Audio Transcript

Published: 28 September 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, September 28). How Refraction Media is highlighting STEM careers [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/how-refraction-media-is-highlighting-stem-careers/

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: People like policy makers and corporate leaders were starting to say, “Hang on, if we’re looking ahead at where we want our nation to be and where we want our businesses to be, we really need to get more kids engaged in STEM because those are the skills that we’re going to need in the future economy.” And there was a lot of discussion about how we can do this, where the gaps were, where the failings were. And coming from a content background, Heather and I just thought we could probably do something about that.

[00:00:30]
Ben Newsome: And with that, Karen Taylor-Brown and Heather Catchpole set about creating one of Australia’s leading STEM publishers in Refraction Media. Everything from maths-based essentials through to Careers with Code in the US. Let’s just find out what they’ve been doing. And guess what? Your students can contribute too.

[00:00:45]
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.

[00:01:02]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed podcast. And this week, I’m really excited, like always, but this week particularly because I get to speak with Karen Taylor-Brown, who is the co-founder and CEO of Refraction Media. They do a bunch of work in STEM publishing and their clients include Google Australia, the NRMA, the Australian Academy of Science, University of Melbourne, the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. There are so many people they’re working with.

[00:01:25]
Ben Newsome: In this interview, we get to find out what it’s like to really work in a major STEM publishing house in Refraction Media, but also find out about their new series, Careers with Code and Careers with STEM, which they are very much launching as we speak, as I record this, in San Francisco in the US, which is unreal and amazing. And guess what? She talks about how your students can start publishing and submitting articles to them to maybe get them in print too, which is really exciting. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, meet Karen Taylor-Brown.

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Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast.

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Ben Newsome: Karen Taylor-Brown, welcome to the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:02:00]
Karen Taylor-Brown: Thanks, Ben. Great to be here.

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Ben Newsome: Look, I’m really stoked that you’re able to join us, especially after a very busy term three, and you have been flat out in the publishing world. But I must say, there might be some people who don’t know what you get up to. Karen, what do you do?

[00:02:14]
Karen Taylor-Brown: Oh, what don’t we do? Sometimes I wonder. But in a nutshell, I’m the co-founder and CEO of a company called Refraction Media. And Refraction Media is a specialist STEM publishing company, so that’s science, technology, engineering, and maths. And we produce a range of materials for a wide variety of audiences, but our focus is pretty much consistently around raising engagement with STEM and inspiring young people to consider pursuing careers that have a foundation of STEM.

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Ben Newsome: Which means you’ve got lots of interesting publications. So what sort of things have you been producing? I mean, obviously there’s a lot of stuff you could be doing in science, technology, engineering, and maths. I mean, what are you producing, at least currently anyway?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Great. Well, I guess our flagship platform is called Careers with STEM, which is pretty self-explanatory. And it includes a number of different mediums within that. We do a quarterly glossy magazine that goes directly to high schools all around Australia. And that’s distributed once per term, and each term the magazine has a different area of focus or discipline.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: So for example, in term one, we do Careers with Science. In term two, we do Careers with Maths. Term three is Careers with Engineering, and we’re just about to release our term four, which is Careers with Code. So we look at each of those STEM disciplines, but the narrative that we have consistently throughout our publications is what we call STEM+X. So it’s STEM—science, technology, engineering, and maths—plus X, where X can be your passion, a problem you’re trying to solve, or a completely another discipline.

[00:03:54]
Karen Taylor-Brown: So we think STEM is a great foundation for the careers of the future, but it’s not necessarily the single destination. We think the optimum engagement with that area is when we can bring a student’s passion and goal within that STEM foundation and help them find a career that suits them. So we’ve got the Careers with STEM magazines. We’ve also got the Careers with STEM digital hub that has the magazines available as e-editions, but also a whole bunch of extra material, more profiles.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: It’s got an interactive degree directory where you can choose your discipline, choose your X, choose your state, and then find out a short list of degrees that might be interesting. We’ve got some amazing classroom resources that are available there as well. We worked with the Department of Education to produce classroom notes that accompany each issue of the magazine, so teachers can download those. And it gives a few top-line activity pointers as to how you could incorporate a careers conversation into a classroom and link it into different curriculum areas across the STEM disciplines.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: We’ve also got these amazing, really cute A3 downloadable posters that again accompany each magazine. And they’re a really dynamic visual display of how STEM actually integrates into real life, what the real-world relevance of STEM is in future careers. So it’s magazines, it’s the website, teacher resources, and occasionally events as well. And that’s what we’re hoping to do a little bit more of in 2018.

