Audio Transcript

Published: October 28, 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, October 28). Neil Bramsen on the importance of primary science education [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education.
https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/neil-bramsen-on-the-importance-of-primary-science-education/

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]
Neil Bramsen: Everyone goes, “Wow,” and science has a wow factor to it. Science is the way to get in. Literacy and numeracy are embedded in science. Everything we see around us, anyone listening, you look around the room, everything around you has an element of design, innovation, materials, engineering, what have you. Science is this way of pulling in literacy and numeracy.

[00:00:22]
Ben Newsome: That was Neil Bramsen, an incredibly motivated primary teacher who is making a massive impact at his school at Mount Ousley Public School. Everything from drones and bird watching through to launching air balloons in Western New South Wales, Neil has done it. He really has travelled all over the world to do it. No wonder he’s got the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Primary Schools.

[00:00:41]
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.

[00:00:58]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Big show this week. We have a very special guest in Neil Bramsen, who is fresh off winning a massive prize from the Prime Minister’s Office. I tell you what, he has been very busy on radio and TV, and that’s going to continue for a while longer yet. He was good enough to drop in to have a bit of a chat with us about what he’s been doing with his outdoor education with his primary school and well beyond that. Bit of an interview here. Definitely get a pen, get a piece of paper, and if you’re walking the dog, you might have to go back into the room and listen all over again because Neil has a lot to share, and it’s well worth our time. Let’s dive right in.

[00:02:23]
Ben Newsome: You have had a flat-out week. Describe what has happened to you.

[00:02:30]
Neil Bramsen: I guess last week was a once-in-a-lifetime type experience. It was the culmination of the Prime Minister’s Science Prizes and being fortunate enough to receive the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science Excellence in Primary Teaching. That was really nice because it was nominated by a couple of parents. That process started many months ago and it was a nice surprise driving down the Snowy Mountains about seven weeks ago to get a phone call outside Cooma to say, “Hey, you’re the winner.” It was like, wow, that’ll top off a great weekend.

[00:03:21]
Ben Newsome: So first you got dubbed in, and then you get called up like it’s the Nobel Prize. Out of the blue, you don’t even know it’s coming.

[00:03:30]
Neil Bramsen: That’s right. Then it was like, don’t say anything for a couple of weeks because it’ll all go through embargo and media and so on. We had a little film crew come in from Questacon and Wildbear Productions. Then it was really nice last week to get to meet with the other teacher, the secondary teacher from Kirrawee High in Sydney. It was great to see two Department schools there. It was just really lovely to share with the actual scientists, who I think are the main achievers in that front. They were just very humble, modest, but inspiring people who love to give back. Their knowledge and depth is something to be commended.

[00:04:20]
Ben Newsome: Well, that’s nothing taking away from what you do, though. You’ve got science educators whose job is to get kids into science eventually. That is an important role, a critical role. Look, these sort of things don’t come in overnight. You’ve been doing this stuff for years. Just out of interest, what sparked people’s attention that was happening down at Mount Ousley?

[00:04:40]
Neil Bramsen: I have been doing it for years. I was thinking the other day, I was explaining or talking to a few staff members and I said to me it’s probably the culmination of 12, 14 years of doing science in the primary school context. Starting out small, basically with an ICT technology drive, but always having that interest in science. I’m an electrician by trade, so I guess there’s a little bit of competence and fun with wires. Not that I’d be rewiring any houses in the near future.

[00:05:19]
Ben Newsome: What made you jump out of that? Ignoring the education for a little bit, I’m always curious about what drives people to do things. You’re a sparky by trade, so an electrician. What decided, “You know what, I’m going to go put my hand in and start teaching kids”?

[00:05:36]
Neil Bramsen: I’m going to have a great story here because I was someone who disliked high school and disengaged in high school. I was always very capable and in the top classes, but I left in Year 10. I remember thinking back that I really didn’t enjoy science. They stuck a science book in front of me, and the science teacher stood at the front looking very bored and hungover. I thought, I’m not really loving this and getting this. I did enjoy geography and a couple of other subjects, but I thought I want to go out and do some other things.

[00:06:18]
Neil Bramsen: I lived in Wollongong and I got offered an engineering traineeship out of Year 10, which sort of went to most people in Year 12. I had a bit of a head start there. I jumped into that and I probably wasn’t the best student at TAFE. After four years of crawling through grease pits and changing motor brushes and so on, I jumped out of being an electrician and went ski-bumming for a few years.

[00:07:01]
Neil Bramsen: I think I fell into outdoor education, which is really what got me into teaching. I was in the UK, I was travelling, and I was teaching canoeing and climbing and all those lovely things in an outdoor ed centre. I was heading back to Australia and I thought working with students is something that’s connected with me. The environment had connected with me, which probably enabled science because environmental education is a passion of mine.

[00:07:45]
Neil Bramsen: Before you know it, you’re back at Uni and you’re a mature-age student in your early 20s. I was fortunate to get posted to Manly Village where I started my teaching career. I’ve sort of come through it circular. I also got out of teaching for a little while and did some sales and marketing within education, and then I got back in again. Obviously, I’ve stayed for the last 10 years and it’s been very good for me because I’m in a place where I need to be. I’ve often said to people teaching is the best job or the worst job in the world, depending on your mindset.

[00:08:38]
Ben Newsome: Isn’t that the truth?

