Audio Transcript

Published: 23 July 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, July 23). How virtual excursions enrich classroom teaching [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/how-virtual-excursions-enrich-classroom-teaching/

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]
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.

[00:00:18]
Ben Newsome: So you really want to get your kids to connect with museums, zoos, and aquariums and all those sorts of great places to teach your kids how the real world works. The problem is, you might be too far from it, or it costs too much to jump on a bus. Well, our next guest, Jan Zanetis, certainly knows a way around this. She has over 180 content providers, not just in North America, but across the world, who are more than able to use video or web conferencing technology to have connections straight into your classroom with live experts who are ready to answer your kids’ questions.

[00:00:52]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We love making science make sense. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? If you’re outside of Australia, you can connect with us via a virtual excursion. See our website for more.

[00:01:16]
Ben Newsome: Welcome again to another Fizzics Ed podcast. My name is Ben Newsome: and I’m so glad to bring a great friend of mine, Jan Zanetis, to you because not only does she know a lot about distance education, but she really does know a whole bunch of people right across the planet, not just in North America but seriously around the globe, that your students can be connecting with to learn all sorts of stuff. And frankly, it’s not just in science; we’re talking art, history, maths, music, the lot. She knows so many people in galleries and museums all over the place that can really enrich your students’ lives. She is the managing director for the Centre for Interactive Learning Collaboration and she’s a board member of the International Society for Technology in Education. So in other words, Jan really knows her EdTech. So let’s listen on in; she’s got a lot to share.

[00:01:59]
Ben Newsome: Jan Zanetis, welcome to the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:02:02]
Jan Zanetis: Thanks, Ben. Glad to be here.

[00:02:04]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, thanks so much. I know that you’ve got a lot of stuff going on, very busy throughout the day, and this is the last meeting before you get to run away.

[00:02:14]
Jan Zanetis: That’s right. I’ve got a two-week vacation coming up.

[00:02:17]
Ben Newsome: Got to love that, especially leading up to a major conference coming around the corner. Actually, before we get into this, we probably should let people know. Jan, what do you do?

[00:02:29]
Jan Zanetis: Well, currently I am the managing director of the Centre for Interactive Learning Collaboration, which is basically a clearinghouse where teachers can find great content from museums, science centres, art galleries, authors, etc., all over the world. That content is live interactive video programmes.

[00:02:53]
Ben Newsome: That’s interesting. Now, content—there might be some people who know exactly what you’re talking about when connecting with authors and museums and zoos and things, but some people may not know what that sort of content might be. Let us know a bit further what that means.

[00:03:13]
Jan Zanetis: Well, I’ll just give you a couple of examples. So one of my favourite content providers is an organisation based in Sydney called Fizzics. And these guys do live science experiments with students across Australia, but they also connect with other educators and students around the world through my organisation, the CILC.

[00:03:36]
Jan Zanetis: So that’s one example. But we have about 200 content providers, mainly in the US, but also in Canada, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa that do these programmes with students. The programmes are geared toward what the teacher is teaching. So in the US, it’s based on content standards that are set for the whole country. We have programmes for all ages from kindergarten all the way up to senior citizens, so lifelong learning going on in these lessons.

[00:04:14]
Jan Zanetis: Some of my favourite content providers are places like the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Canada, Mote Marine Lab in Florida, you know, they’re just all over the place. We have an organisation in Ghana, Africa, that connects students in Africa to students anywhere else in the world. So not only do we do these live programmes, but we also host lots of collaborative projects where kids can talk to kids in different parts of the world for cultural exchanges, language practice, etc.

[00:04:45]
Ben Newsome: That’s so cool. I could imagine what it would be like as a kid in New York getting to speak with a kid in Nairobi. That’s just outstanding.

[00:04:56]
Jan Zanetis: Not only do they get to speak to them, they get to see them. So they can share resources, they can present to each other, they could have debates; there’s all kinds of ways that you can use today’s technology to connect kids to kids and kids to museums, etc.

[00:05:13]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, so much fun. Actually, it just reminds me, I was lucky enough to go to the New York Hall of Science a couple of years ago and met up with the team out that way. They were describing this connection they were doing with students where they were doing a programme to a local school in their neighbourhood in New York, and in the next room another one of their educators was speaking with a group in Kenya.

[00:05:38]
Ben Newsome: They realised that both were almost talking roughly about the same stuff ish-ly; one group was talking about light and colour, and they were speaking to this group in Kenya around, I think it was microbes and digital microscopy and that type of thing. They realised that there was some theming about light, and they suddenly twigged that maybe they should get these students to meet each other. So they walked one computer into the next room and it kind of went from there. Suddenly these students in Kenya were now talking to students in New York and it was completely ad hoc and gee it worked.

[00:06:10]
Jan Zanetis: Yeah, that’s the brilliant part about this is that when groups of students connect, at first they’re aware of differences, but the more they chat, the more they realise that they have similarities.

