That if you go and cut your finger, you go to the doctor and say, listen, I’ve diagnosed myself, I have cancer. And the doctor says, where on earth did you get that diagnosis from? And then you start listing all these sites, but clearly if you had the right type of filter, you would know that certain things are probably not applicable, avoid certain websites, etc., etc., and then you would have known that you just cut your finger. So I know that doctors are big fans of Google because many of their patients come in self-diagnosed, and they are completely wrong because they are not medical experts, and the filter that they are using is not based on a medical doctor’s filter, they’re based on their limited knowledge of medicine. And unfortunately, that causes some more complications as well.

[00:39:15]
Ben Newsome: So with all this in mind, I mean, there’ll be some people listening in who are brand new into teaching, and wondering what could they do best about their students. And it’s relevant really whether it’s Year 3 to Year 10, it doesn’t really matter at this point. It’s more about, what would you say to these, you know, teachers fresh out of uni just about to hit the class running for 2018. What would be your advice for these people to really get their classes working well in the modern age, as opposed to the old style of thinking?

[00:39:47]
Steve Sherman: Well, the first thing I need to remind you is that we are now in the 21st century. And if you take the classroom and you look at how much it has evolved in the past three or 400 years, the answer is very little. And the world around us is changing at a rapid pace. Especially with the introduction of technology. And I think that this is the advantage that new teachers have over teachers that have been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years. These new teachers come in without a fear of technology. And that enables them to make the lessons so much more exciting, introducing things like Kahoot into the classroom where you can take all the content, put it into a quiz format and the kids bring devices and they get to answer the quiz in class, as far as they’re concerned they played a game. They have no idea that you were actually teaching them content.

[00:40:46]
Steve Sherman: Using, you know, things like Plickers, where if the kids want to do a quick test in the class and you don’t feel like marking, you basically give them a multiple choice test and all they do is they hold up their barcode, you scan it with your phone, and it collects all the responses from all the students, and at the end of the lesson you can then print out a spreadsheet on how each student did. So no marking necessary. So if people start using technology, maybe even flipping the classroom, recording some of your lesson and sending it home with the kids to watch at their own leisure. And then when they come to school, they actually do the homework in the classroom under your supervision as opposed to the parents, who have absolutely no idea how to explain this content to their kids because it’s changed so much since they were at school.

[00:41:36]
Steve Sherman: So I do think that new teachers have a distinct advantage over the older teachers. And the other advice that I would give is that, you know, there are so many online PLNs, the professional learning networks and groups of teachers all over the world who are willing to share. You can go onto Pinterest and in five seconds you can find a thousand different ideas to make your classroom exciting, to make your lessons exciting. There are people who have got their own science channels on YouTube who show cool experiments that you can use in your classroom. You can form a Facebook group with your colleagues, with colleagues from other schools in the area, with colleagues from schools around the world, and you can share ideas. And if you go onto Facebook, you’ll probably find a physics group, a maths group, an English group, an additional language group, and people are constantly sharing.

[00:42:33]
Steve Sherman: So I do think that from an access to resource point of view, from the attitude of not being scared of technology, the new teachers for next year are ripe to take over the educational system.

[00:42:48]
Ben Newsome: That is by the way fantastic advice. Everything from flipping your classroom through to using new tech, totally get it. That’s fantastic. And I was kind of just wondering, imagine that you were able to talk to your former self, the Steve Sherman, the recalcitrant 12-year-old not really that happy with what’s going on in their classes. I mean there’ll be these kids in every school around the world. Um, if you were able to take him aside and just whisper in their ear about how, you know, innovators actually think and the way what they do, what would you say if you only had a couple of minutes to try and turn their life around?

[00:43:22]
Steve Sherman: Well you see, I do this every day. You know, I not only in the classrooms here in Cape Town, I teach in classrooms around the world. The first thing I always make sure of is A, I make eye contact with every student in the class. B, if I can, I try and say at least every student’s name once during that lesson. Because I want them to feel like everyone is a member of that class, and it’s not just a handful who know what’s going on and the rest who are a little bit confused.

[00:44:01]
Steve Sherman: The other thing is that in my classes, it’s not for marks. So if you make a mistake, it doesn’t matter. I would rather that you experiment and fail than not try at all for fear of failure. And I think that when students learn to make mistakes, they will discover that many of the inventions in our world today came about because people made mistakes.

