Audio Transcript

Published: 26 June 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, June 26). Talking #aussieED & WorldSTEM.co with founder Brett Salakas [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/talking-aussieed-worldstem-co-with-founder-brett-salakas/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:17]
Ben Newsome: Our next guest, Brett Salakas, is a man on a mission. He’s a primary teacher of over 20 years experience in Australia and Southeast Asia, but he also has been heavily involved in social media. I mean, really involved. Think Twitter, think Aussie Ed, and think thousands of teachers communicating on a weekly basis, and look, he’s the founder of the whole thing.

[00:00:41]
Announcer: This is the FizzicsEd podcast.

[00:00:44]
Ben Newsome: Yes, and welcome back to another FizzicsEd podcast. My name is Ben Newsome, and this time we have a bit of a longer interview, but it is worth our time. This time we’re speaking with Brett Salakas. Some of you might know Brett from Twitter. You can catch him on Sunday nights at Australian Eastern Standard Time about 8 o’clock, where he heads up with a team of other educators, the Aussie Ed Twitter Chat. And we’re not talking 5, 10, 15 people. There are some evenings when it gets to hundreds, if not thousands of people, all over the world who are teaching not just in classrooms, but in many different ways. I think you’re going to get a lot out of this. So, let’s cut the intro and let’s just get right into it.

[00:01:24]
Announcer: You’re listening to the FizzicsEd podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

[00:02:19]
Ben Newsome: Brett Salakas, thanks very much for popping on the FizzicsEd podcast.

[00:02:22]
Brett Salakas: Good day. Great to be here.

[00:02:24]
Ben Newsome: Especially considering it’s a Saturday evening, the kids are in bed.

[00:02:31]
Brett Salakas: Never-ending task, but that’s okay.

[00:02:34]
Ben Newsome: It is. For people who don’t know us, we’ve both got young kids. Brett’s flat out as a teacher and he’s given up his Saturday evening, which, firstly, hats off, even though I don’t have a hat on right now.

[00:03:28]
Brett Salakas: It’s all good. It’s quite funny because in normal life, I’m so busy just living day-to-day life, day-to-day routine, and as you say there, teaching. You can be so time-poor during the teaching day or the working day. As you know, Ben, and perhaps some of the people listening in, I like to connect online as much as I can, probably a little bit addicted to it, but that’s okay, that’s my vice.

[00:04:02]
Ben Newsome: Workaholics are fine here.

[00:04:05]
Brett Salakas: I actually find, particularly when you’re talking to people all over the world, Australia in a far-flung corner of the globe and surrounded by a lot of ocean, there’s a significant time zone difference depending on who you’re talking to. Usually if you’re talking to someone in Europe or South America, North America, talking in our evening actually makes it a lot easier for them. I’ve become used to talking once the stillness of the night has come about and I find it actually suits my working habits even better. So, it’s all good.

[00:05:27]
Ben Newsome: I totally agree. At my office we’ve set up a swag, or for me I’ve got a swag in my video conference room and I have definitely done back-to-back conferences to New York and it’s two or three.

[00:05:39]
Brett Salakas: Swag, that’s such an Aussie word, isn’t it?

[00:05:42]
Ben Newsome: Bedroll for those uninitiated.

[00:05:45]
Ben Newsome: It sounds like you’ve brought out some swag, but what are you swimming in gold? No.

[00:05:49]
Brett Salakas: Yeah.

[00:05:51]
Ben Newsome: Lucky you have your Tuckerbox down there or something.

[00:05:53]
Brett Salakas: Jesus, Aussie as now.

[00:05:56]
Ben Newsome: Oh gosh.

[00:05:58]
Brett Salakas: Billy Tea by the side.

[00:06:40]
Ben Newsome: I love Billy Tea. Actually, it makes a good teabag rocket.

[00:06:44]
Brett Salakas: We were chatting offline before we got started. We’re wondering whether we’d go down some tangents and yes, we are. We are definitely going to go down some tangents. We can be Australian before we get into education, hey?

[00:06:56]
Ben Newsome: Why not? I reckon it’s all good. I agree. Actually, to be honest, the time zone things aren’t too bad. West Coast US works quite nicely. To the UK it’s not too bad because it’s almost directly opposite. The Eastern states of the US are very difficult to line up something that’s nice. But usually better during the summer than it is in winter.

[00:07:21]
Brett Salakas: It’s very true.