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Ben Newsome: That’ll be interesting. Now, before we get onto the events thing, I’m just actually interested, what drove the need for a specific publication around careers in various different areas of STEM? I mean, was it coming from teachers asking for it, or was it like a gap that just didn’t seem to be around? Why did you do this?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Oh, look, I’ve been interested in this space for a number of years. I actually met my co-founder when I worked at Cosmos Science Magazine quite a few years ago.

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Ben Newsome: Heather Catchpole.

[00:05:53]
Karen Taylor-Brown: That’s right. Heather Catchpole and I worked together at Cosmos where she was managing editor and I was associate publisher. And we obviously loved telling science stories and loved being able to engage the disengaged in those stories. And what we discovered sort of around the 2010 timing was that people like policy makers and corporate leaders were starting to say, “Hang on, if we’re looking ahead at where we want our nation to be and where we want our businesses to be, we really need to get more kids engaged in STEM because those are the skills that we’re going to need in the future economy.”

[00:06:28]
Karen Taylor-Brown: And there was a lot of discussion about how we can do this, where the gaps were, where the failings were. And coming from a content background, Heather and I just thought we could probably do something about that. We did a bit of research and we discovered that STEM had a really bad image problem with young people. They thought that if you studied science, you’d be a scientist, you’d be wearing a lab coat surrounded by people with mad hair stuck in the lab. They thought if you did coding, you were stuck in a basement and never saw the light of day.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: And the stories about the creativity that comes with STEM careers just wasn’t—didn’t have an avenue to be told. So we wanted to really tell those stories of creativity plus STEM and how you can create your own future. The other gap that we saw was to do with diversity. So in Australia, 28% of STEM professionals are women. So there’s a bit of a way to get to equity there. And a lot of the reasoning behind that is what I call “you can’t see what you can’t be.”

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Karen Taylor-Brown: There weren’t a whole lot of role models within STEM professions that were going to be connecting with young girls. So we really wanted to create really dynamic visual publications that uncovered a real diversity of talent doing amazing things. And we wanted to shoot them in locations that were really surprising and unexpected. For example, I remember when we did Careers with Code 2014, we shot this amazing software developer who is also a trapeze artist on the weekends. So we did a photoshoot while she was doing her trapeze.

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Ben Newsome: That’s interesting, just as a side note, we’ve got three people at Fizzics that all have circus background. I’m wondering what’s going on there.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Well, it’s that creativity side that I think fits really well with STEM. And it really helps, yeah, helps both sides of the brain problem-solve and I suppose agility would come into that too, both metaphorically and physically.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s just interesting. And look, here’s the thing, yourself and Heather clearly have a serious talent when it comes to writing and producing high-quality content. But I kind of wonder, you could have done this in any area. Why science? Why this area?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Look, as I said, when we met at Cosmos, we both just shared this passion for science stories. We think that this is something we can do that will have a real impact on the world. And it’s just a privilege to be able to sit down with these people that have created and researched and found solutions to global problems and be able to share their story. So it’s a really rewarding place to be.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Also, we really see the need for it in Australia’s future economy. There’s a bit of a challenge, I suppose, to keep pace with the rest of the world. And if we don’t develop these skills at a large scale, Australia’s going to have less of an opportunity to be at a global level within technology and innovation of the future. So coming from a media background, we felt we could really hone our skills onto that big-picture question where we can really want to make a difference and make an impact in the world.

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Ben Newsome: And you really are. I mean, it’s big picture, but gee, it’s diverse. Just looking at the range of clients you’ve worked with. I know you’ve worked with Google Australia, NRMA, the Australian Academy of Science, ANSTO—the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation—Garvan Medical Research Foundation. You’ve got all these different people doing stuff. What are some of the things you get to do with these people?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Oh, look, anything and everything. For example, I remember one of the first projects we worked on in 2013 when we started the business was we worked with ANSTO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, and created a virtual tour of their nuclear reactor. So this had never been done before, and very few people actually have the opportunity to be on the floor of the nuclear reactor.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: So we were invited in, asked to suit up, test our radiation levels going in, and basically shoot the reactor. And then once we had all that footage, we built a virtual tour experience out of that, so students that can’t physically get there can still have an opportunity to explore what a nuclear reactor does and what its outcomes can be. So that was pretty exciting.