[00:44:28]
Steve Sherman: There was that old story of Thomas Edison, when they were interviewing him and they said, you know, how do you feel about the fact that you failed a thousand times before you actually discovered, you know, how to make the lightbulb? And he said, I didn’t fail a thousand times. I successfully found a thousand ways on how not to make the lightbulb. And I think that, you know, it’s that kind of attitude that students need to know that, you know, when you make a mistake, it’s part of the learning process. That’s how you come to find the actual answer, when you realize what the answer is not. It leads you onto the trail of what the answer could be.

[00:45:10]
Steve Sherman: And I think that whenever I work with kids, I always let them know… and this is a pet habit of mine, I like to drop in little bits of interesting titbits that they would catch onto. And I look to see what things interest specific kids. So for example, we might have a quiet kid in the classroom that happened to be into surfing, but not into anything else. And then I might say, ah, you know, I was watching on YouTube and there’s this guy Kelly Slater, and I know that Kelly Slater being the number one surfer in the world, uh no offence to any of the Australian ones, I mean they’re quite good, but this American is just phenomenal. And I already see this kid, the eyes are lighting up because I am now speaking about something that interests them.

[00:45:56]
Steve Sherman: And I would say, you know, he invented a wave pool to then have the perfect surf. So you can actually get onto your surfboard and get the perfect wave because this machine constantly is making the perfect wave. And this kid was like, “What? Really?” And I said, “Well, why don’t you go on YouTube?” And this kid spent the whole afternoon learning about the wave, how the machine actually works, why they were doing it, and the next day when they came to class, their level of participation increased significantly. And that means they felt like they had a stake in that class. So it doesn’t matter what you’re teaching. As long as the students, if you can identify what areas interest them, use that to your advantage. And bring them into the class, you can feed them whatever you like, but you can’t feed someone that isn’t listening.

[00:46:55]
Steve Sherman: Especially a recalcitrant 12-year-old who is looking out to see how many times the cable car goes up and down Table Mountain because you know, the fact that you’re talking about equations doesn’t really excite him. Um, because it doesn’t appeal to me. There was no benefit to me to know why I did or didn’t do anything, so I was far more interested in what was going on outside. But if I had a teacher who would have woken me up and said, oh by the way, I’m glad you were looking at the cable car because you know, they had to repair the wires, how do you think they repaired the wires of the cables on that car? And now you put me into a situation where I have to think it through, and I feel like you value my opinion. I get excited to be in your class.

[00:47:43]
Ben Newsome: That’s fantastic. And look, I know, and wow, I don’t even know what to say after that, because that’s just a great way to think and really grab kids who just want to do exactly the opposite to what you’re doing right now. I mean I agree, it’s like just, you know, work with them. Why not? There’s an idea. They might work with you too. And in fact, I’d say nine times out of ten they exactly will do. If they don’t work with you then, if you keep doing it, they will do it eventually. That’s totally so… yes, go ahead.

[00:48:13]
Steve Sherman: I was going to say, and self-deprecating humour and teachers who make mistakes are very, very powerful tools to get the kids who are worried about making mistakes to actually take part. And what you would do is when we work with our younger kids, the Year 1 and the kindergarten kids, we play this wonderful game called noughts and crosses. So imagine you have a noughts and crosses board, but it’s much larger than the normal noughts and crosses board. Let’s say it’s a 6×6. The boys are noughts, because sometimes the boys can be naughty. The girls are cross, because maybe they get cross with the boys, and vice versa, you can give it the other way around. And the T are for teachers.

[00:49:03]
Steve Sherman: And what happens is the boys place the nought first, then the girls place their X, the cross, and then the teachers place the T. And of course, you’ve got to try and get three in a row, but because you are not alternating with two, it means the third one is the kingmaker. They can block, or they can selfishly go and set themselves up so that the third person has to block the first person, or try and stop them. And it becomes a game of strategy, and you know what? Every now and again, we let the kids win. And when that happens, these kids, we always start off with, ‘Oh boy, you’re going to need a box of tissues because by the time we finish with you, there are going to be tears in this classroom. In fact, we are going to solve the water crisis in Cape Town that we’re going through right now, because you guys are going to need canoes to get out of the classroom.’

