Audio Transcript

[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.

[00:00:19]
Ben Newsome: Welcome back to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Glad to have you yet again for another chat around STEM and all that sort of thing. I tell you what, Chris Woods, our guest today, really loves STEM. So much so that he’s the host of the STEM Everyday Podcast and has been doing heaps of really cool ideas through his dailystem.com website to help people find creative ways to inspire students and their kids—not just in the classroom but also at home. He is a maths teacher of over 20 years experience and he really loves this STEM thing. In this chat, we get to talk about really how we integrate maths in different ways into the classroom and make STEM really appealing, engaging and accessible for kids of all ages.

[00:00:50]
Ben Newsome: So, let’s head right on into this chat. I had a lot of fun having talk with Chris and I hope you enjoy it.

[00:01:05]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:01:23]
Ben Newsome: Chris, welcome to the Fizz Ed Podcast.

[00:01:25]
Chris Woods: Hey, I’m so excited to be with you today, Ben. I can’t wait to chat with all your listeners.

[00:01:30]
Ben Newsome: Oh my gosh, you’ve been up to some stuff. We all have been very, very busy. I must say, you’re the founder of a really cool site. Actually, you know it better than I do, so Chris, tell me what you get up to.

[00:01:46]
Chris Woods: Well, my site is dailystem.com and my goal, my whole mission, my whole focus is trying to help educators find ways to add more STEM—more science, technology, engineering, maths—into everyday classrooms, and right now, every home. Just providing simple ideas, resources, things that are simple and free and easy for parents to do with kids. I mean, a lot of the same kind of things that you do with Fizzics, Ben.

[00:02:18]
Ben Newsome: No, it’s really cool. Seriously, you run a wickedly awesome podcast. You’ve got a lot of information coming out through Twitter, through Daily STEM, and that’s @dailystem just at the front. You’ll find a whole bunch of stuff. What sparked this, mate? Because I tell you what, you’ve got a lot of stuff to help people.

[00:02:37]
Chris Woods: Well, a lot of it sparked just from what I was doing in my classroom. I’m a high school maths teacher, so I teach mostly 14-, 15-year-olds, and if you’re trying to teach 14- and 15-year-old kids maths, the number one thing they’re going to say is, “When are we ever going to use this? When is this relevant to my life?”

[00:02:55]
Chris Woods: My challenge has always been, how do I make what I’m teaching in the classroom relevant to my students? So, I was always looking for ideas, looking for a video on YouTube or some sort of simple thing I can do that can demonstrate a maths concept to my students.

[00:03:13]
Chris Woods: And then it just started thinking in my head, well, if I’m doing this with my kids, I’m guessing not every teacher out there knows all these ideas. Why don’t I share them? And so that led to Twitter, that led to the STEM Everyday podcast, that led to sharing more resources because, honestly, not everybody feels like they’re a rocket scientist and they think that all STEM is rocket science.

[00:03:37]
Ben Newsome: Oh, absolutely. And look, it’s absolutely awesome that anyone who’s been trying to share stuff out—I mean, especially during this time—but people have been doing this for years. I mean, my gosh, it can make some impact. I mean, there’s an Australian mathematics teacher here who’s crazy famous now, Eddie Woo.

[00:04:02]
Ben Newsome: He founded this YouTube video channel called Wootube and it was simply just to help people understand mathematics. It’s really simple, just point a video at the person working on a whiteboard with really useful ways of working around kind of just fun mathematical challenges and how it’s not that bad really when you actually get deep into it. It’s actually quite fun when you play with maths. And I mean, to use that and be able to help other people, I mean, that’s awesome. So right, when did you kick off again? I mean, this has been going for a while.

[00:04:28]
Chris Woods: I probably started sharing stuff seven years ago or so, and then things just kind of go from there. When someone says, “Hey, can you do a session at a conference? Hey, can you share some ideas with me? Hey, can you make up a list of some ideas that I could do with my kids?” And honestly, it’s just people ask, and educators are some of the most loving, caring people because they know that we’re all in this together. We’re all here for the kids, and if you share some ideas, they are sharing some ideas, and it’s this whole holistic, everybody working together kind of thing. So, I’m just one big part of everybody who’s an educator doing the same thing for kids.

