Audio Transcript

Published: November 16, 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, November 16). Teachers helping teachers [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education.
https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/teachers-helping-teachers/

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]
Cherine Spirou: You also have to start getting yourself a network. It does not work if you don’t have a network of teachers, and that’s one of the hardest things that you can get. A network of teachers is something that you need to have to be successful.

[00:00:14]
Ben Newsome: Creating a network of teachers is exactly what Cherine Spirou has definitely done. She’s got hundreds of teachers all over New South Wales working together for the good of their students. Let’s find out what Lachlan Macquarie College is all about.

[00:00:25]
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.

[00:00:42]
Ben Newsome: Welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. This week is yet another big week because we’re speaking with a great guest, Cherine Spirou. You might know her or have run into her through the Lachlan Macquarie College. That is a group that works in partnership with the Western Sydney University School of Science and Health. They run lots of events. It’s all about year 12 chemistry days, year 8 gifted and talented science days, running teacher events and more, just like a TeachMeet.

[00:01:18]
Ben Newsome: We’re talking genuine conferences over several days where teachers show teachers what they do in their classroom. It’s really about helping teachers get students passionate and knowledgeable about science and mathematics. She’s done a fantastic job. So without further ado, let’s listen to Cherine Spirou. She’s got a lot to teach us.

[00:01:51]
Ben Newsome: Cherine Spirou, welcome to the Fizzics Ed Podcast.

[00:01:55]
Cherine Spirou: Thank you.

[00:01:56]
Ben Newsome: Thanks very much, especially seeing it’s 3:30 in the afternoon. You’ve just got all the kids out of the school. You must breathe a sigh of relief occasionally in term four.

[00:02:06]
Cherine Spirou: That’s right. Term four is a lot easier for us at the moment. Although it’s busy, it’s also very relaxing in some ways.

[00:02:16]
Ben Newsome: True, the end is in sight, at least for another year.

[00:02:21]
Cherine Spirou: That’s right. We roll over into our new timetable at the end of week seven.

[00:02:26]
Ben Newsome: There’s a lot of schools that do that.

[00:02:28]
Cherine Spirou: We start a whole new timetable in week seven. For us, it’s great because the kids are not disengaged; they’re engaged with the new syllabus, new curriculum, new classes, everything. It’s really good for them.

[00:02:45]
Ben Newsome: Good fun. So Cherine, there’ll be some people here who haven’t met you, and I also know full well there’s people around the state that certainly have. But just really quickly, Cherine, what do you get up to?

[00:03:01]
Cherine Spirou: At the moment, I have two roles. I’m Head Teacher Science at Fairfield High School in South West Sydney in Australia, and I also coordinate a science and maths virtual college called Lachlan Macquarie College. We run programmes for primary school from stage three all the way to stage six in science and mathematics.

[00:03:26]
Cherine Spirou: Some examples would be our chemistry days, our gifted and talented days for both maths and science, and professional development for the staff. It’s been going since 2008, but I joined in 2011.

[00:03:44]
Ben Newsome: I was at one of your big conferences a couple of weeks ago at the Novotel in Parramatta. That was a lot of fun.

[00:03:54]
Cherine Spirou: That’s one of our biggest events. It’s a science and maths conference for the whole of New South Wales state, for both primary and secondary teachers. We’ve only just started offering it to primary teachers, so we’re hoping that the word gets out there and we get more primary teachers. We’ve got our next one booked next year for the 19th and 20th of October at the same place, and we’re already starting to organise the conference. Hopefully, it’s bigger and better than this year.

[00:04:29]
Ben Newsome: What I loved about that conference, it wasn’t just a “chalk and talk”. It wasn’t just “here’s my PowerPoint, now go to sleep.” You actually got to do stuff, which is always much better for us types.

[00:04:42]
Cherine Spirou: We believe, as a committee and myself as coordinator, that teachers teaching teachers is the best way to do it because they know it’s all about hands-on and what works out there. We ensure for the conference that we run beneficial workshops, allowing teachers to take something back with them, whether it’s about leading a faculty, things on STEM, the new syllabus in science and mathematics, or engaging students.

[00:05:15]
Cherine Spirou: All of those sort of workshops we know that teachers can take back with them. We make sure that we get people that are known as well, so that the teachers attending know they’re quality and that they know what they’re talking about.

[00:05:33]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. Obviously, I want to find out more about what goes on at Fairfield High School and with your virtual college, but I always wonder, what got you into science in the first place? Think back well before you even left high school. Why science? Why is this your thing?

[00:05:53]
Cherine Spirou: Honestly, I’ve always liked science. My mother’s an English teacher, my father’s a maths teacher.

[00:06:00]
Ben Newsome: Oh, you were doomed from the start!