[00:49:56]
Steve Sherman: And you will know that when you’re working with eight-year-olds, when you challenge them like that, it gets them so excited and so loud that they want to prove you wrong. And what you do is you do one or two where you show that you can actually score some good points, and then when they come along, then you’ll say to them, ‘No, no, I don’t think you should go there, there are just too many crosses and noughts and Ts there. I think you should rather go in the corner.’ And then they know, ‘Oh no, no, no, we’re onto something.’ And then they go and put them in the right place and they win, and then they rub it in. And they laugh in your face, and then you’ve got to pretend that you’re crying, so they pretend they hand you tissues. At the end, a little bit of a fake cry never hurts. And then of course they come running up and handing tissues to you to make sure that you acknowledge the fact that you were beaten by a group of eight-year-olds.

[00:50:42]
Steve Sherman: But what we’ve just done is that the next time I want to play a game, they can’t wait to beat me. And if they don’t, it’s okay, because they won the first one. So it really is about making kids feel comfortable in that learning environment. And don’t always see it as a classroom, it could also be outside. You could take what you’re doing in a classroom and move it outside. They must always remember that it’s about the learning, the journey, and not the actual venue that you are actually using for that moment.

[00:51:12]
Ben Newsome: Steve, I think there’ll be so many students who would benefit from the way you teach and frankly I reckon I would have had a ball in your classroom as a kid.

[00:51:20]
Steve Sherman: So would I. It would have been nice if I was teaching myself.

[00:51:23]
Ben Newsome: Which brings us back to full circle, which means saying that you’re having fun and you’re not really working at all, you just do a lot of hours doing it. It’s really fantastic.

[00:51:31]
Steve Sherman: Completely. And I mean, just to give you another practical example of when I say I’m not working, we are going to be embarking on our first space tour. It’s the Living Maths space tour and we’ve got an astronaut coming out to Cape Town, and then afterwards we’re going to take him up to Johannesburg, and then after that we’re going to go up to Durban, and we’re going to get to tour three cities, visiting schools and getting the kids to actually come to a public talk where they can hear first-hand from an astronaut, a real scientist who’s actually been to space four times, and then afterwards they can go and talk to him and shake his hand, get a photograph or an autograph.

[00:52:09]
Steve Sherman: And let me tell you that the mileage we will get from that is that young kids will go back to school and start thinking, I want to become a scientist because this astronaut told me that he applied to be an astronaut 19 times, and he was turned down 19 times. And yet, on the 20th time, he was accepted. And he said that if I, and he’s a real astronaut, he said to me personally, if I really put my mind to things, I can achieve it. All of a sudden, these kids go out and become motivated because they had some form of inspiration. And I think that that’s what it’s all about, it’s about, you know, getting people excited and bringing role models to kids and doing more online interviews. We’ve got some very exciting ones coming up over the next month or so.

[00:53:06]
Steve Sherman: And your students and the listeners can join in live during these interviews, and if you’ve got a group of people we’ll bring you into the interview so that some of the kids in your group can actually ask the questions themselves. And I think that would be amazing from a learning point of view.

[00:53:24]
Ben Newsome: That is awesome, and I feel like we really need to make sure that you give out your contact information for that, because there’ll be people… well clearly I’m in Australia and I know a lot of Australian teachers, but frankly there’s a lot of people around the world listening to this podcast as well. So um, please, let us know, how do we get in touch with you to get involved with this?

[00:53:42]
Steve Sherman: No problem. So the simplest is obviously livingmaths.com. And for the US schools that’s math with an S on the end, so it’s livingmaths.com because we make maths come alive. And my email is steve@livingmaths.com. And Twitter is @livingmaths. And if you go onto Facebook, you’ll find us at Living Maths, two words. Um, and of course if you just Google Living Maths, something will pop up that you should be able to track us down.

[00:54:18]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, look, fantastic. Look, thank you very much, Steve, for breaking away for just a moment to just at least reflect on the way you think about the way maths can be taught, and frankly, let’s not just say maths, STEM in general. Let’s take that way even further. Let’s just say school, just life in general.