[00:08:41]
Neil Bramsen: Simply because of the effect you have on everyone around you, but importantly the kids. If you’re not the right person, you really shouldn’t be there. But if you are, leverage it.

[00:08:53]
Ben Newsome: You’re a force multiplier for good, or not so good.

[00:08:58]
Neil Bramsen: Totally.

[00:09:01]
Ben Newsome: I’ll tell you what, as an outdoor education enthusiast, you couldn’t have too bad of a run being at Mount Ousley. It’s a beautiful spot of the world.

[00:09:10]
Neil Bramsen: It is. I think I was lucky in that when I was living at Jervis Bay and I was teaching at Sussex Inlet Public School, it had a huge couple of acres at the back of the school with some existent remnant forest and a nature trail cut through. That’s what really enabled me to get back into science teaching and particularly environmental education because I was running bird watching before school for students and parents.

[00:09:42]
Neil Bramsen: That was really well received in that some parents would come up and say, “We don’t get to spend a lot of time with the kids because of our work and shifts and whatever, but this is an opportunity for my son and I,” this was a father, “to spend half an hour bonding in just a different way where they could both come into it from a different angle.”

[00:10:13]
Neil Bramsen: That wasn’t something I was looking for when I started it. It was more just let’s go for a walk, let’s enjoy the bird life, let’s enjoy a bush walk before school. But it started to leverage into something a little bit more. That’s one of those serendipitous discoveries you get in education that keeps you moving forward. Then from Sussex, I was able to build into space science. I got to Honeywell Space Camp. I was never a strong space science person before that. I always looked at the stars and the planets, but I’ve never understood in depth too much. I’ve enjoyed the romanticism of space science and exploration, but I was not a space junkie in the sense of some people that just live for their space education.

[00:11:02]
Neil Bramsen: But going to Space Camp, keeping the science going and then picking up an RFF and technology role, I picked up a Premier’s Environmental Education Scholarship to the States to look at environmental ed and the use of technology back in about 2008. That was a chance to visit some schools in the US and institutions that were starting to use ICT.

[00:11:35]
Neil Bramsen: This was when an iPod was a cool thing and an iPod was a breakthrough in technology. A couple of outdoor centres had birding calls and bird IDs on iPods and it was like, wow, this is amazing stuff. Digital cameras, as ever they still are, were a really good tool.

[00:11:58]
Neil Bramsen: So I was starting to pull together some environmental aspects along with some space science supported by technology where appropriate. That kind of just kept me moving. Then I was lucky to come up to Mount Ousley, which is again in Wollongong. We’ve got a nice suburban area, but we’ve got some really established trees, old growth turpentines. We’ve got some Tawny Frogmouths nesting out there at the moment. I think we counted about 12 birds’ nests today. Two of which had fledglings and birds being fed, which the kids were able to witness, which is lovely.

[00:12:43]
Neil Bramsen: But we’re also pretty close to North Wollongong Beach and we go down there and do marine debris surveys. Students in Years 4 to 6, we’ll take a small group down and we can do an emu walk or a transect study and just look at what the plastics are and other rubbish on the beach. Then just look, is it cigarette butts, are they hard plastics, are they soft plastics? We try and look at what we think is often a clean space, which actually is not as clean as we might think. Still pretty good, but we could always do better.

[00:13:21]
Ben Newsome: So you’ve got a lot going on. With all these different lessons and especially the outdoor stuff, I mean you’re certainly taking your kids well out of the classroom. That’s just awesome to see. What years are you doing that with, for example, the transects?

[00:13:38]
Neil Bramsen: So the last couple of years I’ve been on a Stage 2, which is year three/four and before that I taught Kindy, Kindergarten for a couple of years. But now I’m essentially an RFF role, so teaching across all classes for an hour or so a week, predominantly science, also a little bit of maths, and also doing mentoring and coaching on a quality teaching basis one day of the week, and also a little bit of device use. But being able to run this across K to 6 means, this week is Aussie Bird Count week, I’ve been able to get all the classes out and do a bird survey, using ID charts, capturing some data, submitting that data. We also use the BirdLife app so we can pull out that data down the track and look at say long-term studies and what I’d really like to see is in two, three, four years what is the biodiversity in terms of bird life within the school and is it increasing, is it decreasing? Noisy miners taking over from Indian mynas or what have you.

[00:14:25]
Neil Bramsen: But the way in is citizen science for me because it adds an authenticity and validity and it has a purpose. When the kids see that someone might look at their data—a scientist might actually call upon it down the track, or they can refer back to it in a table form or what have you—there’s an empowering nature to that. It’s something that also gels with parents. It makes it easier to talk about and communicate what you’re doing, as there’s a sense of understanding.

[00:14:58]
Ben Newsome: Well, that citizen science really has boomed. The New South Wales Inspiring Australia manager, Jackie Randles, was on the podcast back in episode four, I believe, talking about all the different citizen science opportunities that are out there. Seriously, there are so many and you can run it straight off your phone. It’s unreal.

[00:15:13]
Neil Bramsen: It is. I think the great thing, as you say there, Ben, is that with the apps these days, any government agency or not-for-profit that might be running a citizen science programme is looking to make data capture easy, or easier. With device use, mobile devices, and mobile internet, it’s very accessible now to go down to the beach or go out to the bush to take photos—at the simplest level, iNaturalist—but also to do some online survey material and push it through. Whereas in the past, it was much harder to do that and probably done more in isolation. In that sense, citizen science is a boomer and I think it’s got a long way to go.