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Ben Newsome: That’s really good because I might actually like to go into that—I might have to catch up with you further on this because I’m actually chatting with ANSTO‘s staff on this podcast in a few weeks’ time, actually, to find out what they’re doing and hearing about the virtual excursion. Unreal.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Oh, yeah, it’s fantastic. And it’s got a whole lot of—we created a whole lot of other animations about how the machinery on their site actually works. And as you can imagine, when you see the machinery, it’s like a great big metal box, but all the magic happens inside it. So we actually worked with 3D visual artists to be able to recreate how the process of these machines work with the atoms and what the outcomes can be.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: So with a complex topic like that, it’s really important to bring a lot of creativity into it so it can be explained to a broad audience. So, yeah, you’ll have a great time talking to them about all the amazing products and the amazing experiences they have there. Another really exciting experience we had the fortune to do was we also were involved with Google in America last year and this year.

[00:11:42]
Karen Taylor-Brown: They saw what we were doing here with Careers with Code and the Careers with STEM series and asked us to take the model to the United States and replicate it there. So it was a big learning curve. We got to understand a lot about the diversity challenges there and the goals that a lot of big tech companies have, which is to increase diversity, particularly amongst African Americans and Hispanics. So we really got to deep dive in a lot of cultural areas that we hadn’t had the experience to before.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: And in the States, the critical need for people with these skills is escalating. They expect by the year 2020, they’ll have one million unfilled jobs in technology. So they really need all hands on deck and they just want as many kids as possible to start building, creating, making, engaging with technology and to really consider pursuing careers in that area.

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Ben Newsome: Jeez, if you wanted to grab just one quote straight out of this interview and put it on your whiteboard, teachers: one million jobs required.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: That’s exactly it. It’s a staggering figure. And it’s not—these jobs aren’t just in technology companies. It’s across every business. So it’s agriculture, it’s manufacturing, it’s food technology, it’s education. So every single industry is increasing its number of technology workforce and it’s a great area to be working in, a great opportunity for young people to get involved with.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: And sometimes it’s a matter of connecting at a young age and really opening their eyes to what they can do with technology and STEM in general and help them visualise what a future might look for them.

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Ben Newsome: I mean, what you’re doing actually is highly multi-disciplinary. I mean, you’re a publisher, you’ve got writers on board. Do you have digital content people with you, or do you bring them into the team when needed?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: No, we’ve just—we’re starting to build out our digital side of the business and it’s going to be an internal experience. So we’ve had an amazing small team of people come in and create videos and animations, all sorts of things around that. And we’re really hoping to increase that. We did a survey with teachers last year and we’ll be doing another one this year as well in November and asked them what more we could do.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: We’re in this amazing position, I suppose, where we work with a lot of organisations that want to join us on this journey and share our vision. And they want us to create materials and resources that are going to be helpful to teachers and engaging to students. So we asked in our survey what more could we do, and a resounding response was “make more videos.” So we’ve really taken that on board and we’re creating more videos, so the content we create for the magazine is in the magazine, it’s on the website, it’s in a video format, it’s on social media.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: It’s redeployed across a number of different channels. So digital is a really exciting space for us. We’re actually just about to start working on an app edition of a career finder, incorporating some of the key content of our magazine where we can look at, like I said with the degree finder, you choose your foundation discipline, you choose your X, and then it can bring together a whole lot of our content and present a number of job opportunities that might be of interest.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Complete with starting salaries, pathways to get to those jobs, and a whole bunch of profiles that we’ve interviewed—people that are doing those jobs and connections to people in that area at the moment. So digital development’s really exciting place for us.

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Ben Newsome: That’s so cool. And I can imagine what that will look like when you bring that to your events that you’re planning. What are you going to do with these events? I’m just curious myself just to find out what’s coming up.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Yeah, great. Well, we do have one coming up, in fact, October the 11th, we’ve got a Careers with STEM student mentoring event in Sydney. It’s going to be hosted at the Commonwealth Bank‘s brand new building, and we’ll have a panel of what we call near-peer professionals. So it’s young professionals working in STEM areas who will share a little bit of insight with students around their journey, how they got to where they got, what they find exciting about what they do and what any challenges might have been.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: …And then following the panel, we’ll have tables of students who can connect directly with mentors who work in STEM and ask them anything they like. Really get to the nuts and bolts about what they like doing about it and is it a career for them? So that’s actually available for registration now. It’s on Eventbrite. So if you Google Eventbrite and Careers with STEM student mentoring event, you’ll see the registration page there.