[00:06:21]
Ben Newsome: The thing about CILC, it’s got a couple of hundred content providers, but my gosh, there’s a lot of school groups involved. I was just wondering if you could give people an idea of just how many people are actually connecting through your organisation.

[00:06:37]
Jan Zanetis: So, we’ve been around for 23 years, starting in the state of Indiana, and we have grown and grown and grown. So now we’re international and we have about 50,000 members across the planet in 93 different countries. And that’s over the years; those aren’t all active now. I’d say we probably got 20,000 or so that are still coming on our website and booking programmes and using our resources.

[00:07:05]
Ben Newsome: So, that’s a lot of people and a lot of content providers. Obviously, this being a science education podcast, I’d like to give people a bit of a heads up about the types of things—you quickly alluded to it—yes, Fizzics is one of them. Full disclosure, Jan and I do very much know each other, but there really are several hundred museums, zoos, and aquariums that are just wicked, and a good two-thirds of them are doing science content. You mentioned the Royal Tyrrell—let’s talk about that, it’s a good start. I know they’re one of your favourite content providers, what do you like about them?

[00:07:42]
Jan Zanetis: Well, I like that they’ve got dinosaurs. Schools are always interested in dinosaurs. I know you found some in Australia now which is very cool.

[00:07:52]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, up in Winton.

[00:07:54]
Jan Zanetis: These guys are located up in the western side of Canada and they’ve just got some great artefacts and they use those in their presentations with the kids. But it’s not just about dinosaurs. We’ve got programmes about manatees and dolphins, endangered species, waterfowl, lots of animal kinds of programmes, as well as hard science like what you do: physics and biology, a whole spectrum of science.

[00:08:23]
Ben Newsome: Actually, one of the ones that reminds me—and I’m sorry I can’t remember who they are, I think it’s out of St. Louis or something—but the group that shows autopsies or something to that effect, what was that about?

[00:08:34]
Jan Zanetis: That is AIMS, out of St. Louis. We also have another provider, I can’t remember, but they both do live autopsies. They do live operations like knee replacement surgeries, cadaver dissections. That’s where we get most of our high school or secondary students, because their schedules are really hard to match, but they’ll change their schedule so they can get into one of these live autopsy programmes.

[00:09:09]
Ben Newsome: That is insane! That’s the beauty about being able to connect via video conference to anywhere on the globe; it can take you places that in some ways you had no business being. That’s interesting.

[00:09:23]
Jan Zanetis: Well, when else could you watch a live surgery and ask the surgeon questions as he’s doing his job?

[00:09:31]
Ben Newsome: That is insane. I must actually—I’m going to be connecting up for this podcast with Derek from the Museum of Human Disease. Wouldn’t that be a cool collaboration between those two?

[00:09:42]
Ben Newsome: Oh, yeah. There’s just so much cool stuff. Actually, look, let’s just go back a little bit. You haven’t just done stuff with CILC; you have done a lot of interesting things over the years. Where did this all start? Where did this all come from?

[00:09:56]
Jan Zanetis: Well, believe it or not, I was a science teacher. I taught year seven students. At the end of my teaching career—I started out in special education and got a master’s in reading—but I truly loved science even though I wasn’t trained that much in science. But I loved doing hands-on things with my students and they really took to that method.

[00:10:24]
Jan Zanetis: But along the way, I was also very keen on the technology side of things. I mean, I was around when the first Apple computers became available to schools, and I would train teams of students to support other teachers using the technology because the teachers were afraid of it. So from there, one of the technologies I discovered in the late 1990s was video conferencing.

[00:10:48]
Jan Zanetis: And I got trained on how to use that at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and was offered a position at their virtual school. Well, I wasn’t ready to leave the classroom and they kicked me out, basically. They said, “You’re crazy if you don’t take this opportunity.” So I went to Vanderbilt and I was tasked with connecting schools in Tennessee with scientists at Vanderbilt University, which was very cool.

[00:11:22]
Jan Zanetis: But then we expanded outside of the state of Tennessee and I got connected up with CILC in about 2003 and became their first out-of-state content provider in their network. So I was their guinea pig for non-Indiana content providers. And from there, we grew to international. So when I left Vanderbilt in 2005, I was doing programmes with France and Australia and all over the world.

[00:11:46]
Ben Newsome: What sort of programmes were you doing, just out of interest? Obviously connecting with scientists, but what were you doing out of state?

[00:11:52]
Jan Zanetis: Well, I expanded beyond science. Actually, we did series on the Holocaust; we had Holocaust survivors talking to kids all over the place. We did a series on special people with special needs and dealing with handicaps. We had career series where I’d bring in the engineer chair of the department or somebody from the law school to talk to kids about different careers in those areas.

[00:12:23]
Jan Zanetis: So the virtual school at Vanderbilt was where I really got into developing these programmes. And I wrote a book along those years with a couple of other teachers, which ISTE published, the International Society for Technology in Education. And that book was well received, and because of the attention I got from the book, I was discovered by a corporate company called Tandberg.