[00:15:53]
Ben Newsome: And tell you what, your passion for science is really obvious, especially for primary kids. Not only did you get to go over to the US for the Premier’s award, you got yourself over there again with a Churchill Fellowship as well.

[00:16:06]
Neil Bramsen: Yes, I did. The Churchill was back in 2013 for 2014 travel. What was really interesting about that is I was looking at… I was teaching maths and science and I’d been using technology to support that sort of teaching. I was looking at particularly what hooks kids in, especially the middle years. In the States, you’ve got that elementary, middle, and high school component, whereas we tend to run primary and secondary. I was looking at the 10-to-14-year-old bracket, particularly within a context of maths and engineering, which really has now morphed into STEM—which is a somewhat overused and abused acronym, I think, at the moment.

[00:16:46]
Ben Newsome: STEM, STEAM, STREAM, MES… name your acronym.

[00:16:49]
Neil Bramsen: I think there’s certainly a place for STEM, but it’s what is the messaging attached to it and what is the context in which it’s being delivered? That’s the important thing. At the time, it was STEM and it was about science, technology, engineering, and maths. What are some of those integrated type programmes, or even standalone programmes, that could support that in middle school? For me, it was looking at some space opportunities such as high-altitude balloon launches, which are great for capturing data because you’ve got a design-and-make aspect. You’re building the receiver box, getting your helium balloon, and launching in a safe area up to 50, 60,000 K. It’s harder to do on the New South Wales East Coast because of flight paths.

[00:17:19]
Ben Newsome: I was going to ask that. In Australia, I suppose you’d have to apply to CASA or something to do that?

[00:17:21]
Neil Bramsen: Yeah, it can be done. A couple of schools I know have done it. They were, I believe, Sydney schools, but they’ve really had to drive out to Western New South Wales to find a clear area. A launch is easy, but recovery is much harder, and you need to get out of a flight path. We’re on the Sydney-Melbourne flight path, so it would not be looked upon favourably.

[00:17:43]
Ben Newsome: You’d make the news for a whole other reason!

[00:17:46]
Neil Bramsen: You probably could do a tethered launch whereby you launch the balloon up to say a few hundred metres or a K, but I think there’s a risk factor there. I’m all for taking risks and learning, but that’s probably one too many for a number of reasons that are pretty obvious. But that sort of thing… in the States, I saw some good things happening with middle schools doing that and I know that programme’s expanded. I looked at High Tech High in San Diego, which was a great influence because of their project-based approach. I was really interested to see that in the mornings, they were running somewhat traditional literacy and numeracy—teaching the nuts and bolts. But from middle session onwards, they were tending to collapse those classes and have maybe two classes together with a humanities/English teacher and a science/maths teacher. You had two subject matter experts there and then they would branch into some project work.

[00:18:31]
Neil Bramsen: I saw some great stuff from Kindergarten through to year six or seven, from really in-depth physics of cars and wheels and axles in the Kindergarten area through to what I really liked—a butterfly garden project for years three, four, and five. Because Monarch butterflies are endemic to California and they’re looking to sustain and breed them to a greater degree, they had a garden with the appropriate plants, but they also were breeding the Monarchs and harvesting eggs and had a real life cycle going. They’d written a little book to go along with it because their documentation is through books and curating content. It’s High Tech High, but it’s not really a device-driven school; it’s tech as in technology for learning.

[00:19:16]
Ben Newsome: Laura McBain was in Australia recently for the Education Changemakers week—Educhange week—down at Melbourne, and just hearing the simplest project work that can be done with very young kids can have a profound impact on the way kids develop as makers and doers, people who are engaged with their world as opposed to thinking it’s all about the books. They’re doing a fantastic job.

[00:19:41]
Neil Bramsen: They are. Project-based learning, as was explained to me when I was somewhat of a newbie to it, really allows an entry point for success for all students because they can come in and do different things within a greater project. In our instance with our butterfly garden, we had an overgrown garden area and we looked at what we might do. We looked at butterflies and the species that would attract them locally. We also looked at some milkweed because we knew that would bring in Monarchs, even though I’m not sure that the species we’ve got is actually endemic to this area.

[00:20:26]
Neil Bramsen: What was fun was the kids… we put a drone up, a Phantom drone, and captured some aerial footage of that area. We then mapped that area to work out the area we were working with. We then had the students in groups design a pathway through, design the arrangement of the shrubs and bushes, the paths, and where benches might go. They were doing a visual aspect—the art comes into it there. We then looked at volume of mulch we might need and volume of gravel on the paths. We looked at what sort of seating we wanted for half a class as a quiet area or a reading area. We sourced some benches that the kids finally assembled that they purchased from Bunnings. We also costed it and the students rang up and ordered the materials from the local landscape supply with the school credit card, put their order in, and watched it be delivered.

[00:21:11]
Neil Bramsen: They really saw that project through. That’s a project that you think you might do in one term, but three terms later you’re still working away. That is the biggest thing with project-based learning: giving yourself as the teacher or instructor time to let it happen. Some of it’s organic and flows off in different directions, but it really is about backward mapping what you do back into the syllabus. We are accountable to deliver the syllabus and I think where schools or teachers find fear is: what does this look like and how do you plan for it?