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Ben Newsome: Oh, cool. And what we’ll do is we’ll put that in the show notes for sure because that sounds like an awesome event. Now, I know that because of the nature of podcasts, they’re global. Are there ways that people can connect if they can’t come to the Commonwealth Bank in October?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And we’ll be doing a Facebook Live of that event. So if you follow Careers with STEM on Facebook, we’ll be doing—whenever we do an event, we do a Facebook Live as well. So you can tune in on the 11th of October to see that one, or we’ll have it available on our website afterwards.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: But speaking of global, we’re actually also doing an event in San Francisco in about two weeks’ time to celebrate the new issue of Careers with Code, and that will also be available on Facebook Live on the Careers with STEM website.

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Ben Newsome: So you’re saying you’ve got lots of time, you’ve got not much to do at all.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Yeah, exactly. I sit around thinking, “What could I do today?” Absolutely not. There’s never a spare moment, there’s so much to do, but it’s just the way that I like to work. It’s really fast-paced, but it’s very creative. And being in a small, passionate, agile team, somebody can come in on a Monday morning, they heard a new story the night before, they’ve got an idea about how they might be able to solve a challenge, and we can get on it straight away.

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Ben Newsome: That’s awesome. I’m very curious about how the news cycle actually works. I mean, especially in STEM because, okay, you can have a monthly thing, you could have a fortnightly thing, you could have a daily thing going out. I mean, there’s a lot of effort to pull this stuff together.

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Ben Newsome: How, okay, when you first hear about a particular article, a particular thing that’s come up—I mean, from start to finish, how long does it usually take to pull together to be able to get it out in a really succinct way that people can actually understand? I suppose it depends on what you’re doing, right?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Exactly. It depends what we’re doing. We can get something out on digital really quickly, that same day. Sometimes we go to various events and there might be an incredible speaker speaking at a conference, and we can be writing an article while the speaker’s on stage and have it posted that afternoon on the website.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: The production of our print magazines takes a little longer because we really like to—we spend a lot of time researching the people we want to include in the magazines. We spend a lot of time ensuring our diversity levels are balanced. We make sure we have a minimum 50% female, but also we stretch out and have cultural diversity as well as regional-metro diversity.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: So we spend a lot more time in the production process of a magazine and with photoshoots and everything like that. So it just depends on what we’re making. Digital is fantastic because it’s super fast, super reactive, but I still love print as well because it’s got a, I guess, a rich narrative to it and a very much strategic and thought-out goal when it’s being produced.

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Ben Newsome: So when—like, there’ll be teachers listening here going, “I know some students I’d love to develop in their literacy because they’re totally into their science and they’re very clear that they’d be brilliant science communicators.” I mean, what sort of things could you advise teachers to be considering to do to get kids really ready to enter the science communication field?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Oh, I think get them writing as soon as possible. We’ve had some amazing high school students that have actually submitted articles to us. They’ve approached us and they’ve said, “Love the Careers with STEM website. I just found out about this game developer who’s 13 years old and I’ve got a connection, and could I write a story about them?” And we love that.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: So I would encourage any teachers to really support their students in just getting writing. Not only for the writing experience, but the actual researching and uncovering and developing a pitch is really important for science communicators. And the process that we go through for that is we have a writer, it could be a student that actually emails our editor and says, “This is my idea for a story. Do you want me to do it?” And it’ll be a yes or a no, or it’ll be a “yes, but this should be your lead story here.” And it’s great because then they’ve got a published piece of work on their resume. They can share it, their parents can share it amongst their networks, and it’s something that they can be really proud of.

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Ben Newsome: That’s really useful because I’ve spoken with plenty of scientists talking about yeah, they do this interesting research but getting it out into the media via a media release is completely daunting. At the same point in time, as soon as you get publicity around it, you can then generate some buzz and potentially extra funding.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Exactly. And it is a different skill to a research skill to be a science communicator. We recently had an intern come in and work with us for three weeks and he was actually—he had been a researcher at a university. So he had great writing skills, felt really confident about it, but he had to almost relearn how to write because when you’re writing for the media, you really have to capture your audience early with a staggering hook of some sort. And that’s quite different to what academic writing is like. So it was great to have him on board and really good to see how he evolved his writing styles to suit a different audience that perhaps doesn’t have the knowledge, but you really want to engage with.