[00:05:13]
Ben Newsome: That’s it. And so, one of the things—it’s very clear passion—you wouldn’t start a place called dailystem.com unless you went into STEM. I was trying to get my head around how I was going to chat with you because you’ve got so much stuff out there that you could go down lots of rabbit holes about what we could discuss around how to do STEM in different ways.

[00:05:33]
Ben Newsome: I mean, so I’m going to ask you a really difficult question. Imagine, say in half an hour, any grade—let’s go middle school, middle of the road—you had 30 kids in front of you and a plethora of different STEM challenges and fun things to do. If you had to go, “Right, I haven’t met these kids yet and I want to engage them and I want to make it really cool and fun and all the rest,” out of all the things you could pick and choose, knowing they’re a middle school group, what would be your go-to without having to carry on with lots of expensive stuff? What would you do?

[00:06:08]
Chris Woods: Yeah. That’s a great question. Honestly, I would find a few videos that I find interesting that have some sort of STEM, maths, sciencey, technology, maybe career-related—just some short videos—and throw them in a YouTube playlist. I mean, making a playlist on YouTube is so simple but so helpful because we come across videos all the time in our social media feeds. If you throw those videos into a playlist for yourself, then anytime you need to inspire a couple of kids or inspire a class or a big group, you can just throw up one of your playlists. You show it and you say, “Okay, what did you see?”

[00:06:54]
Chris Woods: And just questions spark curiosity. I think that’s some of the things that we often forget about and learn about in learning; if we can just get kids to be curious and want to be excited about learning, that’s going to blossom and grow into other things.

[00:07:11]
Ben Newsome: Oh, totally. It actually reminded me what I used to do back in the day when we had old VHS. I’d have it all wound up and ready, and as the class walks in—I’m teaching genetics or something—I’d have like a very short snippet, really short because you’ve got to watch out for attention spans and honestly, frankly, copyright.

[00:07:30]
Ben Newsome: But we would then show a quick short snippet of—in this case, I was using Jurassic Park as a teacher. I’d show a really small, short snippet. Now, of course, they’d always bring up the conversations as to, ‘Is it possible? Is it not? Is it real? Is it not?’ etc. But they were really there just to grab the kids’ attention, and then you can move on with the lesson. And that really makes a difference.

[00:07:56]
Chris Woods: Oh, I was going to say, and there’s so many connections like you brought up in different movies and TV shows and things. And the more we can use those relevant things from the kids’ everyday lives, draw those into our classrooms, then our kids are going to be more excited about seeing, or if you can show them how movie and TV people make those aspects of movies and things. I mean, there’s some incredible STEM that goes on to just produce a film.

[00:08:26]
Ben Newsome: Oh, totally so. And I must say, obviously you then get onto the hands-on activities soon enough. But actually having a go-to folder of stuff is so handy. I mean, right now it’s quarter past six in the morning. At 4:00 AM I did a session through the Centre for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, which does a lot of web conferencing stuff.

[00:08:51]
Ben Newsome: And this particular session I did was a programme called Talk with an Aussie. It’s not a science programme, it’s just what’s it like to live in Australia? Our food, our culture, our houses, our history, our geography, all that stuff from an Australian perspective.

[00:09:05]
Ben Newsome: And the only way you can run that—I don’t want to just chat at the camera for an hour, the kids will go to sleep. So the question and answer through a private chat, making sure it’s all safe. When I get the questions, I then go to a folder of photos. Really simple. Because literally I’ve got a folder of about 800 photos and we simply just share them stuff based on what they asked. And if I haven’t got it, guess what I do? After that session, I go get it.