[00:21:56]
Neil Bramsen: I see what I need to fill in or where I’ve got gaps. Some of that might be real traditional teaching; I’ve got no issue with that. Traditional teaching for me is working with groups of three or four at a small group. It’s very rarely whole-class delivery, maybe for an introduction occasionally. But project-based does offer that way in for everybody; it offers hands-on learning, and everyone has a degree of ownership. You can support and scaffold students at different levels of interest and need, you backward map into your syllabus, and you give yourself plenty of time. That’s my takeaway.

[00:22:30]
Ben Newsome: I bet. And obviously, this sounds incredibly daunting for someone who is brand-new to teaching, going, “I’ve got to do all this stuff”. But then again, you’re 10 years down the track, and then some. How does it… what does it look like? How do I make it work?

[00:22:46]
Neil Bramsen: And I think you start small. And it doesn’t have to be… project-based learning can be a simple thing. It can be as simple as getting new garbage bins for a school. So, you know, one of the things I’ve looked at is a lot of schools have old metal bins. Okay, let’s not just go out and buy them. Let’s give the students ownership. Let’s get the students to research the amount of waste we’re generating. Let’s do some waste surveys. We’ve got some data to play around with. We can then work out how many bins do we need in certain areas of the school? We can then work out the volume of a Sulo-type bin, a contemporary bin. What colours do we want? Are we going to cut slots in the top so it’s easy for kids to put rubbish in and hard for birds to get in and pest birds and so on?

[00:23:28]
Ben Newsome: One of the best art things I’ve seen done with a rubbish bin like that—so the big green bins, for those people overseas just think about four foot high and however many feet wide—but I saw one converted into a fantastic wheel-out solar-powered speaker system, like a PA system. It’s brilliant and the kids painted it up, it’s unreal.

[00:23:51]
Neil Bramsen: And that’s it. And that’s tinkering and making and a bit of STEM in there as well. A lot of this is about—I’ve said to teachers—look for opportunities around the school for you to make a physical change. A physical change is a good one because something is seen and valued. Look for something that’s accessible where success can be achieved in a reasonable timeframe. I think the gardening is a great example. Anything that is… gardening is good because there’s a start point and an end point; you can do it on a term basis. You can look at bigger community-type things; if you’re near beaches, you can do debris surveys. I mean ours was initially through TeachWild and the CSIRO, which was a national project that’s ceased now, but you can still log data. You can still use logbooks and make that happen.

[00:24:40]
Neil Bramsen: And then it’s really… some of it’s teacher passion driven. I think if the teacher has a passion for certain areas of learning, they can run with that. The students can come up with ideas. A lot of it is discussion about what can we do and where can we go, knowing along the way you will make mistakes. And one of the big things within my school at Mount Ousley is we have a huge culture of trust. The principal trusts the staff and the staff trust the students. When people slip up, they get a friendly reminder about what trust is and about responsibility is and about the need to manage learning—for kids to manage their own learning and take ownership of that and for staff to push the kids in a good way and to get out of the classroom.

[00:25:22]
Neil Bramsen: One of the things that’s been interesting with this experience is the pick-up of the outdoor classroom, which was not something I was thinking a lot about, but it’s sort of been tagged “the outdoor classroom”. And we’re lucky in that we’ve just had a new outdoor learning area constructed which has an old surf life-saving surf boat there, a tiny aluminium fishing boat, and a lot of wooden logs in a setup in a campfire approach. There’s a stone wall to sit on and musical instruments. Importantly, because we’re a one-to-one school with devices K to 6, iPads and MacBooks, we’ve built purpose storage for devices outside so that when the kids are doing some art or doing some light reading or numeracy and they’re not using their device at that time, we’re not just going to put it on the ground and run the risk of damage.

[00:26:07]
Neil Bramsen: We’re going to be responsible and put it in a storage area. So we’re trying to think of these things that make it easy. You’ve got to make it easy for students to get out there and you’ve got to make it easy for staff and teachers to take the little risks by putting the infrastructure and the essential stuff in place.

[00:26:23]
Ben Newsome: I love how you’re allowing people to fail a little. I mean that’s so important from the teachers all the way down to the students. I know for a fact the number of times I’ve messed stuff up, it keeps on happening. But just even thinking back to all the different lessons that you’ve run day in and day out, is there anything that sort of pops to mind where you’re going, “You know what, looking back, what was I thinking?” and it just went completely pear-shaped?

[00:26:51]
Neil Bramsen: I’ve never had a real biggy. I was thinking about this and I can’t say I’ve had anything that’s scared the living daylights out of me. I’ve done a lot of rocket launches with model rockets and bottle rockets. Occasionally I can think of launches that have… the bottle rocket, we’ve had a couple of bottle rockets go a lot further than I thought they would in terms of distance and velocity because the students have got the nose cone weight balance right, which is a real key with bottle rockets. And I’ve thought, “I’m glad that didn’t end up over the fence in someone’s backyard while they were putting the washing out”.

[00:27:26]
Ben Newsome: Have you ever seen the ones that are multi-staged? Where you have bottle rocket on rocket and then rocket again and the thing just launches three or four hundred metres in the air.

[00:27:32]
Neil Bramsen: We joined in the Illawarra Aeronautical Association… there was a school rocketry competition at Wollongong Uni about eight weeks ago and we were fortunate enough to join in with other schools from the state and there were some very long-distance launches that disappeared into the trees. It’s interesting to see what you can do with a bottle rocket when you get it right and you get the right amount of pressure in there. A lot of my things have been fizzes as well, when the kids have built their model rocket and we’ve gone out to launch and the igniter hasn’t taken. You’ve got to just check it carefully and re-do it. It’s usually parents and people waiting on hand with expectation, so there might be a three-minute delay for safety while you check things and re-launch.