[00:07:23]
Ben Newsome: Thanks very much for popping on. Some people may not actually know what you do, Brett. We probably should get into that.

[00:07:29]
Brett Salakas: That’s okay.

[00:07:30]
Ben Newsome: Brett, who are you? What do you do?

[00:07:32]
Brett Salakas: I’m a primary school teacher, first and foremost. At the moment, I’m teaching Year 6, looking at 11 and 12-year-olds. I’ve taught a range of different schools. This year I happen to be working at MLC Burwood in Sydney, and that’s an all-girls school. So I’m working with all girls, something I’ve never done before and really enjoying it at the moment.

[00:08:41]
Ben Newsome: Different classroom dynamic there, aye?

[00:08:43]
Brett Salakas: Very different, but absolutely flying through the work. The girls are just, I’ve got a terrific bunch of kids, and at the end of the day, that’s really what counts. They’re loving learning and experimenting, loving no fear, just getting right into it. It’s a beautiful class to teach and just loving it there.

[00:09:04]
Ben Newsome: Fantastic. As a primary teacher, everyone, clearly you love your science, but you’ve got history, art, maths, music, everything else to fit in. How do you juggle all that?

[00:09:58]
Brett Salakas: That’s a rough question, isn’t it? I suppose that’s the whole thing between being a generalist and a specialist. I’ve started to come to understand and appreciate the difference between perhaps having a whole middle school concept. I really get that you need someone who has that skill set for kindergarten, those younger years. But when I was a boy, I left my primary school in Year 4, went off and had a couple of years at an all-boys school.

[00:10:39]
Ben Newsome: Whereabouts?

[00:10:40]
Brett Salakas: I went to a Marist Brothers school. I went to a normal traditional co-educational primary school and then went off and had a couple of years away from everybody, and then went in my senior school to another boys school again. In Australia, we moved away from that model where we were doing that bit of a change in Year 4, and we’ve very much come, I think virtually every school now is K to 6, 7 to 12.

[00:11:25]
Brett Salakas: But if you actually think about it, the needs of a 12-year-old kid in Year 6 are light-years away from the needs of a 5-year-old in kindergarten. But so similar, especially at the start of the year, to the needs of a 13-year-old in Year 7. And that Year 7 kid is probably light-years away from the needs of someone in their final years of study.

[00:12:10]
Brett Salakas: I think that we often talk about this change when children roll over from primary school into high school, and it’s almost time for us to have a little look at the way we have our education system because that transition that a middle school concept allows could minimize that dip.

[00:12:55]
Brett Salakas: I’m very fortunate in the environment I’m teaching at the moment. I am in that middle years program and I teach at an IB school, so they have that whole MYP, the middle years happening. I think it’s a big winner. I’m seeing people actually thriving because of it.

[00:13:47]
Ben Newsome: You’ve been in schools for a long time. Have you dealt with the IB, the International Baccalaureate schools before?

[00:13:53]
Brett Salakas: I’ve been fortunate enough. This is my 20th year teaching, and I was lucky enough that in my 20s, I spent a lot of years travelling. I lived in Southeast Asia for a while. Singapore is almost my home away from home. I feel like I’ve got a second home in Singapore. But obviously a very proud Australian.

[00:14:38]
Brett Salakas: I was fortunate enough to have a bit of experience teaching in a few other schools, just tinkering with Malaysia and Indonesia, but very much being based in Singapore and getting to see some of the international schools and how they operate there, and even doing some work with some of the local schools.

[00:15:10]
Brett Salakas: There’s a broad experience. I’ve been very fortunate in my early teaching years to be able to see not only what other systems were doing, but other cultures and other countries. I suppose I’ve been fortunate enough then to cherry-pick the best of what I saw, and that made the lovely tapestry that is my teaching style. A very East-meets-West teaching style, I think.

[00:15:39]
Ben Newsome: That’s cool. What even got you into it in the first place?

[00:15:43]
Brett Salakas: That’s a funny question. I’m a typical blokey bloke, red-blooded male, love my footy. But a big softy as well and I’ve always enjoyed looking out for those who haven’t been able to look out for themselves and helping people.

[00:16:28]
Brett Salakas: There was just a natural affinity for working with children. It was something that I enjoyed doing, but it’s only something that in the last four or five years that I’ve actually realized I’m super passionate about. It’s like I’ve become more passionate about it each year that I’ve taught and absolutely loving it now.