[00:09:23]
Chris Woods: Yeah, exactly. And I think just like you said, Ben, having just some things that you can pull out of a hat, like any magician always has a few tricks up their sleeve ready to pull out at a moment’s notice. I think educators often miss out on some of those learning opportunities because there’ll be five minutes left in the class and they’ll just say, “Well, just sit and talk with yourselves,” instead of saying, “Let’s grab that five minutes. Let’s use it to spark a little bit of inspiration or thinking about a new career or see some news article that maybe connects to STEM or whatever it is that you’re learning about in your classroom.”

[00:10:04]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. And then one of the things—obviously as a high school maths teacher—you’ve got that’s where you’re formally trained, but you’re dealing with all sorts of stuff in STEM with the science, technology, engineering, maths. Maths really deeply connects with everything. So how do you weave your mathematics into the STEM projects the kids would do? I mean, what do you get up to?

[00:10:28]
Chris Woods: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of times when we initially ask and say, “When are you going to use maths?”, it’s because kids are thinking, “I’m not going to solve an equation when I go to the store. I’m not going to graph something when I need to build a shelf in my house.” But there’s so many different aspects of maths involved with going to the store or building a shelf in your house. And if you can just get kids to realise some of those practical things.

[00:10:59]
Chris Woods: And again, that’s where maybe the other aspect of what you asked earlier, Ben, about what do you do if you’ve got 30 kids in front of you and you got 30 minutes? Pull out some paper, pull out some cardboard, and instead of just talking about a maths formula, actually have the kids cut out all the pieces that make and fold up into a triangular prism or a cylinder. Because it’s always interesting to see what kids will come up with. Or a cone is one of my favourites because they have the hardest time trying to cut out and figure out what kind of piece would roll up and fold up to make a cone.

[00:11:32]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. It actually reminded me, I remember my Grade 10 maths teacher—it might be a standard thing, I’m not a maths teacher, I’m a science teacher, but we use maths quite a lot—but I do remember we had to create a net. So a fold-out structure so it can come back together. And we had to be able to hold a certain amount of water in a bottle and it wouldn’t fall apart, basically make a box. And that was interesting what people came up with because it was just “make a box to hold a thing.” But the thing could be held in lots of different ways. And that’s where the creativity comes in.

[00:12:03]
Chris Woods: Yeah, and you’re not just saying, “Here’s my project, my activity, let’s all replicate it.” It’s the birdhouse project where everybody’s just going to make the exact same birdhouse. That’s not giving those kids any opportunity to be creative and to really stretch their mind and think what is possible based on the maths and the science and the other things that I know.

[00:12:25]
Ben Newsome: So, based on all the things that you’ve seen around the place—I mean, obviously being invited to conferences and all this sort of thing—you would have seen other great presenters showing all sorts of cool stuff their kids have done. What are some of the fun things that you’ve seen in STEM where you go, “You know what? I wish I did that last year. That would have been so cool”?

[00:12:41]
Chris Woods: Yeah. I think every educator who has seen 3D printing just thinks, “If only I had more time to have kids do 3D printing.” And not just the final process where the machine squirts out the plastic and makes something cool, but it’s all those steps leading up to that aspect where a kid has to think about a real problem, think about a situation that needs to be solved, figure out possible solutions, trial and error, prototype maybe with some cardboard or paper, and to get to that final stage when they actually print it.

[00:13:17]
Chris Woods: And then, even after that, that iteration and say, “Well, Apple didn’t stop after making iPhone 2. They kept going. They made all the way up to whatever iPhone we’re at right now.” And to me, that’s the biggest aspect and the thing that I would love to do more. I’d love to have more kids designing things and then making things, especially being able to throw it on 3D printers.

[00:13:42]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. I mean 3D printers are kind of cool because, yeah, you’re right. I mean, you’ve got the product that comes out at the end, but it’s interesting actually watching—and this can actually happen from all grade levels, ages—I’ve watched adults have the same trouble. Spatial reasoning. You’re dealing in this 3D environment and you’re putting these blocks and blobs and things together, hopefully, and then forgetting that, okay, they’re sticking two-dimensionally, but when the 3D printer prints it, it’s a blob because it dripped into the air and didn’t have anything bind to it and drops to the ground. Drop to the thing. And that’s going to happen, right? And that’s really, really powerful to use because it actually kind of reminds me of those sort of things you see shared out actually on Facebook or Twitter or whatever where people go, “Yeah, probably should have done some more maths” and someone trying to shove a cupboard into the back of their car. It just doesn’t fit.