[00:28:12]
Neil Bramsen: But I do a lot of science, I guess, and I always say to the students with science, if something doesn’t work or come to what you’re expecting, that’s fine because with a hypothesis it doesn’t always eventuate as you might wish or think. And when we do things in class, we might do something as simple as elephant’s toothpaste, for example, using hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), detergent, and yeast. We might get a bigger reaction than we thought or we might get a lesser reaction because we changed an ingredient. With all the sciencey stuff I do, the kids tend to enjoy it because it’s that visual stimulation.

[00:28:43]
Neil Bramsen: It’s like when I was at school and I watched the Curiosity Show or Julius Sumner Miller. Everyone goes “Wow” and science has a wow factor to it. Science is the way to get in—literacy and numeracy are embedded in science. Everything we see around us, you look around the room, everything around you has an element of design, innovation, materials, engineering, what have you. So science is this way of pulling in literacy and numeracy and it shouldn’t stand alone as it sometimes does. And I said at the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science in my speech that we have far too much of a focus on standardised testing at the expense of the other learning areas. And it’s sad when science—and particularly in the States—science might be pushed away because there’s a pressure to deliver in literacy or numeracy in some measurable way that everybody is then judged on.

[00:29:15]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I think we can’t hear it but I believe there’d be applause right around the world listening to this podcast right about now because change is coming. You can see it happening. It’s going to be a long process but it’ll get there.

[00:29:21]
Neil Bramsen: And you do need rigorous assessment and you do need accountability and you do need programming. Nothing this is… you’re not winging it. It’s done with purpose. But you don’t have to get yourself so tied down in a textbook or programme that you’re too scared to deflect from that programme or diverge because if you don’t do instruction three of page four of lesson five, the world will collapse or your supervisor will jump on top of you and say you’re a bad teacher or bad person. If they did, they’re a bad supervisor. I think some programmes, such as PrimaryConnections, are a great jumping-off point for people developing their skills and confidence and I think there’s a great place for them. But to me, they’re always a jumping-off point and they shouldn’t constrain other ideas, options, and ways of delivering things innovatively.

[00:30:08]
Ben Newsome: Which I think was what PrimaryConnections was always designed to be. It’s great for some who build a lot of their curriculum around it, but it was really designed for the people who want to really deep-dive into science. It’s a good starting point, like the diving box off of a board into a pool.

[00:30:23]
Neil Bramsen: That’s right. And I think I only reference PrimaryConnections because it is probably one of the more well-known programmes within Australia and with a lot of justification and out of the Academy of Science, so it is a really strong piece of work. I would just like to see everyone use that maybe as their base and then complement and extend with their own teaching, learning, and ideas. And then you get the kids smiling and laughing and going, “I’m enjoying this, I want to…” It’s using the language, “You are a scientist, you will think like a scientist, you are a mathematician.” Let’s use that metalanguage of maths. Let’s have good deep conversations and really think about what we’re doing here.

[00:30:45]
Ben Newsome: With this sort of platform that you’ve got, obviously there is a bit of a loudspeaker to you which is fantastic and so hopefully people are listening Australia-wide and beyond. I guess that inevitably means that you’ll be put in various university lecture theatres and all that sort of thing. Imagine if you had one minute, maybe two, two minutes tops where it’s like, “Right, pre-service primary teachers, this is my one piece of advice I’m going to give you, please listen to it and take it to heart.” What would you say if you’re only given a short window of time to these people who are about to influence our kids?

[00:31:21]
Neil Bramsen: Yeah, I think the message is you have to hook kids in the learning. The more that you can hook them in and engage them in hands-on, exciting, and stimulating activities—it is literally giving them a buzz—then that’s your starting point to drill into your deeper, heavier learning without doubt. It’s also to get outside and use the environment around you; I think we neglect that far too often. Learning—and this is important for both teachers and students—needs to be a balance of fun and learning. I want my students to have fun, and I want to have fun. I want to see learning within my students, and I’m always learning as well. So I always have that scales approach: when you approach a lesson, are those scales balanced? Are you having fun within your learning? Is there learning happening? Or is there too much fun at the expense of some deep learning? It’s about getting that balance, but it is about having fun and enjoying what you do. That’s my takeaway, having been in and out of teaching when I wasn’t enjoying it.

[00:31:25]
Ben Newsome: I bet. And I reckon the fact that you scale all your lessons that way means you’re not really working, you are just having fun and getting outcomes at the same time.

[00:31:34]
Neil Bramsen: That’s right. I mean, I think when you are doing what you enjoy, particularly within the science, environmental space, and STEM, I do enjoy what I do. And working with kids who are not always… we’re not always looking for easy kids or the best kids. We want everyone to be exposed to this stuff. Often the kids who someone else will say are trouble or they had difficulty managing, if you give them the right learning activity or exposure, then suddenly all that trouble disappears because you’ve hooked them in. Now, it’s not going to be the case for everybody, but in a lot of students, you really can bring them that little bit closer and have them buy into school, which is what we want so that they’re set up for secondary and wherever that may take them.

[00:32:16]
Neil Bramsen: Secondary is a tricky one because you do lose kids in secondary. I think the nature of secondary is far less flexible and open than the primary environment, and I’m glad I don’t teach secondary.