[00:12:52]
Jan Zanetis: And they were the company that was the leading company in video conferencing equipment, and they hired me as their global market manager. So I got to travel the world and talk with educators all over the place and spread the joy about how you could use this technology to connect students with the outside world. After that, Tandberg was bought by Cisco and I got the opportunity to go to Australia and work as the education specialist for Cisco in Australia for two years. Then I came back to CILC as their executive director.

[00:13:30]
Ben Newsome: Full circle! It’s always amazing listening to where people go. I mean, I was doing a presentation to some university students, pre-service teachers, and they were just asking, “What can you do once you enter a school? Is that it?” I said, “Not a chance is that it.” There are so many different ways. You were teaching, then you started helping out at the university, then the university had you being a content provider, then you started working with Tandberg. It just keeps on going. It’s amazing where you can end up.

[00:14:05]
Jan Zanetis: Yeah, and I never really meant to do any of those things. They just sort of happened at the right time.

[00:14:12]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, they’re good accidents. They’re totally fine. Actually, just thinking about it, even just from a time frame, late ’90s, you would have been doing that on dial-up.

[00:14:20]
Jan Zanetis: Oh, absolutely. We had ISDN lines, which were telephone lines bundled together. So you had to use eight telephone lines to do one call at 768K—very slow.

[00:14:37]
Ben Newsome: And with some serious coin behind it. That would have cost a bit.

[00:14:42]
Jan Zanetis: Oh yeah. A typical video conferencing setup in those days was about $15,000, not counting the phone bills. The phone bills would be off the hook—eight lines going to long-distance places.

[00:14:58]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, right. It’s just amazing how technology’s accelerated. I mean, we’re connecting right now on Zoom. It was simply just a click of a button and done, it’s done over IP and it all works perfectly fine.

[00:15:10]
Jan Zanetis: So, I think the video conferencing has gone through three stages in my lifetime. The first was the ISDN lines. The second was in about 2005, they converted a lot of stuff over to IP. So instead of plugging in phone lines, you plugged in your internet cable. And life was good because that was all one low price.

[00:15:30]
Jan Zanetis: And then more recently, in the last three or four years, I’ve seen the rise of web-based conferencing like we’re using now on Zoom.

[00:15:43]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, it’s insane. Now, you did briefly mention and I have always sort of alluded to what’s happening in just a few weeks’ time. There is a major conference of which you’re heavily involved in. Let’s go down that path, let’s let people know about this because there would be people who may not know.

[00:15:57]
Jan Zanetis: Okay, great. International Society for Technology in Education, known as ISTE, puts on a conference once a year at the end of June in various really cool cities across the US. So this year it will be in San Antonio, next year in Chicago.

[00:16:10]
Jan Zanetis: This conference brings in anywhere between 15,000 to 20,000 participants. That’s not counting the vendors. This is a humongous show and the focus is all around how to use EdTech in education.

[00:16:33]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely, in the middle of winter I get to go over to summer in San Antonio just for a week.

[00:16:42]
Jan Zanetis: Well, a really hot summer too. So I’m on the board of directors of ISTE, which is a great place to be because I get to see all the latest and greatest trends in technology and rub elbows with some of the brightest stars in the world.

[00:16:58]
Ben Newsome: Well, this is what’s really cool about it. It’s not just about video conferencing; there are so many PLNs. I’m going to throw an acronym and I shouldn’t because some people have no idea what a PLN is—Professional Learning Network. There are so many places that are doing cool stuff. Let’s just think about different things that people can actually do and learn at ISTE. I mean, what…

[00:17:21]
Jan Zanetis: And it’s not just at the conference. The purpose of the PLNs is to keep the learning going throughout the rest of the year. So Ben, you and I are on the IVC PLN, but I bet you’re on some of the others. Like, I’m very involved with the Global Education PLN and the Online Learning PLN.

[00:17:40]
Ben Newsome: Those guys are great. Especially the Global Education one, that’s unreal because that’s really educators connecting with educators and students connecting with students in any format possible, which is very cool. And you kind of think there are lots of other things. There are people doing work on Minecraft, drones, people dealing with coding. What’s the sort of cool stuff that you’ve heard about across the different places in ISTE?

[00:18:03]
Jan Zanetis: Well, I think some of the big things now are using those 3D printers and of course the Maker Movement is really hot at the moment.

[00:18:11]
Ben Newsome: Massively. Actually, a couple of episodes ago I spoke with the guys from Makers Empire out of Adelaide who don’t make 3D printers; what they’ve done is created software where kids can learn design thinking in putting blobs and bricks together to create things of value that can be used in their school. I mean, anything from making a clothes peg, which is actually harder than it sounds, to these guys actually even created with some students—like year five, year six students—a model of a prosthetic arm to help a kid using a 3D printer. Stunning.

[00:18:48]
Jan Zanetis: I first saw that in Sydney at Macquarie, I think. Now, another movement that I’m kind of on the peripheral edges of—I love it because it includes video as an option—is the flipped classroom guys. The biggest, the most popular book that’s ever been published by ISTE was Flip Your Classroom.