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Ben Newsome: Well true. I mean, I was sitting here with a big smile on my face remembering we were told time and time again throughout our degree: passive voice, passive voice, passive voice. It’s always “maybe, maybe, maybe,” whereas you’ve got to be—doesn’t work when you need to grab a headline, right?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: That’s right. It’s all active voice. And we say to scientists too sometimes, even if it’s a maybe, just say you think it’s going to happen. You’re not promising anyone, it’s just your opinion. So we really encourage our writers to really put a compelling story forward and kind of leave the doubt and the passive voices on the sidelines.

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Ben Newsome: I’m going to have to ask you probably the most difficult question you could possibly answer, but in the very nature of your work, you would have interviewed so many cool people doing so many awesome things. So, gosh, throwing you on the spot—and hence me talking for a while so you can think for a little bit—what has been some of the most interesting stories you’ve come across?

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Oh my goodness, yeah, you’re right, that is a pretty difficult question. But in the nature of your work, I mean, you get to interview engineers, doctors, all sorts of people doing wicked things and research that have genuine impact. The stories I love the most are the ones that really demonstrate the STEM+X narrative that we try to promote. So we love hearing about STEM professionals that have found some quirky X factor that they’re inspired by and they’ve brought it into their professional life.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: So for example, in the Careers with Engineering magazine, which is out now, we met an engineer named Nathan who absolutely loves surfing. So he developed a buoy which will go out into the ocean equipped with sensors and will relay in real time data about the swells and the surf conditions to his website, which he can then make accessible to all the surfers along that area. I love that when it’s STEM integrates with a person’s passion.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: There was another example of a woman I met when I was in America putting together the Careers with Code US edition, who’s an amazing coder, she’s worked for some big companies. But her passion was helping people. So she walked away from a career with a really high-profile tech company and she started working for this organisation, a non-profit called Code for America, which was all about making government services more accessible to Americans and to, I guess, disadvantaged Americans. So I love when people have used their skills to help improve the world as well.

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Ben Newsome: I love that you said “quirky” because I was just thinking about an interview we had a couple of episodes ago—just a brief one when we went to the Innovation Games for Sydney Olympic Park Authority. We had a whole bunch of awesome science communicators doing a public event and I spoke with Kelly Simpson who’s doing a PhD in epidemiology, only she stood up on stage and tried to get public to understand what epidemiology was by talking about the mathematics of zombie outbreaks. I went, “Wow, that is one way to grab people’s attention.”

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Karen Taylor-Brown: Absolutely. Yeah, and it’s that quirky X factor I think that can really break down a lot of stereotypes and connect with more people as well.

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Ben Newsome: Ah, that’s awesome. And speaking of connection, I mean, there’ll be people, I’m really hoping there’ll be people wanting to get their students to write in, pitch you. I’d love to see your email box filled with pitches from students from around the world with things that they’ve been doing. I mean, how would they get in touch with yourself or Heather?

[00:24:33]
Karen Taylor-Brown: Yeah, look, I would say just email info@refractionmedia.com.au and Heather and I both look over that account. And yeah, make the pitches exciting, quirky, and really the narrative that we look for is STEM+X. So if you can find the really surprising, unexpected X factors, they’re the types of things we love to read about.

[00:24:55]
Ben Newsome: Well, that’ll be unreal. And I’d love to hear more about what happens in two weeks when you go to San Francisco. I mean, I suspect when this gets published you’ll actually be over in San Francisco at the time when the podcast gets released. So good luck and I’m sure—actually, we’ll talk in past tense—I’m sure you had an awesome time at San Francisco.

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Karen Taylor-Brown: I’m sure I did. Yeah, it was mega successful. Thanks for that, Ben.

[00:25:15]
Ben Newsome: Look, much appreciated Karen for coming along and have a fantastic afternoon.

[00:25:20]
Karen Taylor-Brown: Great. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for the opportunity.

[00:25:23]
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 fizzics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:25:40]
Ben Newsome: How good are Refraction Media? I love how well-produced and well-timed and how thoughtful their articles and magazines and publications really are when it comes to informing people about the world. And hey, go really check out Careers with STEM and Careers with Code. It is fantastic. And I’ve got a couple of learnings out of this. And I know you do too. So in fact, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email. Just drop us a line and it’d be great to hear what you’re thinking about these interviews. But certainly here are three of mine out of this. First up, get your students into writing science articles.