[00:14:32]
Chris Woods: Yeah. Well, and I think too, you see like you said that spatial visualisation is such an important skill. Now, 10 years ago when I was teaching, I also teach a hands-on geometry class. So as opposed to just, “here’s a bunch of proofs, let’s list all the steps and reasons,” which is a lot of great logical thinking that kids need, but also doing a whole bunch of more hands-on kind of things that involve geometry which I think every, especially the primary age teachers do a lot of with their kids. But I’ve noticed just in the past 10 years how much better my kids are at that because they play Minecraft, because they play other apps on their phones that are all developed in those three-dimensional worlds, those isometric worlds.

[00:15:18]
Chris Woods: But at the same time, being able to then take those skills that maybe now they’ve learned and they’ve sparked their interest because of something like Minecraft, and then say, “How can we use that to then design products that help people every day, or a bookshelf that doesn’t fit into the back of your vehicle?”

[00:15:37]
Ben Newsome: Oh, totally. It actually reminds me of a couple of programmes we’ve run over the years—one being LEGO building stuff, the other one being Meccano. And I’ve watched the LEGO building thing, the kids have gotten really fast with it. They’re quick—I mean, some kids unfortunately don’t have access to that, let’s be honest, some people don’t have the cost—but as a whole, they go, “Wow, it’s LEGO, let’s build it,” and they’ve gotten really quick at it. Meccano is interesting because it’s been around for decades just like LEGO. But that whole ability to turn nuts onto bolts and bits and pieces… I’ve actually watched kids, they understand the spatial but can’t use their fingers as well. And that’s been a bit of a challenge because whilst I’ve watched the LEGO challenges get faster and faster and faster and faster—they have, they’ve gotten quicker at it. At the same point in time, what almost looks the same—in fact, you could challenge them to make a windmill, one with LEGO, one with Meccano. Apart from the actual, it’s going to take time to screw a nut onto a bolt and things to hold the Meccano together, the physical, like watching how a bolt inserts through a hole on a diagram and then trying to actually make that happen in real life. It’s almost like learning how to use IKEA.

[00:16:43]
Chris Woods: Exactly! It’s exactly IKEA. And I taught a STEM one-week class one summer, and it surprised me that almost every kid—and these were middle school-age kids—had never used a screwdriver or a wrench. And you think, how could you have not used a screwdriver or wrench at this point in your life? Just even just simple tightening up a screw on an outlet in your home or tightening up the door handle on your bedroom door or something. But that’s another skill like you said, Ben, just getting kids to use their hands because they use the tip of their finger and the tips of their thumb, but they don’t really use their whole hands for a whole lot of things.

[00:17:25]
Ben Newsome: Oh, totally. Actually, there’s a really fun challenge you guys can do—I mean, obviously make sure you check everything’s safe that you’re playing with—but you can do this what we used to call like a mad machine deconstruction lab. And the idea is that the kid pulls apart something. I mean obviously there’s no power involved—you pull apart a toaster or something—and then the next kid has to then put it back together again after watching them do it. Or they could create a procedure: “I pulled it apart this way,” and then they put it back. You can play it back and forth about what is the best way. I mean, from a fair testing point of view, every kid should get the same machine, but obviously you’re getting scrap from a junkyard. I mean not with spiders and stuff in it, you get stuff from a second-hand recycling place or off the garbage collection or something. Don’t rattle around. But the idea is that the kids have a lot of fun because they’ve never had that chance to use tools, and it’s really, really good. Just as a heads-up, those people listening though, just be aware of things called capacitors. They hold charge. Those things are found in things like TVs and things, so don’t play with those. But things like old machines that do stuff, kids love pulling those things apart.