[00:17:10]
Ben Newsome: Especially when you’re not scrambling, especially in the early years, scrambling to just survive each week, got to get the lessons together and all the rest. Now it’s almost playtime in some ways.

[00:17:21]
Brett Salakas: That’s true. Become a bit of an old hand at a few things.

[00:17:26]
Ben Newsome: Obviously, you love your tech, you love your science. I definitely want to dive right into your thoughts around science and things in the classroom. So, I’ll ask flat out, what are some of the best science lessons you’ve run in a primary context?

[00:18:23]
Brett Salakas: I’m going to jump back a second. Let me give you half a step back and that’ll help me answer that question.

[00:18:31]
Ben Newsome: No problem.

[00:18:33]
Brett Salakas: As you probably know and as some of the people listening in, one of the ways that I have been able to connect with people has been very much on Twitter, but then also through a few other online things. Predominantly through Twitter. A few years ago I set up a thing called Aussie Ed, #AussieEd, and that was a Twitter chat.

[00:19:18]
Brett Salakas: It was right time, right place, and Aussie Ed grew to be one of the more successful Twitter chats, definitely the largest in Australia, and almost one of the largest in the world. We get tens of thousands of teachers joining in every Sunday night. But if I let you know how that actually began. A few years ago, five or six years ago now, I was teaching at a little primary school in the suburbs of Sydney, and we were one of the first four schools in Sydney to do a trial with one-to-one iPads.

[00:20:03]
Brett Salakas: So, we were moving into a brand new thing that Google had released called GAFE and I know a lot of people will be very familiar with it, the Google Apps for Education now. That was brand new and even the word cloud and what was cloud technology was so confusing and obscure. We were right at the cutting edge of using that technology, and it was a very exciting time.

[00:20:48]
Brett Salakas: What I quickly learned was that the usual channels for being able to discuss things, being able to try things and talk, like sitting in the staffroom and your usual network of teachers, no longer gave me the sorts of answers that I needed because so few other people I knew were delving into the sorts of pedagogies that now I face in this digital environment.

[00:21:33]
Brett Salakas: I only had one place to turn, and that was online and there were some online communities. I was able to really connect with those people and I saw so much of what was already happening in places like America, where a few chats were set up and there were a few really niche talks happening in Australia. What I was able to do was cherry-pick what I liked that I saw happening around the globe and create a model that at the time was quite unique.

[00:22:18]
Brett Salakas: At the time no one else was really doing it, and it struck a chord with a lot more people than I thought. I remember my first Twitter chat, I think it was about 20 odd people. The second one we had about 70. The third one we had about 2,000, and then 10,000 and then it just went ballistic.

[00:23:38]
Ben Newsome: And if you talk about exponential… And if listening, you’ve never ever jumped on a Twitter chat on #AussieEd, it is insane. I’ve got no idea how you keep up with it. I almost feel like you should give your team a shout out.

[00:23:53]
Brett Salakas: I do have a fantastic team. In the early days, we had a team of 10 teachers from all over Australia. That’s shrunk now as people’s careers have moved on and they’ve taken new appointments. But I’ve got to say, Zena Teltz, a teacher that I know, I’m fortunate enough to actually have her teach one of my own children several years ago.

[00:24:57]
Ben Newsome: Zena taught your kid, that’s awesome.

[00:24:59]
Brett Salakas: Yeah. So, Zena taught my kid and then Zena and I also teamed up as part of Aussie Ed. I’ve got Rob McTaggart, a man from regional Australia, up in Newcastle. And then we’ve got Maggie Matson, Magdalen, who’s another Sydney girl. And then I know we’re talking about science, probably one of the best science teachers I know, Kelly Hobson, Kelly Hollis, as she goes by now. Probably the most amazing science teacher that I know. A fantastic team, just people who have become my best friends in the world. They’re a great bunch of people and have been able to create something truly special.

[00:26:31]
Ben Newsome: This is a STEM chat too, so going down technology is completely fine. I can see why it grabbed a chord. We know about the teach meets now happen, but you have to actually make an effort to get there on time at this particular place. Whereas Twitter is an app, it’s free and off you go.