[00:26:15]
Ben Newsome: It’s so good just even just for their thought processes to put them down onto paper and perhaps they’ll be preparing them to be able to become STEM publishers in the future. Number two, there are many, many opportunities for students to find out about possible careers in STEM. And events like Careers with STEM are a great way to learn from peers who are going through that process as well. So definitely go check out that event coming up soon.

[00:26:40]
Ben Newsome: And number three, if you’re a scientist talking with the media, please don’t be afraid to share your opinion. Look, I know that we very much were trained to not always say this is outright how it is. However, when speaking with media, they would like your opinion too. So yeah, present the facts, write it in a way that looks after your industry and looks after what you’ve been studying, but don’t be afraid to project into the future about what might happen. As long as you put the caveat “might” in there, you’re able to insert your own opinion there too. And certainly the more you do that, the more people will find out about what you’ve been doing and researching. And perhaps you might attract some extra funding too.

[00:27:10]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Love your science? We do too. Here’s this week’s education tip of the week. Grab your pencil and get ready to make some notes.

[00:27:21]
Ben Newsome: It’s time for another ed tip of the week and this week I’d like to drill down on what Karen Taylor-Brown was talking about in the interview in regards to how to get your students into science communication publishing—how to actually become a writer for a major science magazine. And that’s going to take some practice. And I suppose it would be worth getting your students used to writing before they hit that big bad world.

[00:27:43]
Ben Newsome: So what does that mean? It’s time to start writing about what you’re doing in your classroom. Now first up, you need to set up some ground rules. You have to do a bit of thinking about what you’re going to do with this blog before you announce it to your students. So straight up, what is the purpose? Are you doing it to be able to make sure that the kids can learn how to write in the science communication world, or is it a vibrant outlet for student expression, or is it going to be part of an assessment task? It’s totally up to you but maybe having that upfront before you start is a good thing.

[00:28:09]
Ben Newsome: Secondly, check out your student’s policy on blogging. Have a chat with your executive, it will actually help you out a lot and it’ll really save you a bit of hassle as every school will have different slight variations about what students can produce and where can they produce it, which brings up the main one: child protection. Make sure you’re doing this blog in an area where it’s safe for students to post their thoughts, their ideas, and critically, photos as well. So make sure that’s all protected and there are a number of different platforms around, so just type in “student blogging platform” into Google and you will find a heap. And I wouldn’t be surprised if your school already has one that they already use and go have a chat with your IT person if you’re wondering about that.

[00:28:49]
Ben Newsome: Now you have to work out how much time are you prepared for students to dedicate towards blogging. I mean, it’s very good to practice their time and effort into writing up their articles and things, but they’ve got to make sure that they’re also doing their other work too. So ideally students should be documenting photos and videos throughout your planned science experiments anyway, keep that aside in a folder for content that they can write up in the first place.

[00:29:13]
Ben Newsome: And before you get the kids writing in blogs, get them to think about: what is their target audience? Are they writing it for the students? Are they writing it for their parents, the broader community, yourself? What is it they’re trying to target their writing for? And that’s really important, especially if they decide that they want to become a STEM publisher one day, they have to think very carefully about who are they writing their information for. And that’s really important.

[00:29:37]
Ben Newsome: So what are the sort of things could they do? Well, they could be doing a blow-by-blow account of a longitudinal science experiment that you’ve been running every week. I mean, that’s the sort of thing where you could be doing crystal growth or plant growth or they could be simply even measuring the weather. It’s just a matter of working out what can they take regular measurements about and what can they write about in the first place.

[00:29:56]
Ben Newsome: They could write up a procedure of how to use a particular science apparatus in the classroom, or maybe it could be about the new digital microscope they’ve been using in class, or perhaps about the astronomy night that you’re preparing for, or maybe what they discovered while doing 3D printing in your maker lab. It doesn’t matter, it just needs to be something informative that other people could actually use.

[00:30:13]
Ben Newsome: Maybe it could be about a special school science visit they’ve done, or a science fair they’re prepared for or just did, or it could be like a bushwalk they just did recently and all the things they discovered. It doesn’t matter, it just needs to be creative. Or even better, maybe they could be writing about a particular area of science which is burgeoning right now. Maybe a bit of futurism could be good in your classroom. Get kids to write their opinion, but hopefully get them to base it in fact as well and steer it towards the reader. So there you go, this is this week’s ed tip of the week: get them publishing and get them prepared for perhaps after school becoming a STEM publisher themselves.