[00:19:13]
Jan Zanetis: So these guys are all very involved with ISTE and they have gone global in the last couple of years. And I know that Jonathan Bergmann was recently in Australia touring all these different schools because that’s a movement that’s caught on all over the world, not just in the US.

[00:19:31]
Ben Newsome: There’d be some people who may not know the flipped classroom thing. What’s that all about?

[00:19:35]
Jan Zanetis: Okay, well, it’s basically where the teachers create the lesson on video using your iPhone or whatever to record yourself teaching the lesson. So the students view the lesson, the content that they have to learn, outside of the classroom—at the library, at home, on the bus, wherever.

[00:19:57]
Jan Zanetis: And then when they come back to the classroom, they can use that time for more higher-order activities, like building projects or doing group work together. So the sky’s the limit because you can really take advantage of this model to get the content out of the way so you can do the really impactful things during classroom time.

[00:20:21]
Ben Newsome: The beauty about that is I could imagine sitting on the school bus after watching a video like that on my way to school and I’ve got time to think about what it was about. I mean, I was one of those kids that was heavily distracted in classrooms and to this day still heavily distracted. You can imagine that would actually have been really good if, back in my day type thing, it would have been kind of handy to be able to just concentrate on this lesson and go, “Right, I got it,” and then just mull it over for a while, which means when I next catch up with my teacher…

[00:20:51]
Jan Zanetis: Yeah, and then when you do meet with the teacher, it’s all about applying that knowledge, whether it’s doing experiments or developing some research projects or what have you. And usually, it’s done in a collaborative, problem-based learning type scenario.

[00:21:05]
Ben Newsome: Now, you used to be a teacher and as far as I’m concerned, I think once a teacher, always a teacher in lots of ways. You would have had to have come across some scenarios that are at least minimum amusing. What sort of things have you seen happen in the classroom?

[00:21:22]
Jan Zanetis: Okay, it was a long time ago, but I remember—in fact, I was reminded of this just the other day when I went to a funeral of one of the teachers I used to work with because they brought it up to me. I used to be a life sciences teacher and so I thought it would be very appropriate to have lots of animals in my classroom.

[00:21:43]
Jan Zanetis: So I had the big fish tank and the gerbils and the rabbits and the hamsters and I had a big bullfrog; he was a lot of fun. But anyway, long story short, one time my room was over the cafeteria and the teachers’ lunchroom. So somehow, one of my students hadn’t locked the door up tight on the hamster cage, and a hamster got loose, and guess where he ended up? On the teachers’ lunch table while they were eating.

[00:22:15]
Ben Newsome: Oh, fantastic!

[00:22:16]
Jan Zanetis: I didn’t get to see it, so sad. But one of the teachers was so freaked out, she stood up on her chair and screamed. So I was not allowed to have hamsters after that incident. And I’ve got lots of other animal mishap stories, so that’s one of my fond memories.

[00:22:34]
Ben Newsome: As a travelling outreach programme, a programme on biology, so we’ve got these spiny leaf insects and we’ve got hermit crabs as part of this thing. And so the staff often take them home at night because they’ve got to go to a school the next day and they look after them.

[00:22:51]
Ben Newsome: And I found out one of my staff members—hi Kirri, if you’re listening—she said that rather than just keep them in the cage, they kind of keep them in an open box with some sand and some water and all the stuff they need to stay alive with the heat lamp, they should be happy. She heard in the middle of the night this scurrying, and the scurrying was not the hermit crab in the tray.

[00:23:12]
Ben Newsome: Turns out the hermit crab had sort of crawled across the room, had gotten out the door because the door wasn’t shut or whatever, and was within about a couple of centimetres of falling off the edge of a veranda.

[00:23:22]
Jan Zanetis: Oh!

[00:23:23]
Ben Newsome: Okay, I rescued you. That little hermit crab, he’s actually only a couple of metres away from me while we talk. Yeah, we call him Neil because—after Neil Armstrong, he’s a bit of an explorer. I kind of wonder actually, I wonder about—they’d be a lot of stories where—what do they say, never work with children or animals? So I wonder what happens in classrooms with them both combined sometimes.

[00:23:46]
Jan Zanetis: A lot of fun, that’s what.

[00:23:48]
Ben Newsome: It is a lot of fun. Do you miss being in the science classroom?

[00:23:52]
Jan Zanetis: Absolutely.

[00:23:53]
Ben Newsome: I think it’s why you and I geek out a lot.

[00:23:56]
Jan Zanetis: I know. I love to tell stories about working with kids and being in the classroom and I would go back, but I don’t know if I could afford it.

[00:24:05]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I understand that. There’d be some people going, “Yep, get it, totally.” Unfortunately, but we’re all working on making things better, very much so. And actually, just thinking because I know that you’re involved in lots of stuff, one of the things which I thought’s been very cool, that’s come up recently, is your work with Nepris.