[00:27:32]
Brett Salakas: Zena coined the phrase once, and it’s taken off. I see the hashtag now get used all the time, #PDinPJs. Professional Development in Pyjamas. You can sit down in your pyjamas, you got your cup of tea, you have a slice of toast, the kids are in bed, and you can sit down and get inspired. This whole tangent started because you asked about some good lessons. What’s happened from connecting with people on Twitter is that rarely do we actually get to see what’s happening in the classrooms next door. Sometimes you could be with a person for years and not really know what happens in their classroom. But online there is…

[00:28:37]
Ben Newsome: I agree. One of the things that grabbed my attention when I was talking with the Education Changemaker team out of Melbourne, they’ve got a phrase: collective genius. Which is simply just there’s so much around, you just got to tap into it. So many people are doing so much cool stuff.

[00:29:07]
Brett Salakas: That’s a beautiful phrase for what I was about to say. You are inspired on a weekly or daily basis, but online the generosity, enthusiasm, love, and desire to truly share and collaborate with people on forums like Twitter is otherworldly. I’ve never experienced anything like it. You’ve got teachers who are the most keen, passionate, and willing to learn new things and share what they’re doing. You can’t help but be inspired.

[00:30:21]
Ben Newsome: You got all these highly motivated teachers with a lot of knowledge to share, and I’m thinking about just the curation of this knowledge. This stream can get out of hand, like it trends every single time you guys jump on on Sunday nights. How do you collate it so that people who missed the chat get the goodness?

[00:30:40]
Brett Salakas: We’ve all got different roles within the team. Maggie often archives the chats with a tool called Storify. For the uninitiated, Storify is a little tool where you can put in a time frame of a hashtag and it will capture the tweets that you want. You can hand-pick the tweets as well, but you can basically capture entire conversations and store them as a story. On the Aussie Ed website, you can go and there’ll literally be a couple of hundred chats. You want to look at STEM, flipped learning, you’ve got all the different conversations archived there that people are able to peruse in their own time.

[00:32:31]
Ben Newsome: So, it’s almost too hard, you’ve got that much volume of just little tweets going on and trying to work out which ones really grab people’s fancy might be difficult because there’s so much content. But at least thinking about the different chats, obviously they’ve got a theme every week. Which one has clearly touched the nerve of teachers and just gone berserk?

[00:33:31]
Brett Salakas: Different themes for different people. It’s very hard to predict. There are some people, usually people who are quite high up within their own system or network, sometimes they’re very frustrated by a Twitter chat because I always call a Twitter chat a great leveller. You could have someone who has a PhD, someone who’s got 30 years experience in the classroom, someone who’s been out just teaching for a couple of years, and your pre-service teacher all within the same conversation. Sometimes the people who are used to getting up and because they’ve got the authoritative position, are used to saying something and having everyone sitting and nodding and almost too frightened to challenge what’s being said. Twitter in its levelling way, people aren’t judged by who they are, they’re judged by the ideas that they bring to the table. It’s the idea and the concept that gets talked about, not the pedigree of the person proposing it. It’s a huge leveller. And it can be a little bit disorientating for some people.

[00:35:37]
Ben Newsome: I completely agree. You see there’s a lot of conferences these days where there’s almost this back channel happening. A whole another conference happening even in the same room. It’s really handy for the introspective that, I actually don’t mind hiding in the corner just typing away and doing stuff. It helps people who want to just get their word out in a quiet way.

[00:36:45]
Brett Salakas: When you ask what has resonated with people, what often resonates the most is not necessarily the mainstream of the chat. A big chat like Aussie Ed will trend sometimes in multiple countries. But what really is the power is the side conversation. If Ben, if you’ve posted something that you’re trying in your class, I can ask you a further question and we might set up direct messaging or share an email. Those side chats that happen in parallel with the main chat, I think are actually really where the power of the chat comes from.

[00:38:29]
Ben Newsome: It is. What’s cool about it is that you’ll then meet up with these people months, years in the future. I ran into some teachers at a conference in Atlanta. I don’t know, Brett, you know exactly what I’m talking about, the International Society for Technology in Education conferences. And I ran into some teachers that I’ve been speaking with previously. It’s kind of weird to be able to meet people in person. That’s great.

[00:39:04]
Ben Newsome: Just out of interest, you’ve been teaching for 20 years. Trying to single out different things that have worked brilliantly well in the class from a science perspective. Imagine if you had a first-year pre-service teacher about to hit the world. And you want to give them a couple of experiments, “I want you to give this one a go because I know the kids are going to love this.”

[00:40:11]
Brett Salakas: Oh, experiments.

[00:40:12]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, what are the ones that you go, it doesn’t have to be fancy, over the top and wild and bubbly. Just things that every single year you run, it grabs the kids’ attention. I know you’re being put on the spot.