[00:32:32]
Ben Newsome: Well, and I have. I definitely used to be a high school science teacher. But I’m just thinking now even about our role doing outreach with our company. Some of that brings us into the behaviour schools and juvenile justice centres and places where things have clearly gone wrong for the kids for years upon years. Often the teachers have brought us in going, “If they get the science, that’s great and we’ll be very happy, but to be honest, we just want the kids to stay in the room for more than five minutes without fighting.” When you’ve hit that level, you do need something incredibly engaging and I must say science is such a vehicle for that. It works well.

[00:33:11]
Neil Bramsen: It is. It’s because it is hands-on and it’s visual learning. It can be complex or it can be presented simply. Some of the simple things, like milk and food colouring and a bit of detergent, everyone goes “Wow.” It is such a simple way in and a safe way in.

[00:33:48]
Ben Newsome: Totally, and it works with adults too. I mean, I’ve got to speak at a Rotary function and they’re going to love that. I’m doing that tomorrow night, actually, with a number of Rotary people. It’s a gimmie of an experiment, but gee, it’s got some rich meaning when you actually pull it apart and go into it.

[00:34:03]
Neil Bramsen: Exactly, and there’s so much out there in terms of all the everyday things we use around us, and particularly with design and make challenges, which obviously is the engineering design process, which we didn’t do a lot of years ago. So I think my goals now are to balance the design and make, the engineering design. We want our students to be computational thinkers. That’s a biggy for us that will be reflected in our school plan in the near future.

[00:34:41]
Neil Bramsen: But that’s not necessarily coding and app creation. That’s certainly an accessible way into it and a very obvious one, but I certainly wouldn’t want the idea that everyone has to make an app to be the sole driver of coding and computational thinking, because there’s much more to be done than that. Having that logic thinking process and being able to apply that to a range of learning areas and a range of opportunities is what it’s about.

[00:35:08]
Neil Bramsen: And coding is one way of getting there without doubt and it is a good way with the likes of Lego, Sphero, Ozobots and what have you. I don’t think it really matters which toy you use; it’s what do you get at the end. So computational thinking is a biggie for us, continuing to drive students to be critical and creative thinkers, to be resilient. Our students are used to the word failure; we want them to fail forward in the sense that when you make a mistake you look to how that can help you down the track. Failing forward is the biggie and that delivers resilience, another somewhat overused term I guess, but an important one.

[00:35:53]
Neil Bramsen: So just many, many opportunities arise when you get this stuff working well and when you have your staff on board, you have your principal on board and the community backing you. It obviously makes things a little bit easier as well.

[00:36:13]
Ben Newsome: I kind of wonder, especially when I speak with highly experienced teachers, what would happen if they had this never-ending pot of money, what a school would look like. I mean, just trying to project in the future, imagine what it would be like if you were given full reins of an account and we’re not going to tell you how much is in there, just keep spending. But it doesn’t have to be that extreme. I kind of wonder what would schools look like if teachers had complete control and a never-ending supply of cash? What would it end up looking like? Or would it not actually be as full-on as people might envisage?

[00:36:47]
Neil Bramsen: I don’t think the spending would be the be-all and end-all. There’d still be a fair bit of money left in any account that I was using, even if I didn’t know what was in it. I’m in an older style school that was built in the 60s, so infrastructure-wise I would look to something that’s more contemporary with flexible spacing, flexible learning spaces, comfortable seating. Our students work in the hallways, they work on sofas, they work on bean bags; they can work pretty much anywhere as long as they are taking responsibility and ownership for their learning. We don’t have enough desks in each classroom for all the students for the sheer purpose that we don’t want anybody falling into the trap of thinking they can teach to all the kids at a desk.

[00:37:37]
Neil Bramsen: So in any of our classrooms you will find seating for well, anything from a quarter to about half the students at one given time. The other students could be sitting on the floor, they could be at a stand-up table, they could be on their project work while the teacher’s working on literacy and numeracy. So it is very differentiated, which is what learning has to be. But within that, you know, we’ll be receiving some award money from this prize and initial discussions are that we will be putting a little bit into resources along the lines of probably some Lego robotics because I think that is still probably the best quality product that offers scope.

[00:38:22]
Neil Bramsen: But the vast majority of that will go into developing teacher capacity and sustainability through enabling me to do a little bit more mentoring and coaching and team teaching with individual teachers in terms of using outdoor spaces and indoor, so that all the teachers have the foundation. And a lot do, I mean we’re pretty good here, but you can always do a little bit better. We’re very strong on teacher professional learning and I think driving teacher professional learning in whatever way is needed is what gets you there. Because it is the teacher in front of the students that makes the difference. It’s not all the gee-whiz bang furniture, toys and other things. They’re tools to help. We’re one-to-one, but we don’t buy the devices; students bring in their own BYOD and we’ll support those students that cannot do that as part of equity.

[00:39:13]
Neil Bramsen: I think money is about professional learning and then about developing teachers as leaders so that all teachers can share and lead back within the school. We’ve done a lot of that work and it’s been quite positive in terms of when we run workshops and professional learning, any teacher might be up there as the leader. It’s not always the principal or the assistant principal running the show and I don’t think it needs to be that anymore. It’s not a power structure that says I’m stronger than you. It’s about everyone taking ownership and having an interest and then building their expertise and then sharing that back. That makes the whole school a stronger and better place. And then you feed that back into the students as well.