[00:06:03]
Cherine Spirou: Yes, and my sisters are both primary school teachers. At school, I did physics and chemistry. I really loved chemistry when I was in year 11 and 12. I excelled in that, came second in the course, and I really loved the science part. So I thought I’d go into a science degree and I did a Bachelor of Science at Western Sydney University. Back then it was the University of Western Sydney.

[00:06:28]
Cherine Spirou: I graduated from there with a major in chemistry. As you said, I was doomed to it, and the lifestyle of a teacher is the best thing ever. I would never give up my profession; I love what I do. I did a Graduate Diploma of Education majoring in secondary education back in 1992 and I haven’t turned around since. I’ve never gone back into the lab. I love what I do. Teaching is for me.

[00:07:02]
Ben Newsome: And it really shines through. That’s what I meant by “doomed”. My mum’s a teacher, my aunt and several uncles are teachers, and it’s almost a family heritage that you often find when you ask teachers why they got into it, inevitably there’s been someone who’s influenced them from a very young age.

[00:07:22]
Cherine Spirou: Absolutely. When your parents are both passionate teachers, it flows on to you as well. I went a bit further; I became a Head Teacher. Neither of my parents became Head Teachers, nor my sisters, but I like to transfer the knowledge I have to the younger staff. I’ve got a staff of 13 here at Fairfield, which is a pretty large school, and we have the largest faculty in the school at the moment. We’re larger than English, which is a compulsory subject.

[00:08:01]
Ben Newsome: Well, that’s awesome! A growing faculty, that’s fantastic.

[00:08:07]
Cherine Spirou: This year I have 23 senior classes at Fairfield High School under our staffroom. We’re pretty happy about that.

[00:08:21]
Ben Newsome: That’s fantastic. So you’d have a lot of feeders coming into the chemistry and the physics, which sometimes in quite a few schools dwindles a little bit, I’d imagine.

[00:08:33]
Cherine Spirou: Surprisingly enough, this year we do. Next year in year 11, we’ve only got one class of physics and chemistry, but we have the new Investigating Science course. We’ve got five classes of that. I think the students have realised that this Investigating Science course is the way to go. It is all about working scientifically, and we’ve tried to promote that for our students because we’re not an academic school.

[00:09:06]
Cherine Spirou: One of our directions is excellence in teaching and learning, and that encompasses all our students. With Investigating Science, we love the fact that they picked up the science. We have three biology classes as well, but Investigating Science seems to be the one that’s really grasped the kids, which for me is fantastic because that’s where the kids should be.

[00:09:31]
Ben Newsome: Investigating Science, when you think about it, it’s really just critically thinking and working scientifically, methodically learning about your world. No more than that.

[00:09:42]
Cherine Spirou: That’s right, and it’s absolutely a hands-on subject. Next year will be our first year to teach it, so we’ll just have to wait and see from there, I guess.

[00:09:54]
Ben Newsome: I’m actually curious. Obviously, you’re planning out exactly what next year’s going to look like. What fun things have you got in store for the students in 2018?

[00:10:06]
Cherine Spirou: We’re still learning with the students with this new syllabus. It’s very different to what we’re used to, but in the junior years, we’ve started to implement integrated STEM. I’m the STEM coordinator at the school as well. We’ve started to integrate STEM into the year seven and eight timetable. They have classes of STEM on the timetable all year.

[00:10:32]
Cherine Spirou: We had year seven do it this year just as a trial with two gifted and talented classes. Next year we’ll have the gifted and talented class in year eight, but we’re also going to have the gifted and talented classes in year seven, and another two classes in year seven as well. We’re trying to build it slowly just to see how it’s going to work. We’re really excited about having STEM integrated into the school timetable.

[00:11:02]
Ben Newsome: With your work with Lachlan Macquarie College, you come across a lot of head teachers and find out what they’re getting up to. Is this a common thing they’re planning for next year, or are you a bit of an outlier?

[00:11:18]
Cherine Spirou: It’s very hard to integrate STEM into a timetable because you have to take the periods from somewhere else. We’ve taken the periods from our TAS (Technological and Applied Studies) for year seven and eight, so those kids are doing STEM through that. It’s been interesting and challenging because you have to make sure you address all the outcomes in their faculty, their syllabus.

[00:11:52]
Cherine Spirou: A lot of schools are starting to do that. I’ve got two schools coming out to me for the first time in early December to see what we do in STEM because it is a lighthouse school in a way, with the fact that we’ve integrated it into the school programme, the school timetable.

[00:12:12]
Ben Newsome: I bet. Obviously, there’s a lot of things that people can do with STEM. Let’s be honest, that acronym gets thrown around so much and people permutate it in different ways. I wonder, is it just “school” sometimes?

[00:12:12]
Cherine Spirou: No, well, for our Year 8 programme, I’ll just tell you what the Year 8 programme I’ve written for next year looks like. It’s basically Town Planning, and it’s a whole-year programme. The programme goes for four terms, and we start this term in Week 7. Basically, the students are going to create a town.