[00:40:37]
Brett Salakas: You need to whisper that one at the beginning before we press record. I’ll tell you now, it’s just so many. But just before I got on to talk with you, we had a little hiccup trying to get our audio sound. I’m fortunate enough to be going off to a conference I’m very excited to go to in Texas called iPadpalooza. Now, I’ve got a day to myself before the conference starts, and I’m going to be in Austin, and I’m just checking out, will I be able to get all the way over to Houston to go to the NASA Space Centre? I’m half-tempted to see if I can hire a car, or just find a little place. I was just on there seeing if they had like a sleep at the space centre sort of thing I can pay for. I think I’m talking myself into it. I literally was just thinking, I’ve got to go over to Houston. I grab as many resources and make a couple of contacts while I’m there because I’ve got space again in term four.

[00:41:40]
Ben Newsome: Seriously, the iPad, just going down the iPad thing. I can talk rockets all the time. My favourite thing is doing bicarb and vinegar rockets with the film canister.

[00:41:55]
Brett Salakas: I’ve never actually done those.

[00:41:58]
Ben Newsome: You seriously?

[00:42:00]
Brett Salakas: Because I don’t know where you get film canisters.

[00:42:04]
Ben Newsome: eBay, eBay’s your friend. We just ordered like 40 of them for about 25 bucks. If you guys just jump on the Fizzics website, type bicarb rocket, you’re going to find it. The beauty about it is, if you vary the amount of vinegar within your film canister, you can ask the kid, if I fill the thing up full with vinegar and you put a bicarb paste in, obviously wearing protective glasses, will it go higher compared to halfway or nearly empty of vinegar? You’ve got the same amount of bicarb and you’re varying only one thing, which is your vinegar. Always, without fail, kids will say the more vinegar it will go higher. But it’s too heavy. Turns out it is actually rocket science.

[00:42:45]
Brett Salakas: Yeah, there we go.

[00:42:47]
Ben Newsome: The kids can actually do variable testing. But just going with your iPad thing, I’d love to go to that conference. I’m off to San Antonio this year as well and maybe I should do a detour.

[00:43:00]
Brett Salakas: I’m arguing between visiting the Alamo or Houston Space Centre. What a choice. I’ve got to get a Davy Crockett coonskin hat and visit the Alamo as well, hey?

[00:43:40]
Ben Newsome: Oh, that’d be just awesome. I feel like it’s not every day you go down there. I may have to do both.

[00:44:08]
Ben Newsome: But going with your iPad thing. You use iPads, we love an app. You can still get apps which will act like an oscilloscope. I think it’s O-Scope Light or something. It measures sound, uses the microphone off your iPad, and you can teach sound waves using just a simple green line which will respond to your sound. If you play pure notes at it, the kids can see wavelength and frequency and amplitude directly off their own voices. We were at a video conference to a school in New York, and they were blown away that we connected up the iPad and kids in New York were controlling my iPad and seeing the wavelengths playing back at them. It’s completely free. In the show notes we’ll throw some stuff down for people to check that out.

[00:45:59]
Brett Salakas: Fantastic.

[00:46:00]
Ben Newsome: iPads are very, very cool.

[00:46:02]
Brett Salakas: For anyone who is interested in checking out iPadpalooza, I know that the very awesome Kathy Hunt and a great lot of teachers up at St Hilda’s on the Gold Coast, every second year, they’ve franchised out an Australian version of iPadpalooza. They did it for the first time last year. So they’ll actually have iPadpalooza. It’s a long wait, you got to wait another 12 months, but in 2018, if you’re keen to check out iPadpalooza on the Gold Coast, you could have a lot of fun.

[00:46:43]
Ben Newsome: The problem is that there’s so many shiny new toys that come out. That’s probably half the issue is keeping focused on what works in your classroom.

[00:46:56]
Brett Salakas: Funny I’m going to say that because you asked me before about what advice to give to a young teacher, and we’re talking about some really cool stuff. At the end of the day, the quality of the pedagogy far outweighs the flashy tool.

[00:47:21]
Ben Newsome: Exactly.

[00:47:22]
Brett Salakas: It’s a trap, it’s way too easy to fall into. You can get all sorts of tools and games and activities, but if it doesn’t enhance the learning of the children, why would you do it? They’ve got heaps of time to be entertained and play games. The time that we have with them in the classroom for explicit teaching and direct instruction is so short and pure and special. You don’t want to devalue that by using a tool that really isn’t going to have an impact on their learning. That old phrase, pedagogy first, technology second. I’m a massive Ed Tech fan, checking out every tool there is, but advice for the teacher starting up: don’t get distracted, pedagogy first, technology second.