[00:18:29]
Chris Woods: And you learn a lot. And even it can be as simple as pulling apart a doorknob if you’re replacing the doorknob in your house, trying to see how does all that thing work. I mean yeah, you reach and you turn the knob and the door opens, but how does all those things inside actually work?

[00:18:43]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely right. And so, you’re working with the geometry side and you’re working with kids trying to understand the mathematics, but you’ve also got the STEM side which has got the science and the tech and stuff. How often are you weaving the tech, the engineering, the science through your mathematics? I mean, engineering and mathematics really pair together in quite heavily. Well, sometimes people see STEM as a tech thing or as an engineering thing, but really it’s meant to be all four. How do you sort of weave all that stuff together?

[00:19:09]
Chris Woods: Well, some things it’s just a matter of having kids blurring those lines between “this is a maths class,” but yet I’m throwing out science ideas to you or I’m sharing a news story about technology or some sort of thing that’s been engineered. And those are the simplest things that every single teacher can do, because we see news stories all the time, we see videos like we mentioned earlier that have to do with those kind of things. That’s the easiest thing you can do just to show kids in very quick, simple ways that STEM connects to everything. No matter what your subject—even if you’re a history teacher, especially if you’re a history teacher or art teacher—there’s so many connections to how things are unearthed or preserved or made in an art aspect.

[00:20:06]
Chris Woods: But for me as a teacher trying to draw on some of those other things, you know, it’s using whatever devices my students happen to have. So we used to have iPads, now we have laptops—whatever kind of devices you have—trying to find some free apps, some software that allows kids to do some of that design process, whether it’s Tinkercad to be able to design in 3D space, or whether it’s using the PhET simulations, the science and maths simulations, and just being able to see how do things work when maths and science interact with the real world. And that’s kind of that engineering and technology aspect.

[00:20:48]
Ben Newsome: Totally, and it can be a lot of fun with the problem-solving thing. I mean, I was on the primary STEM chat last night and there was this, I don’t know, we went down a rabbit hole of talking about, ‘come to the STEM side, we’ve got cookies’ and we started talking about cookies. Like, I wonder how you make a cookie machine? Hm. Students, we need a cookie machine. Now, that’s a motivation.

[00:21:08]
Chris Woods: Yeah. Well, and or even, there’s so many great How It’s Made videos and they show all the machinery that makes like a cookie. But then you could also bring in, Ben, just getting kids in a kitchen, maybe it’s following a recipe. If it’s primary-aged kids, it’s maybe just making a simple recipe that involves just different snack-type items. But you can go as complicated as you want, too, if you’ve got the resources or the space in your school or even at home, especially right now, to get parents and kids cooking together because you got fractions, you got ratios, you got… and then, of course, you’ve got all the science of how things actually cook. It’s incredible.

[00:21:55]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely, and especially with those units of work that you see where you might see a school dive in and they might choose gold, for example. Maybe they do the California Gold Rush or the ones that happened in our goldfields. And it’s not just, “Hey, we dug some stuff out of the ground and made some money.” There’s all the civilisation that went around it, there’s the people—like how did you bake in the 1800s? Stuff like that. How do you churn butter? You can go on all these weird little tangents and you can weave your STEM projects into those tangents. So if you want to make a butter churn—all right, kids, let’s see if we can make a butter churn out of the stuff we’ve got on the desk. I don’t know, it all comes down to, obviously, there’s a safety aspect and yeah, we’ve got to link it to curriculum, but it’s meant to be fundamentally about exploring and ideating and trying stuff out in the design thinking framework. But honestly, it’s just meant to be fun.

[00:22:42]
Chris Woods: Yeah. And if we can get kids interested and excited about learning, then that’s going to make all the curriculum and all the standards fall into place a lot easier.

[00:22:50]
Ben Newsome: How do you find that? Like, I mean, the standards—the standards are always onerous no matter where you are. You always got to get those things done. Often the issue comes up is just how do I fit it in from a time point of view? Like, how do I shove this in because I’ve got to teach this other stuff, but I want to do this other cool stuff too? How do you handle that tension?