[00:30:48]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re excited about science. Grab a copy of our new book, Be Amazed: How to teach science the way primary kids love from our website. Just search Be Amazed book. It’s available in hard copy and ebook. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s fizzics spelled F-I-double-Z-I-C-S.

[00:31:10]
Ben Newsome: One of the publications they do at Refraction Media is called Careers with Maths and last episode we got to speak with Steve Sherman who runs an outreach programme called Living Maths which is actually based in South Africa and does a lot of work in inspiring students to think logically and creatively when it comes to problem solving. Hey, check out the way he does it.

[00:31:29]
Steve Sherman: I already see this kid, the eyes are lighting up because I’m 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.

[00:32:00]
Steve Sherman: 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.

[00:32:23]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Sign up now for our fortnightly email newsletter. It’s loaded with details on new experiments you can do, STEM teaching articles, new gadgets, exclusive offers and upcoming events. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au, scroll to the bottom and add your email.

[00:32:41]
Ben Newsome: Yes, jump on last week’s episode on the Fizzics Ed podcast. In fact, it’s worth hitting subscribe because we’ve got so many more interviews coming up. Next week we are speaking with Ann Hernandez from the Association of Science-Technology Centers, which is a member organisation with over 600 museums and science technology centres, zoos and aquariums and more. Certainly worth finding out what she’s got to say. And hey, as always, make your science lessons fun, make them as informative as possible and grab your student’s imagination. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome, from the Fizzics Ed podcast and from Fizzics Education. I’ll catch you next week. All the best.

[00:33:12]
AAnnouncer: 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

Question: What is Refraction Media and what is its primary focus?
Answer: Refraction Media is a specialist STEM publishing company co-founded by Karen Taylor-Brown and Heather Catchpole. Their primary mission is to raise engagement with science, technology, engineering, and maths by producing high-quality content—including magazines like Careers with STEM—that inspires young people to consider future careers built on a STEM foundation.

Question: What does the term “STEM+X” mean in the context of career planning?
Answer: STEM+X is a core narrative used by Refraction Media to show that STEM skills are a versatile foundation rather than a narrow destination. The “X” represents a student’s personal passion, a specific hobby, or a global problem they wish to solve. By combining STEM with “X,” students can find unique career paths that align with their interests, such as combining engineering with surfing or coding with social justice.

Question: Why is there such a strong emphasis on diversity and role models in their publications?
Answer: In Australia, only 28% of STEM professionals are women. Karen Taylor-Brown explains that “you can’t see what you can’t be,” meaning a lack of visible, diverse role models often discourages girls and minority groups from entering these fields. Their publications specifically aim to showcase a wide diversity of talent to break down stereotypes and show that STEM is for everyone.

Question: How significant is the projected demand for technology and STEM skills in the global economy?
Answer: The demand is staggering and exists across every industry, including agriculture, health, and manufacturing. For example, it was noted that the United States expected to have one million unfilled technology jobs by 2020. Developing these skills at scale is considered critical for any nation to remain competitive in the future global economy.

Question: How can students get involved with science communication and publishing?
Answer: Students are encouraged to start writing and researching as early as possible. Refraction Media accepts pitches from high school students who find interesting or “quirky” STEM stories. By emailing a pitch to the editors, students can learn to move from academic writing to an active “media voice,” potentially earning a published credit that enhances their resume and builds communication confidence.

Extra thought ideas to consider

Bridging the Gap Between Academic and Public Science Writing
The interview highlights a significant difference between the “passive voice” required in academic research and the “active voice” needed for effective science communication. Educators might consider how to help students navigate both styles. Discussing how to turn a complex lab report into a “staggering hook” for a news article could be a valuable exercise in making science more accessible to the general public.

The “STEM+X” Integration in the Classroom
If “X” is the hook that keeps a student engaged, how can schools better facilitate the integration of non-science passions into the STEM curriculum? Consider ways to allow students to choose their own “X” for projects—such as applying physics to dance or chemistry to cooking—to ensure that STEM remains relevant to their personal identities and career aspirations.

Access Through Virtualisation
The ANSTO virtual nuclear reactor tour demonstrates how digital media can grant students access to high-security or remote scientific environments. This raises the question of what other “unreachable” scientific frontiers—such as deep-sea research stations or remote space observatories—could be brought into the classroom through 3D visualisations and virtual tours to spark curiosity in students who cannot travel to these locations.