[00:24:24]
Jan Zanetis: Oh yeah, Nepris. They’re very similar to CILC except they fill a different need, and that is career education. So an educator can get a Nepris licence and connect their students with people that are live in the workforce.

[00:24:43]
Jan Zanetis: So every area you can imagine, from robotics to nursing to hairstylists, whatever it is, they can bring a person that’s in that career into their classroom over live interactive video. So the students can find out all they want to know about that career and ask questions. They can also sign up to get an expert in a particular field to mentor their students on a project.

[00:25:13]
Jan Zanetis: So we are sort of side-by-side neighbours; you can find them on the CILC website.

[00:25:17]
Ben Newsome: Now and what we’ll do, we’ll definitely throw that stuff in the show notes because I really love the idea of students speaking with real-world people in careers and hearing about not just what they do, but their challenges, their aspirations, all that type of stuff. Gives students context, it’s great.

[00:25:34]
Jan Zanetis: Well, the kids’ number one question is “How much money do you make?”

[00:25:38]
Ben Newsome: It’s a bit of a shame in some ways, but I get it. I mean, we got to eat.

[00:25:43]
Jan Zanetis: I learned that back when I was doing career education at Vanderbilt, but Nepris has taken it way above and beyond, made it a very seamless process. To get the connection, they just send you a link, you click on it, and now you’re connected with that expert.

[00:25:57]
Ben Newsome: Making connections has clearly been your life’s work, in lots of ways; that’s been your job is to connect people up. And you’ve watched technology grow and change over time, and I kind of wonder, where do you think EdTech is going, at least in the communication side? It’s really hard to predict, it’s like “Hi Jan, just give me a crystal ball, let’s go,” but I kind of wonder, where do you think this is going to go over time?

[00:26:19]
Jan Zanetis: Well, it’s kind of scary to even think about it. I mean, we’re already in the age of the Jetsons, remember that show?

[00:26:27]
Ben Newsome: Yes, I loved that show.

[00:26:28]
Jan Zanetis: We don’t have our little flying cars yet, but we do have some cars that are anti-gravitational. As far as education goes, everything is so much in the cloud now that I don’t think schools are worrying so much with the clunky technology and software that comes in boxes; everything’s available through the sky, through the internet.

[00:26:51]
Jan Zanetis: So I think we’re already seeing the future. I don’t know that all educators have tapped into what they could be doing in the classroom using that technology. We’ve got so many schools that have one-to-one computers and they’re using them for 19th-century kinds of applications, like watching a PowerPoint presentation or putting the worksheet on a Word document.

[00:27:14]
Jan Zanetis: So I think we still have a ways to go with educators taking full charge of all of those cool things that they can do.

[00:27:22]
Ben Newsome: I wonder about virtual reality, in some ways. Like, we already know there are VR headsets around and I kind of wonder, you could almost tour with your friends through museums and zoos and things in live format with their educator. That’d be…

[00:27:38]
Jan Zanetis: Virtual reality is kind of coming of age finally. It’s been around for 10 years, I remember trying to build my avatar back in the old days. And it was so clunky, the learning curve was so steep that I don’t think it got adopted very quickly.

[00:27:56]
Jan Zanetis: And now with things like Google Glass, everything’s starting to be easier for educators to adopt those kinds of things into their classroom and their museums as well.

[00:28:09]
Jan Zanetis: We had museums that are not only doing live interactive video conferencing, but they’re doing multicast streaming, they’re doing virtual reality—”Come to the museum, move your avatar around all our different rooms and do hands-on things.” So yeah, I think that’s really a growing area.

[00:28:29]
Ben Newsome: And one of the things I really want to give a shout out to are the teachers who are producing content for other schools. I mean, if he’s listening, Mr Kim Perkins, you do fantastic work at the Camberwell Girls Grammar down in Melbourne; they’re producing content for schools to learn about and the students are doing it.

[00:28:45]
Jan Zanetis: Yes, and I’m waiting for Kim to give it to me so we can offer it up to all our members on CILC.

[00:28:51]
Ben Newsome: Kim, you’ve heard it here mate! I’ll have to send this episode and go, “Dude, you’re getting a rev up.”

[00:29:05]
Jan Zanetis: I show teachers a pyramid on how you can use interactive video. At the bottom is distance classes, and then after that is virtual field trips, after that is student collaborations. And at the very top of my pyramid, I’ve got students creating content.

[00:29:29]
Jan Zanetis: Students as content creators, because I think that’s really the most powerful applications, is when those students are given the freedom to create their own content and then share that with other students.

[00:29:42]
Ben Newsome: Oh, I love it. And people can really deep dive right into this. I know that Greg Zorbas out of Alaska pretty much has all his students constantly connecting with other people outside of their school, like nearly every day.

[00:29:58]
Jan Zanetis: Yep. One of my favourite Alaska stories is, you know, they have this race every year called the Iditarod. And there was a really outstanding technology director in one of the boroughs out in the middle of nowhere, and he had a teenage daughter that was really interested in journalism.