[00:54:36]
Steve Sherman: If I can just add that one of the examples people often say, oh, you’re always working with math, science, and technology, do you do anything else? Here’s an example of something practical that I did about two or three years ago. A colleague of mine from Denmark, he said to me that he has got a group of slow readers, and would I be able to run a class with them to do some reading of Danish. Now, I don’t speak any Danish. So what I did was I asked him to print a very simple poem, and I then read it to the class in my imagined Danish, and they all burst out laughing and they had to correct me.

[00:55:26]
Steve Sherman: So what they were doing is they were following the poem while I was reading it, they were laughing, and they were correcting me. They didn’t realize that that was my plan to get them to read the poem and actually know where I was making the mistakes. And then afterwards, I created a word search and put all the keywords from the poem in the word search and they had to go looking for the words. And what we ended up doing is reinforcing the poem keywords and they had fun. And the feedback was they had such fun, when could they do it again?

[00:56:01]
Steve Sherman: And that stemmed because you know, when I was first teaching one of these other classes, we were doing problem-solving and brain teasers. And if there are any teachers that are listening that would like me to Skype into their classroom or Google Hangout into their classroom and run a session with the kids, I’m always happy to do so, because as you know I only get 20 hours awake out of the 24, so I’ve always got time at strange hours of the night to connect with your class.

[00:56:30]
Steve Sherman: And I think that once I had done their class, he figured well, if we take that approach to teaching, we could put it to language. We could put it to history, we could put it to geography. So it doesn’t matter what you’re teaching. It matters how you’re teaching it. And the big question is, will robots ever take over our jobs? Will computers become the teachers of the future? I sincerely hope not, because it means we’ll all be out of work. But I do think that computers will always be seen as a tool to enhance the teaching of a human being. But you will never be able to replace a human being that understands the dynamics in the classroom, how a child is feeling. When I mention a concept and I see one confused look in the classroom, I know who to target when I have to go and sit with them and explain the concept, because the facial muscles tell a very vivid story. But a computer might not pick that up. I suppose they could probably write AI to do that. Oh boy, I think we’re in trouble. With AI the way it’s developing, we might be out of a job. But hopefully it’ll only happen when we are no longer in the teaching profession.

[00:57:47]
Ben Newsome: Well that certainly concerns Elon Musk and Bill Gates and a few others have for sure with AI. I think the quote currently is ‘strawberry fields forever’ by Elon. If you’re not sure what I mean by that guys, go look up what I mean, strawberry picking robots.

[00:58:06]
Steve Sherman: Well, if you look at the way that AI is developing, right now, you know, if you walk into a supermarket, if you had some sort of identifier, whether it be a chip in your phone or on a bracelet, whatever it may be, that supermarket could identify you. They could look at your past purchases. They could make recommendations to you. When you go to the till, they would then charge it to your account. You wouldn’t have to do anything because it would then take all the devices that you were purchasing and wirelessly scan them in and know exactly how much you’re spending. Now you might say, that’s just, you know, technology taking over. But that’s a convenience. That’s not a bad thing. Yes, people are going to lose jobs, but now more jobs are being created to sustain these things. So I do think that there’s a little bit of a balance. While we might lose manual labour, and I think it was the MD of Mercedes-Benz who was giving a presentation, and he said that in the future, using AI, people can go online and get a legal opinion, a basic legal opinion, that is probably going to be more accurate from the computer than a human being. Where the computers were 90% accurate, human beings were giving 70% accuracy.

[00:59:29]
Steve Sherman: And he says that if you continue to improve on that AI, eventually there’ll be no need for attorneys. You’re only going to look for people who are specialists. But then, you know, should we be studying law if we know that that profession is going to get closed out? So then you’ve got to start thinking and innovating and find out what is going to generate an income and how I can get involved. And that’s why you need 21st century skills, because kids who think outside of the box and can problem-solve will be able to adapt.

[01:00:04]
Ben Newsome: Steve, this is a very much a brave new world, I must admit. But look, I’m really happy that you’re here to chaperone as many people as possible, students, teachers, lecturers and everyone alike. It’s an amazing job that you’ve been doing. And look, I’m really happy that you were able to join us in this podcast and I know that when we finally catch up in Chicago at ISTE 2018, that would be fantastic.

[01:00:28]
Steve Sherman: Very excited about that.