[00:23:08]
Chris Woods: Yeah. For me, it’s using those little bits of time. You know, it’s the five minutes at the beginning of class when, instead of just trying to get every kid to settle down for five minutes, show them something. Maybe it’s a demonstration, maybe it’s a, “Hey, I’m just going to pass out some paper right now and we’re going to see if we can figure out what’s the best way to make this paper fall faster to the ground? Is it better to crumple it up in a ball? Is it better to fold it up into an aeroplane?” And you can do things like that in five minutes or less. And you could use it in the middle of class when the kids are starting to get bored or something or lose their focus a little bit, or you could do it, again, at the end of class. But just using those little bits of time to bring in some of those aspects and just spark, again, spark their interest and curiosity.

[00:24:00]
Ben Newsome: I always reminded me, I wrote a thing ages ago on our site, how to use Minute to Win It challenges and put the science aspect to it. You could totally do that and they really are like a minute. And you can use that as a carrot at the end to have, or honestly the whole lesson if you want.

[00:24:16]
Chris Woods: Yeah. Well, and for instead of, you know, like I said, I teach 14-, 15-year-olds maths, so a lot of algebra skills. So if we’re talking about a rate, you know, a distance divided by a time basically, I’m not just going to say, “Here’s what a rate is, here let’s divide a distance by a time.” I’m going to pass out rulers to every kid or have the rulers already on the desk when they walk in so it’s even less time, and we’re going to drop—one kid’s going to drop the ruler and the other kid’s going to try to catch it. And we’re going to see how far did it fall before they could get a reaction time? And then just be able to do some quick connections between that and between gravity, and pretty soon you’ve made just a simple formula in a book and some simple problems on a worksheet, you’ve made them real to the kids instead.

[00:25:05]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely, and you just use rulers just then, just straight away. And actually reminds me of the old ticker tape things you’d see in the science lab where you have this tape running through a almost like a clapper thing that puts little holes in the paper. And based on the holes in the paper, you can work out whether the paper was accelerating or whether it was slowing down—decelerating rather. All that sort of thing is quite straightforward. And just the next thing of that was simply just go drop something off the roof and film it. Exactly, you drop the thing and using—this is before you had YouTube timers and things like that—you’d just look at the frames that were taken in the video and you could work out, especially if it was dropped against a backdrop of graph paper running down the side of a wall or something, you could totally work out the acceleration is 9.8 metres per second per second. You could see it happening. And I think that’s all just making it real, that’s what matters.

[00:25:56]
Chris Woods: Yeah. And again, it doesn’t have to be complicated, doesn’t have to be expensive, it just has to be trying something with your kids and just being a little bit creative with your kids. And if you try something and it doesn’t really work so well, no big deal. Next time you try something a little bit different, but the kids appreciate that you tried something as opposed to just, “here we go, I’m going to stand up in front, I’m going to teach and you’re going to listen.”

[00:26:22]
Ben Newsome: Exactly. No, absolutely. And speaking of which, speaking of trying stuff out, I mean dailystem.com has a bucketload of stuff. I don’t know how else to describe it. So, we’re just going to call it the ‘bucketload of stuff’ website. So, you head on to the bucketload of stuff. It’s a bit like our site, it’s a bit of an iceberg, there’s just lots of stuff there. So, where would you send them first?

[00:26:41]
Chris Woods: Okay, so if you click on the resources tab, so I’ve got multiple lists of just 77 simple STEM ideas that kids can do with their families at home, lots of a variety of things. Inside, outside, but again, just using simple little things. I even made just recently one because it was Earth Day. I just put all of ones that were all focused on things you could do outside. So go for a walk, count how many squirrels you see, count, learn how to identify trees by the leaves or by the bark or learn bird calls. I mean, there’s so many little things you could do and especially with technology in the hands of most every person, these are things that everybody could look up and find out really quickly.