[00:30:10]
Jan Zanetis: And what they did was they mounted a video conferencing system on a sled and they went to all the checkpoints for the mushers, and the student team would interview the mushers when they were at those checkpoints. And that was broadcast down to the lower 48. That was a pretty cool application.

[00:30:31]
Ben Newsome: That’s so cool. And the thing is you can mesh it so well, because I know that Lee Gamble out of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, they’ve got one of their most famous dogs from Alaska from one of the races. I’m sorry, it completely slips my mind as to the name of this dog. I know it’s pretty famous up in Alaska. But those people would know about this, though, that they could do these pre-programme sessions before going to the Iditarod.

[00:31:09]
Ben Newsome: The classes could have connected with Lee at Cleveland, met this famous dog that was involved with it, and then go and get in touch with the people who are running the race right now. That’s serious; that’s real.

[00:31:24]
Jan Zanetis: Well, I was fortunate because I got to meet one of the most famous mushers by the name of Jeff King. But before I met him, when I was at Vanderbilt in probably around 2003, I was fortunate enough to hook up with his daughter. I can’t remember her first name. But she went to the University of Alaska and brought her dog and showed the students how to take care of an Iditarod dog. She brought his little mittens for his feet and talked about all the different things you have to do for a dog in the Iditarod. It was so cool.

[00:32:06]
Ben Newsome: Wow. And of course from there, as science teachers, you could easily then talk about movement of heat, insulation, etc. etc.

[00:32:13]
Jan Zanetis: Yeah, just their fur is a whole science lesson, all the different layers that protect them from the cold. It’s awesome.

[00:32:21]
Ben Newsome: And kind of the sky’s the limit in just getting creative and off you go.

[00:32:26]
Jan Zanetis: Exactly.

[00:32:27]
Ben Newsome: Well, thank you. Obviously, thank you very much for popping in. I know it’s the end of your day and we’re just starting our day in Australia and the States. Thank you very much. I know you might even want to get home through traffic, I suspect, but before you run away, there’ll be people who would love to get in touch with you, no doubt. How might they do that?

[00:32:53]
Jan Zanetis: Okay, so basic email is my name, Jan Zanetis: jzanetis@cilc.org. And then if you want to find me on Twitter, I’m @janzan, J-A-N-Z-A-N.

[00:33:13]
Ben Newsome: Perfect, and we’ll throw that down in the show notes and make sure everyone can get in touch with you. Look, thank you very much, Jan. And hey, we get to catch up in a couple of weeks in the sun in San Antonio. And unfortunately, by the time this episode likely goes to air, we will have been well gone by then, but I know that we would have had a good time over there.

[00:33:36]
Jan Zanetis: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much, I’ll catch you another time.

[00:33:39]
Ben Newsome: All right, Ben.

[00:33:40]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re all about science, EdTech, and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s fizzics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S, and click 100 free experiments.

[00:33:57]
Ben Newsome: Yes, and thanks very much again, Jan, for connecting up with me just in the preparations on our way to San Antonio for the ISTE conference. And yes, we did all catch up. We certainly had a lot of Texas barbecue. My gosh, there is a lot of Texas barbecue down in San Antonio; who would have thought? But catching up with all the distance learning crew down there was fantastic and learning so much about how they’re implementing augmented reality and virtual reality and using green screens, so chroma key type stuff.

[00:34:32]
Ben Newsome: All this cool stuff to be able to enrich lessons to teach people via distance is stunning. I really enjoyed it and Jan, thanks very much for popping in just before we had to head off to a major conference like that. So, I’d like to really just go through just a couple of my learnings I took away from this interview, and I know that you will have had some too.

[00:34:54]
Ben Newsome: Number one for me: please try out some distance learning using some video or web conferencing technology. Now, here’s the thing: I get it. I get that in some jurisdictions, in some schools, it potentially has been rolled out a little bit awkwardly. Perhaps the person who knew what they were doing has left, or maybe the equipment’s a little bit dodgy, a little bit on the outer, needs to be replaced, or maybe the internet connection might be a bit sketchy as well.

[00:35:25]
Ben Newsome: There are ways around this. Certainly try it out again if you’ve done it. And if you’ve never tried it, believe me, it’s actually completely fine, especially now we’ve got new technology around which certainly connects. There are a number of ways you can try it through Polycom or Zoom or Skype if that’s your thing. There are a few ways where you don’t even need fancy equipment anymore; simply just a computer with a camera and a speaker.

[00:35:51]
Ben Newsome: And if you hook that up to your interactive whiteboard or your data projector, kids will be able to see any content provider or school from around the planet live on a big screen and they’d be able to hear them through your speaker. And critically, the other person on the other side of the world, or whoever you connected with, can certainly see and hear you using the speaker and microphones from your computer. You don’t need fancy stuff.

[00:36:19]
Ben Newsome: And if you haven’t got a computer, you’d be surprised: you can use an iPad, a phone, a Google device, some form of device that’s smart that allows you to do this. You really can. So please try it out. If you’re not sure how, reach out to ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. If you jump on that website, you will find there are professional learning networks and one of them deals with interactive video conferencing.