[00:40:01]
Ben Newsome: That’s fantastic and I must say, in different words but effectively the same way, every single person who’s been teaching for long enough says invest back in the teachers. They rarely ever say the building. If you just look after the people who are doing the teaching, everything else will flourish as a result. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve only got access to water, sticks and string.

[00:40:27]
Neil Bramsen: That’s right, and everything comes down to culture—the culture of the work environment. We have a strong culture of trust, a strong culture of risk-taking, and we’ve got a reasonably progressive outlook on educational pedagogy. We have a good team of people that fit that mould. You know, we have people who are the right fit for the school and that is so important. Investing in the right people initially through recruitment is important, but then investing in their professional learning and a commitment to allowing them to share back is vital as well. That’s that culture of trust and responsibility. Then people feel they’re in a place where they’re welcomed and wanted. The students feel that and then the community feels that. When you’ve got the community behind you, it’s very hard to go wrong.

[00:41:13]
Ben Newsome: Fantastic. Look, Neil Bramsen, thanks so much for jumping on this podcast. Hey, I guarantee there’s going to be someone out there who’d love to get in touch with you, so how might they get in touch?

[00:41:25]
Neil Bramsen: Okay, well the easy way is the Twitter handle which is @galaxyinvader—G-A-L-A-X-Y-I-N-V-A-D-O-R as it is. Galaxy Invader, a great old game from the 1980s.

[00:41:33]
Ben Newsome: I thought that’s what you were doing. Have you got the symbol there instead of your face? Have you got like a logo?

[00:41:39]
Neil Bramsen: No, I’ve just got the Galaxy Invader there. That I had before I was even interested in space and so on. I thought, “That’s a cool galaxy invader.”

[00:41:44]
Ben Newsome: I love Galaga. Galaga or Galaxian, that’s my favourite fish and chip shop. I’m a kid of the 80s, I love that thing.

[00:41:52]
Neil Bramsen: That’s right. So that’s an easy way. But obviously my email and that would be my work email, which is neil.bramsen@det.nsw.edu.au. And I think there’s probably also a blog, which—let me just check that because I sometimes get that wrong—neilbramsen.edublogs.org. So I tend to keep that… it’s not a weekly update, I’m not that type of blogger, but I tend to post on that once a month or so as interesting things are happening within project-based, purpose-based science teaching and learning.

[00:42:31]
Ben Newsome: No worries. And we’ll be sure to put all those links in the show notes so everyone can go check that out because you’ve got a wealth of stuff. I’ll also put a link through to your Churchill Fellowship report as well. People can dive right into what you’ve been doing with—yeah I know it’s the label—the outdoor education classroom or whatever they’re calling it, but the reality is how to get kids involved in their learning, period. That’s what it actually is.

[00:42:53]
Neil Bramsen: On that note, I think we should also put a plug in for the likes of Churchill Fellowships, Fulbrights and other things that different countries offer. If you are keen to really extend your professional knowledge, it is great to visit others. You get to a point in your career where all your learning comes through networking and through sharing back with fellow peers at a level of expertise and interest. Some of my best learning has really come through networking from people I’ve met overseas or in Australia. So don’t be shy of going for those opportunities and backing yourself and then continuing to build your own professional portfolio as you learn more and you can give more back.

[00:43:33]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. And I will actually put some links into that. One that comes to mind is churchilltrust.com.au. That would be one to definitely check on that. I suppose just use your favourite Google version and type in Fulbright or Rhodes or whatever. You’ll find something out there. But yeah, there are a lot of opportunities. And they don’t have to be the explicitly elite programmes either. There are some great exchange programmes that happen within states.

[00:44:07]
Neil Bramsen: Yeah, it’s just about reaching out. The more you reach out as a professional, as an educator, and as a person, the more you get back. Get involved with your associations, the teaching associations. That’s where it’s at.

[00:44:19]
Ben Newsome: Alrighty. Well, thank you very much, Neil, for popping in. I know you’ve got stuff to do, and look, you’ve got birds to count too.

[00:44:26]
Neil Bramsen: I do, although I might let them rest for a little while as I’ll let my legs rest as well.

[00:44:30]
Ben Newsome: Fair enough. Well, I’ll tell you what, much appreciated, Neil, and look, we’ll talk soon. Catch you later.

[00:44:35]
Neil Bramsen: No worries, Ben. Enjoy the birds. Alright, thanks, Ben.

[00:44:38]
Ben Newsome: Take it easy, mate.

[00:44:40]
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.

[00:44:56]
Ben Newsome: How good was that? Gotta love how enthusiastic Neil is with his students. I mean, that outdoor education thing is just brilliantly done, brilliantly instigated. And more importantly, it’s not just about him and his students; he’s spreading the message far and wide. And hey, Neil, well done. That was just a great interview, and I hope everyone listening got a lot out of it. Trust me, I certainly did.

[00:45:20]
Ben Newsome: Hey, I’m going to go through my top three learnings, but I must say, I don’t know even how to bring it down to three learnings because there was a lot more than that. But hey, look, we’ve got to go from somewhere. So first up, learning number one for me was: scale. Use the scale. Use fun versus learning. Are your lessons only about fun and not really getting into the true learning, or are your lessons too much about the learning and the kids are looking a little bit bored?