[00:27:30]
Ben Newsome: What’s really I love about this, this is inquiry-based straight up. I mean, you could have written exactly how-to procedure-based. In fact, we get a lot of people will say, “We use your procedure and how do you do the variable testing?” and we’ll help people out, that’s certainly our job and it’s there to help people. But honestly, your 77 activities for the dot dot dot—because there’s lots of these, by the way, guys—they’re just, “Hey, go check this out. Go find this out. You work it out.” And that’s actually really, really good. I mean, obviously, it’s a—I mean, obviously it’s trying to, the tension between giving the extra knowledge and not—but this is actually like, “Hey, guys, here’s an idea. Pick and choose a few and go for it.” It’s good.

[00:28:08]
Chris Woods: Yeah, like a parent just needs to pull out their phone that’s got either a slow-mo cam on it or a time-lapse cam. And both those features are on just about every phone, and you can just set that up and do something that’s amazing, that’s incredible. You could freeze something in water or you could have a bunch of different liquids all frozen and then you can set up a time-lapse and see which one melts faster. But it’s again, like you said, it’s that inquiry, it’s that think through, make some questions, some hypotheses before you start and just see what’s some ideas. But yeah, those resources are on there, they’re free, anybody can download them, share them, they’re PDFs. Some are in even multiple languages as well. But I also have lists of STEM movies and just different challenges that you could think of when you’re watching a movie, just some different like, “Here’s the best clip in this movie if you want to share it or do a STEM challenge from it,” just to get parents and kids to think about, “I’m not just going to consume stuff, but what could I also think about as I’m just having a little bit of entertainment?”

[00:29:14]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, absolutely. This is a cool site. Go to the site for sure. One of the things I was just wondering, just listening to that, going, I mean, this is happening globally in lots of schools all over the place. I mean, there’s lots of people doing really, really cool stuff. At the same point, there’s other people still coming to grips with how do they move into doing more STEM, etc. I mean, do you find the conversations now compared to five, seven years ago, etc., have they changed much at all between educators? They have. So in what way?

[00:29:46]
Chris Woods: Well, at the start, you know, when everybody heard the word STEM, everybody thought that meant get a bunch of new technology. Yes, there’s still people that feel like that, but STEM isn’t just a bunch of technology, it’s not just 3D printers and robots for your school. It really is those everyday things that you can add into your classrooms. Now, more and more schools have added them in as a special class that a kid goes to once a week or a couple of times a week—those things are great too. But the more and more as we keep going forward, I think more and more teachers are starting to realise they can do some STEM in their classroom. And still, a lot of them are those very simple things like let’s build a marshmallow tower or let’s stack up index cards, or maybe like you said, Ben, some people need still some of those step-by-step instructions. But already we’ve seen more and more of people willing to try, which is great. And my goal is to just keep helping people try more and more and get to the point where everybody’s doing some, everybody’s finding ways that it connects to their content material.

[00:30:52]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely right. And jump on there, too—jump on the STEM Everyday Podcast because you get to listen to other people doing cool stuff too, which is the whole point. And it’s another sharing area and just, you know, try stuff out, take that next step. It’s awesome. Hey, look, Chris, thank you for taking the time to pop on over, have a bit of a chat. I know you’re flat out—your school year is winding up, which means you’ve got stuff on your plate right now, don’t you?

[00:31:18]
Chris Woods: Yeah, as always. But you know what? We’re educators and we’re always looking—I mean, now we’re thinking about, well, it’s summertime and the kids have already been out of school for a few weeks or months already because of just the different situations in our world right now. But you know, what are those kids going to want to do in the summer? Let’s keep building up some of that because if we’ve talked about summer learning loss in the past, what’s it going to look like now in this kind of new and strange world that we’re in?

[00:31:45]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, it is. And weirdly, there’s also an opportunity in here because as much as I must admit, I was the kid that once I was let out for the summer break, that’s it, I’m gone. But at the same point, I was messing around outside and building stuff and messing around, and now I run a science company. But that’s the thing. I think using those activities, like the things that are on your site, if you’re listening, and just honestly as a parent—not, you know, this is a teaching podcast, but as a person who deals with young kids—throw them a challenge a week. Even let’s be honest, if you want to go camping, go camping or whatever you’re allowed to do in this current state. But maybe have a challenge up your sleeve, so when the kids say, “I’m bored,” you go, “Well, guess what? I’ve got a challenge for you.” And you’ll have less of that summer learning loss and they’ll come back better, for sure.