[00:36:48]
Ben Newsome: And obviously, people in Australia, maybe this is not your thing to go on the international site, I get it. Jump on Virtual Excursions Australia. Virtual Excursions Australia is a non-profit entity which is kind of like a portal to sort of tell people how they’re using it from all different ways. Some schools are contributing, museums are contributing, sort of what content’s around and critically, how to use the hardware so it works.

[00:37:14]
Ben Newsome: You’re always welcome to reach out to me too; I certainly am heavily involved in it. And hey, maybe you’ll be able to check out the Churchill Fellowship that I did and goes into a whole bunch of details. I’ll give the link in the show notes where there’s a full report about why you might want to try video conferencing, what’s the benefit, how do you do it, and where you can go from there. It’s worth your time.

[00:37:33]
Ben Newsome: Number two, and this is certainly one that Jan only touched on just a little bit, but certainly grabbed my attention anyway, is: read Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams and try to implement the ideas. The idea of being able to create a lesson via video that students can check out in their own time is great because then the kids have got plenty of time to reflect on whatever was in the video and then ask you better questions when they’re in the classroom.

[00:38:05]
Ben Newsome: So questions can be really beneficial, but if they haven’t had that time to process what you’ve done in your lesson, well, the questions are not going to be as deep as they might be if they’ve had a day or two to stew on it and come back to you.

[00:38:18]
Ben Newsome: Number three: once you’ve tried doing a bit of distance education using video conferencing or web conferencing technology, and yes, again, we can certainly help you out, try connecting with people who are working in a variety of occupations using a service like Nepris, N-E-P-R-I-S, Nepris. The idea of being able to connect with lawyers, accountants, doctors, plumbers, all sorts of people from all walks of life is cool.

[00:38:46]
Ben Newsome: Because the kids can then see what it’s like to work in the real world, not just read about it or hear from a family and that’s about it. So there you go, they’re my top three learnings and I bet you’ve got a few too. So hey, drop us a line; I’d love to know more.

[00:39:03]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Love your science? We do too. Here’s this episode’s education tip of the week. Grab your pencil and get ready to make some notes.

[00:39:15]
Ben Newsome: There are so many ways to teach science, let’s be honest, so many ways. And I thought I might throw a different one out here today: role-playing. Why don’t you get your kids involved in role-playing to get a particular science concept out? Now, there might be some people listening going, “Oh man, seriously, role-playing? That’s going to get awkward to pitch to my kids. They’re not going to do it.”

[00:39:36]
Ben Newsome: Well, I suppose it depends on your kids, of course, no doubt it does. But there’ll be a way of getting kids involved if you can show that it emulates the real world and is giving them real skills for the real world. It could be a forensics scenario; I mean, who doesn’t like forensics? Lots of kids watch CSI or Bones or whatever, even if they’re not meant to, even if they’re a bit too young, they still do.

[00:40:02]
Ben Newsome: So that’s an easy scenario. But having scenarios around fix the environment or trying to work out how old a shipwreck is, having a scenario where kids have to role-play out particular characters in that, whether it’s landing a spacecraft or whatever, means that kids can research it and get their head in the game for what you’re trying to teach. Now, here’s a few different ideas to be able to get a role-play to really work in a classroom.

[00:40:31]
Ben Newsome: At least these are ones that worked for me, anyway, and I’d love to hear if you’ve got other ideas as well. So, number one: get your objectives for the lesson down first. What do you want them to learn? What are the students needing to do after the fact? Do they need to prepare a report or a presentation for this later? Is it going to be eventually a public performance? Seriously, I’ve seen people do public performances. A bit of pre-planning here will help you not just only get your lesson together, but also keep your objective clear on what the learning outcomes are.

[00:41:16]
Ben Newsome: It also makes you think about what are the skills you’re trying to develop in the kids in the first place. Eventually, it’s not just about assessment; it’s about: is this good for them in real life? Number two: get pragmatic. What are the constraints here on the lesson? And this includes: are the kids going to buy into it in the first place? Also, can you donate enough time to be able to make this actually happen? How much time do you have to put this together? And if you don’t have the time, how can you get the students to help you to get it together? Are the students working in small groups? What’s your budget? Just think about the logistics of getting this particular lesson together.

[00:42:01]
Ben Newsome: It sounds a bit onerous, but believe me, a role-play doesn’t have to be over the top, but I have seen people do exactly the opposite; they’ve done a fantastic job with getting kids to emulate the world. Jan Zanetis’ expertise in EdTech really got me thinking about all the people we’ve been connecting with on this podcast and beyond, and only the last episode with Mandy Dimitriadis from Makers Empire certainly got into the applications of EdTech and why it can be profoundly important to show this to kids.