[01:00:29]
Ben Newsome: Oh, very much so, it’ll be unreal. Look, much appreciated, I will catch you another time. But look, of course, everyone listening in, please jump on livingmaths.com, find out about the interviews and all the various things that are going on there. It doesn’t matter where you are on the planet, if you have internet, you can certainly connect. And hey, he might even do it in a Danish and South African accent altogether as well. Alright, much appreciated, I’ll catch you another time.

[01:00:53]
Steve Sherman: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

[01:00:56]
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 spelt F I Z Z I C S, and click 100 free experiments.

[01:01:14]
Ben Newsome: And there you go, that is one enthusiastic teacher right there in Steve Sherman. And I know the team at Living Maths have done a fantastic job right across South Africa and beyond in getting kids to really feel empowered when it comes to their own learning. Go check out their website, I highly recommend it. And especially for those Google Hangouts with NASA astronauts, that is just cool. And I know he’s got quite a few more coming up. And hey, check out next week’s episode, we’re getting to speak with Karen Taylor-Brown, who describes what it’s really like to be heading up one of Australia’s leading STEM publishers in Refraction Media. Definitely worth your time. And in the meantime, make sure your classrooms are humming really well when it comes to STEM. Make them as engaging and as exciting as possible. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and of course you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Catch you next week.

[01:02:00]
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.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is an “edupreneur” and how does Steve Sherman define his work?
Steve describes an edupreneur as someone who develops and manages educational projects with the goal of reaching as many people as possible. While these projects aim to generate an income to remain sustainable, the primary focus is on creating structured systems that empower students and make learning interesting. For Steve, this work is so engaging and passion-driven that he does not view his 20-hour workdays as “labour” in the traditional sense.

How can teachers help students who claim they “hate” mathematics?
Steve suggests using a music or art analogy: just as someone might dislike opera but still love music, a student might dislike repetitive sums but still enjoy the broader world of mathematics. By identifying a student’s personal interests—such as surfing or skateboarding—and showing the physics and maths behind them, educators can “spike” a student’s interest and give them a personal stake in the subject matter.

Why does Steve advocate for introducing context before terminology in science and maths lessons?
Starting a lesson with jargon often causes students to switch off. Steve argues that educators should first present a real-world problem, such as how to get a guest speaker in a wheelchair onto a stage. Once students begin brainstorming solutions (like adjusting the length or height of a ramp), they naturally discover the need for the “tools” of gradients and slopes. This approach ensures the mathematics is seen as a practical solution rather than an abstract concept.

How does “numerical literacy” help students navigate modern media and “fake news”?
Numerical literacy provides a “maths filter” that allows individuals to evaluate the reliability of information. During the interview, Steve highlights how a basic understanding of statistics (such as the difference between mean, median, and mode) can reveal how advertisers or politicians might manipulate data. Scientific literacy also helps students question improbable claims, such as false reports of asteroids interfering with a solar eclipse.

What are the benefits of the “Flipped Classroom” model for students and parents?
In a flipped classroom, students watch recorded lessons at home at their own pace. This allows them to do the traditional “homework” in the classroom under the teacher’s supervision. This model is particularly beneficial because it removes the frustration for parents who may struggle to explain modern teaching methods, and it ensures the teacher is present when the student actually needs help applying the concepts.

Extra thought ideas to consider

The Power of Informal Learning Environments
Steve mentions that students often retain more information when it is presented in an informal setting or by an “outsider” (like a guest speaker) rather than a regular teacher. Educators might consider how to replicate this “extra-mural” feel within the standard school week. How can we break the psychological barrier that leads students to see classroom learning as a chore while seeing extracurricular activities as play?

Normalising Failure in the Scientific Process
Using Thomas Edison’s approach to the lightbulb, Steve emphasises that making mistakes is a critical part of the learning journey. In a mark-heavy education system, students are often terrified of being wrong. Shifting the classroom culture to value the “1,000 ways not to do something” could encourage more creative problem-solving and higher participation rates in STEM subjects.

The Human Element vs. Artificial Intelligence
While Artificial Intelligence can provide accurate data and legal or medical opinions, Steve points out that a computer cannot yet read the subtle facial cues of a confused child in a classroom. As we integrate more EdTech into schools, it is worth discussing which parts of the “human dynamic” are irreplaceable and how teachers can focus on those emotional and social insights that AI might overlook.