[00:45:48]
Ben Newsome: Constantly using that scale as a metric in your own head going, “Are the kids engaged because they’re having a bit of fun? That’s a good thing. But are they having too much fun and maybe missing the deeper meaning?” That was a really good idea and well worth putting into your classroom.

[00:46:03]
Ben Newsome: Hey, number two, and this should really stand out massively: use the outdoors. Doesn’t matter whether you’re using Kindergarten kids, Year 12 kids, adult learners. Using the outdoors. Even if you only go a little bit outside, even if you’re in a concrete jungle in the middle of a city somewhere, look up. There’s going to be birds, there’s going to be stars. There is the environment itself that you can use in some way. Kids love it.

[00:46:28]
Ben Newsome: And actually, tell you what, getting outdoors is actually a bit of a circuit breaker for your class. It gives them a bit of a time to refresh, get their brain charged so they can head back into class and do some other things. And mind you, I’m going to do this as learning 2B. The fact that Neil is restricting the number of desks in their classrooms is a great idea. The ability for kids to cycle around and have different positions and poses within their classroom is a great thing.

[00:46:55]
Ben Newsome: Hey, learning number three, or I guess well, learning four or whatever we’re going to say, is invest in your colleagues. I was very interested to hear what Neil had to say if he had this imaginary bucket of money that just kept on giving. Rather than worrying about the buildings and resources and tech and all these other little bells and whistles, he went straight into centre: invest in the teachers, invest in the profession. And I must say, that is just brilliant.

[00:47:22]
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.

[00:47:34]
Ben Newsome: Yes, considering how passionate Neil Bramsen is about the environment, I think it’d be remiss of me not to actually talk about what you could do when taking students outdoors and potentially even on a bush walk. So, here are some ideas that can get those kids really thinking about their environment and some little lesson activities that’ll help boost it along too. So, here we go.

[00:47:54]
Ben Newsome: So first up, before you go out in the outdoors, make sure people know where you’re going and that the first aid’s all dealt with. So knowing that, what are you going to do with the kids when you take them outdoors? I’d say first up is, rather than looking for the big things, how about consider looking for the little things? You’d be amazed at the amount of biodiversity that can be found in leaf litter. Just get kids to wear gloves and get some tweezers and some sorting trays and the kids can start looking through all the leaf litter, all the soil for all the quite amazing amount of life that can be found underneath shrubs and bushes and trees and things.

[00:48:31]
Ben Newsome: Try different vegetation types. Do you find more things under a particular shrub than another? Have kids look through it. And look, if you want to be a bit more rigorous, a bit more scientific, maybe bring along some things that can act as a quadrat. That could be just a series of rulers taped together, or if you want to get a bit fancy, I’ve even seen people cut up some rebar, some Rio mesh, which you often see put into concrete. Yes, you can get some people to carry that along and act as a formal quadrat as well. But there you go. Jumping into the leaf litter and have a bit of a look.

[00:49:06]
Ben Newsome: Speaking of little things, bring yourself along some ice cube trays, some spoons, and some dip nets and little things like that. And get the kids to see if they can do a bit of sorting through some aquatic organisms that they might find in a creek or lake or dam as they go along. If you’ve got an identification book along with you, that’ll help you out trying to work out what is that little larval specimen that you found or that tiny little thrip or something that you found.

[00:49:33]
Ben Newsome: Just make sure the kids have the right safety wear and all the rest of it, digging out amongst the reeds. But get them to actually have a bit of a look and you’d be amazed what kids can find when they look in the aquatic area, not just in the terrestrial environment.

[00:49:48]
Ben Newsome: Hey, as you’re going along, see if you can bring along a couple bits of equipment to take readings of relative humidity, temperature, and wind speed and all that type of thing, especially if you’re ascending a mountain or hill or something like that. You’d be amazed how many data points you’d be able to get out of a bush walk and hey, if you happen to own a data logger, this is really handy too. And tell you what, it brings a whole ‘nother IT aspect into your bush walk.

[00:50:14]
Ben Newsome: Hey, if you get a chance, especially if you go to school camp, maybe you could take kids out on a spotlighting mission. Go and find some arboreal mammals, go find some things that are hanging out in the trees and see what you can find. Just be sure to keep to a well-formed track so no one trips over and bring enough decent light so that you can find your way back, but also so you can find in amongst the bush all of the hidden creatures.

[00:50:39]
Ben Newsome: The only issue with this particular idea is kids tend to be just a little bit excitable. We all know that as educators, but really when they go spotlighting they really are. But the problem with that is that unless they’re quiet, they’re likely to lose the animals because the animals are just going to get out of there before they even turn up. They’re going to hide. So you have to give them a bit of a heads up about being quiet as they walk out.

[00:51:02]
Ben Newsome: Hey, when you go out there, and Neil mentioned this in his discussion about using iPods, listen for things. There could be frog croaks, there could be bird calls. Bring a smart device along so you can record those sounds and then jump onto some apps to work out what that thing is. Especially if you’ve got a naturalist with you and you know what, ask your local National Parks and Wildlife Service or similar thing. You might be able to have someone along who can tell you exactly what you’re doing. Bring along some binoculars, bring along a copy of a local bird identification book. It’s really, really handy.

[00:51:33]
Ben Newsome: For those who really want to bring in a bit of maths, you could have kids measuring the heights of trees using a clinometer. That’s kind of handy. And if you’re not sure what a clinometer is, just type in clinometer into Google and you’ll be able to find it, it’s actually not too hard.