[00:42:24]
Mandy Dimitriadis: We’re constantly inspired by ways that 3D printing is being used around the world to solve real problems really cheaply and easily. It was actually a group of students that had looked at the work that Enabling the Future does around the world making prosthetic limbs, and they had also gotten to know their teacher’s child who was two years old at the time and has cerebral palsy. Every morning, this little girl has to have her legs strapped with these quite laborious straps all the way up her leg, and the kids had taken this little girl out into the play yard to play and they noticed that these straps kept coming undone and getting in the way. It was really annoying.

[00:42:51]
Mandy Dimitriadis: So they got together—this was year sixes, six year sixes got together—to think about what they could do. They ended up designing some clips in Makers Empire, printed out a whole bunch of them, trialled them, tested them, and ended up with a plastic clip that holds these straps in place for Casey, the little girl. To this day, a year later, she’s still wearing them and still able to play around without the straps getting in her way. So, solving a real problem that mattered with someone they knew and cared about.

[00:43:03]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re excited about science. Grab a copy of our new book, Be Amazing: How to Teach Science the Way Primary Kids Love, from our website. Just search “Be Amazing book”. It’s available in hardcopy and ebook. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s fizzics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S.

[00:43:24]
Ben Newsome: And this brings us to the end of yet another Fizzics Ed podcast. Look, there’s still more you can do. Jump on our website; there are so many free things that you can certainly consume and use in your classroom. You’ll find blogs, you’ll find articles, and there are over 150 free experiments. There is a heap that you can be doing. Number three: what context will the students be working in? Define their roles; what are their character objectives so they know what they’re going to be achieving? It’s worth thinking carefully about which students work with which students. What are their personalities like? Is some kid very good at the extrovert-type delivery, and there are other kids that might be more introverts and want to work around another area? Think about their personalities and who they work with well.

[00:44:09]
Ben Newsome: Number four: plan for some time for your students to do some research about the topic before you run the role-play in the first place, and then give them an opportunity to bring their new ideas into the session so the kids can then create the role-play and morph it into something they own rather than it being something that you’ve forced on them. Speaking of things coming up, next week we’re connecting with Ann Soren from the Australian National Maritime Museum. It was really interesting having a chat with her only the other week in regards to how they’re using maritime history and maritime science to show kids how the world works. It’s certainly an interesting episode, and you can check that out next week. And as always, may your science lessons be fun, please make them informative, and grab your students’ imagination. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and as always, you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Bye for now.

[00:44:43]
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 the Centre for Interactive Learning Collaboration (CILC)?
The CILC is a global clearinghouse that allows educators to find and book live, interactive video programmes. It connects classrooms with over 200 content providers, including museums, science centres, art galleries, and authors, to provide students with real-time access to experts regardless of their geographic location.

How has video conferencing technology evolved for schools over the years?
The technology has moved through three distinct stages. In the late 1990s, it relied on ISDN telephone lines and expensive hardware. In the mid-2000s, systems transitioned to IP-based connections using internet cables. Today, we use accessible, web-based conferencing software like Zoom or Skype, which often requires nothing more than a standard computer or mobile device.

What are the benefits of a “flipped classroom” model?
In a flipped classroom, students watch recorded instructional videos as homework, which frees up valuable classroom time. This allows teachers to move away from passive lecturing and focus on higher-order activities, such as collaborative problem-solving, hands-on experiments, and deep-dive research projects where the teacher can provide direct support.

What is Nepris and how does it support career education?
Nepris is a service similar to CILC that specifically focuses on connecting students with the professional workforce. It allows teachers to bring experts from nearly any field—such as robotics, nursing, or law—directly into the classroom via video to discuss their careers, answer student questions, and even mentor students on specific school projects.

What equipment is needed to start using distance education in a classroom?
Modern distance education does not require the expensive, “clunky” equipment of the past. A basic computer, iPad, or smartphone with a camera, microphone, and speaker is sufficient. When connected to a data projector or interactive whiteboard, these simple devices allow an entire class to participate in a live global exchange.

Extra thought ideas to consider

Moving Beyond the “Digital Worksheet”
Jan Zanetis noted that many schools with one-to-one computer ratios are still using 21st-century technology for 19th-century applications, such as filling out digital Word documents instead of paper ones. Educators should consider how they can move past “substitution” and use technology to facilitate “redefinition”—creating learning tasks that were previously inconceivable, such as real-time global debates or collaborative international research.

Students as Content Creators
The “top of the pyramid” in interactive learning is when students stop being consumers and start being creators. Rather than just watching a museum expert, students can research, produce, and broadcast their own content to other schools or community groups. This shifts the focus from passive learning to active mastery of a subject and develops critical digital literacy and communication skills.

The Power of “Ad Hoc” Global Collisions
The story of the New York Hall of Science accidentally connecting students in New York with students in Kenya highlights the value of spontaneous cultural exchange. While structured programmes are excellent, there is immense value in finding common ground between diverse groups. Educators should look for opportunities to facilitate these “collisions,” helping students realise that despite geographic and cultural differences, their interests and curiosity are often remarkably similar.