[00:32:36]
Chris Woods: Yeah, exactly. And again, those lists, those ideas—I mean, they’re great to be able to share with the families at your school. And the families can print them out, put them on the refrigerator at home and they go to the icebox and you know, “Hey kid, go pick out an idea” instead of just going to play another game or watch something else on Netflix.

[00:32:57]
Ben Newsome: Exactly. I like the idea of being a producer, not a consumer. It is very much a good thing. Look, thank you again. Have a fantastic afternoon and well done. I’m really stoked with what you get up to. It’s just such a great initiative and I’m hearing it’s also a lot of fun for you, so very stoked. Have a great afternoon.

[00:33:19]
Chris Woods: I appreciate that. Thanks a lot, Ben, and you keep up the good work too.

[00:33:23]
Ben Newsome: Mate, much appreciated.

[00:33:26]
Announcer: We hope you’ve been enjoying 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.

[00:33:43]
Ben Newsome: Well, there we go. We just heard from Chris Woods, who you can really tell loves this STEM stuff. I mean, how cool is it setting up dailystem.com and the podcast—the STEM Everyday Podcast—to help people out with STEM whilst also doing full-time maths teaching? Hats off, really great work to Chris. And look, definitely follow him, check out @dailystem on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and you’ll be able to follow up what he’s been getting up to.

[00:34:07]
Ben Newsome: And again, I really do love the idea of, you know, 77 ways to teach blah, or 77 ways to explore whatever it is. It’s really cool. Just those inspire questions, those little questions of “what could we go check out?” are really great leaders into a really interesting lesson or series of lessons if you are get into it. So definitely go check out all the content that’s on his website, that’s dailystem.com, and definitely follow him on Twitter and all that sort of thing. So enough from me for this episode, we’ve got more and more things coming up throughout the year. I hope you’re having a fantastic day wherever you are. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. I’ll catch you next week.

[00:34:49]
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.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the core philosophy behind “Daily STEM”?
The philosophy is that STEM is not just a subject to be taught in a 45-minute block, but a lens through which we can view the entire world. It is about recognising the science, technology, engineering, and maths that exist in our everyday lives, from the way a toaster works to the patterns in a leaf.

How can teachers integrate STEM if they do not feel like experts in the field?
Expertise is less important than curiosity. Teachers are encouraged to model the learning process by saying, “I don’t know, let’s find out together.” By becoming co-investigators with their students, they foster a culture of inquiry rather than just delivering facts.

Does a STEM programme require expensive equipment or high-tech gadgets?
Not at all. High-quality STEM education can happen with recycled materials, household items, and simple tools. The focus should be on the thinking process, problem-solving, and design, rather than the price tag of the technology being used.

How can parents support STEM learning at home?
Parents can support STEM by encouraging their children to ask questions and take things apart safely. Simple activities like cooking, gardening, or fixing a bicycle provide natural opportunities to discuss chemical reactions, biology, and mechanical engineering.

What role does maths play in an integrated STEM approach?
Maths provides the tools and language to quantify observations and test ideas. Instead of teaching maths in isolation, integrating it into STEM projects allows students to see the practical application of concepts like measurement, statistics, and geometry in solving real-world problems.

Discussion points summarised from the STEM Everyday with Chris Woods with AI assistance, verified and edited by Ben Newsome CF

Extra thought ideas to consider

The Language of Inquiry

Shifting the classroom dialogue from “finding the right answer” to “exploring the possibilities” helps students develop a growth mindset and reduces the fear of failure in scientific experimentation.
STEM in the Community

Look for local problems that students can solve, such as improving a playground design or creating a more efficient recycling system for the school. This gives the learning a tangible purpose and connects students to their community.