[00:49:06]
Ben Newsome: Completely agree. Sometimes there’s all that “let’s make this experiment better”. But Year 5, you get new Year 5s every year, there comes a point when let’s just do the experiment, make sure the kids know what’s going on. It’s a simple trap to get caught in.

[00:50:11]
Ben Newsome: I’m yet to meet a single teacher who’s been in the classroom for greater than 5 years who’s not said that. Everyone says this, and it’s very true. Often when we’re first going in, we see all this cool stuff. The world’s your oyster, and we want to start using all these experiment things, but there comes a point when enough’s enough. Though, going to conferences like the one you’re going to, you’re going to find some fun stuff too.

[00:50:40]
Brett Salakas: Exactly right. You’ve got to sort out the diamonds from the rough.

[00:51:31]
Ben Newsome: Conversely, the thing that often comes up in this podcast is, it’s great to talk about all the wins that you have in your classroom, but it’s only half the story. What comes with the experience is usually the times when things just don’t go well. Just out of interest, and again, I’m just throwing you on the spot because why not?

[00:51:55]
Brett Salakas: Yeah.

[00:51:56]
Ben Newsome: Have you ever had a time where you’ve gone, I really feel this experiment is going to grab the kids’ attention, and it’s just fallen flat?

[00:52:14]
Brett Salakas: I suppose in primary science, not necessarily the experiments per se, but sometimes the learning experiences that I’ve tried to structure around the experiments. The follow-up lessons, the activities, the way that they’re going to document. It’s very difficult sometimes to predict how long students are going to take on certain tasks. Timing is so crucial. Often in science it will be prescribed a set amount of time. You’re pigeonholed into a certain time, you think I’m going to allocate X amount of time and lessons. And then some children go really fast and others go really slow. There might have been a failed experiment or someone away, and they need to redo it. All of a sudden, you’ve got different children at different levels. So you find yourself rushing and chasing your tail just to get it done.

[00:53:00]
Brett Salakas: And then you lose the opportunity to have that reflection. If I’m going to put my hand up and own what I’ve balled up sometimes, it’s probably that I haven’t managed my time sequencing over the length of a program appropriately and given the children the opportunity to reflect and go, what did I learn here? And if I had the opportunity, what could I do better? I’ve just done a fantastic unit on design. We’re building bridges and trying to make products that could stand strong.

[00:53:45]
Brett Salakas: But, that same old trap, it would be beautiful to have that ability to go back and say, okay, this is what we learned, this is what worked, this is what struggled. Let’s have another crack at it and actually apply those learnings to what you’ve got and see how good it is. It’s just so hard sometimes.

[00:54:30]
Brett Salakas: …with this concept of a World STEM Challenge. We were talking before this very chat about finding out what’s happening in the classroom next door. The World STEM Challenge is a call globally to say to all of the teachers who are having successes with STEM in their classroom, let’s share those successes. Make a video, one minute, two minute, three minute, no big deal. In that video describe the lesson, describe your STEM experience, what you’ve done with your class. Let the world know about it. Tell us what worked, tell us what was a challenge. Show some of the kids’ works, get the kids involved in the video if you want.

[00:55:15]
Brett Salakas: And then link it, put it on YouTube or however you want to host your video. Link it at World STEM, and we’re going to make a cachet of all of the best STEM-related lessons that we can gather globally from educators. Even conservatively, if we can get 50 videos or 100 videos over the next few months, literally we’ll have a one-stop shop where a teacher who is hearing all this buzz about STEM, but doesn’t know how to do it, can go on here and see top-notch lessons from educators around the world.

[00:56:00]
Ben Newsome: I’ve got a funny feeling you’re going to get more than 50 or 100 videos.

[00:56:05]
Brett Salakas: I think even, that’s what I mean, even just conservatively, if that’s all that happens, already what a great gift to the educators of the world. Just that small amount. I’m hoping like you, looking through rose-coloured glasses, I’m hoping to be inundated and be a huge success. Over the next few months, I’m going to be trying to bang that World STEM Challenge drum as much as I can in the hope that people go and check out World STEM. You can join on Twitter and look at World STEM EDU. So, @WorldSTEMEDU. Or you can go to the website which is worldstem.co. And there’s instructions on the website there on what to do.