[00:12:30]
Cherine Spirou: They’re looking at sustainability, recycling, environmental sustainability, and entrepreneurship. They go through that, organising the town. They have to have a school, a café, a green space, and housing. It’s going to be a mining and farming town, so they look at what sort of recycled materials they could use and how they can use solar or hydro. They’re actually going to create the town, using Design Thinking as well, using LEGO to design the town. At the end of the year, we’re hoping to showcase it to the community. That’s my “rainbow” project for next year.

[00:13:05]
Ben Newsome: That sounds fun! I only recently had an interview with Danielle Lego from the Sydney Olympic Park Authority, and one of the things they were looking at was exactly that idea of how the built environment integrates amongst everything else in the natural environment. That’s really great, and I’d love to see what the outcome is.

[00:13:30]
Cherine Spirou: We’re starting it in Week 7, so we’ll have a better feel for it soon. We’ve also got TAS in there, which is Technological and Applied Studies. They’re building a postbox for their town, and they’re going to make a pillow out of recycled materials for the furnishings and interior design. Then we’re looking at writing menus for cafés as part of the Home Economics system as well. Plus, there’s a whole lot of science and maths in there with sustainability, statistics, and costings.

[00:14:05]
Ben Newsome: What I love about this is that there’s a real thing to be said about a “moving feast.” Let’s just roll with it and see where it goes. These meshed programmes together are a real big thing. I just spoke with Neil Bramsen, who picked up the Prime Minister’s Award for Primary Science Teaching, and he was very much interested in finding out what other schools are doing with embedding science in the real world with costings and everything else. I love that.

[00:14:45]
Cherine Spirou: One of the things we’re actually going to do as part of the programme is cost out solar panels for our school to see how much it’s going to cost and what it would take for us to actually be beneficial. Will it actually be beneficial or not? That’s part of the programme as well. We’re trying different things.

[00:15:12]
Ben Newsome: Your role as a Head Teacher means you’re pulled left, right, and centre. You’ve got teaching, but you’ve got admin tasks and everything else. As a Head Teacher, you’ve got a lot of experience in teaching kids. If you got to wave a magic wand and tomorrow you got to teach whatever you wanted, and you got to play for that day or hour, what kind of lessons would you love to run if you were given the time to plan for it and just nail it?

[00:15:50]
Cherine Spirou: Year 10. Oh my god. Hands-on. Hands-on stuff. I just want to get the kids to design something that works. Our kids, although they love their science, they really need guidance. Once you actually get them started, they can’t stop; it’s like a ball rolling down a hill. Anything hands-on for our kids, they love it. They hate writing, as all kids do. I don’t like using computers too much because the kids become too reliant on them. I’d rather they use their hands on actual equipment—science equipment, a data logger, or whatever you can do with science. There’s so much we can do.

[00:16:45]
Ben Newsome: It’s such a tough question when you think about it! I’m always curious because there’s so much talent wrapped up in dealing with admin at the same time.

[00:17:00]
Cherine Spirou: It is. The last three weeks all I’ve done is write programmes because we start the new syllabus next year. We go through internal validation next year, so we just have to have everything compliant with NESA. A lot of my work in the last couple of weeks has just been programming, but that’s part of my job. I don’t mind that.

[00:17:25]
Ben Newsome: The beauty about being able to do that is you can shape the curriculum for the whole school and point a direction, helping to develop teachers as they come through straight from university. That’s quite rewarding.

[00:17:40]
Cherine Spirou: We do it as a collaborative process. They wrote the programmes, and I’m just revamping them to make sure they align with what we need. I have seven new-scheme teachers under me in science. Three of them are first-year out teachers and four of them are second or third-year out teachers. We’ve got quite a young staff, and because they’re young, they’re very academic and motivated, which is fantastic. It explains why we have such a rise in numbers in science. One of the things I like to make sure my staff do is make it fun. They like to learn science, but make it fun.

[00:18:25]
Ben Newsome: It’s so important. On the flip side, I often think about some of our best learnings, which works for both students and teachers—it’s when things just go wrong. You’ve got this grand plan, this grand scheme to learn a concept, and you know what? It just didn’t work. Do you have any recent or past memories where you had this grand scheme and it didn’t quite work?

[00:19:00]
Cherine Spirou: Chemistry experiments and physics experiments all over the place! We did have one a long time ago where you have to evacuate the school because it’s been “buzzed.” It happens all the time! Or you’re sitting in the staffroom and all of a sudden you hear this massive explosion. You think, “What the hell happened there?” and you find a teacher’s put sodium in a massive bin and it’s just gone off because they put too much in. These things happen, but the kids love them because they actually remember them.

[00:19:40]
Cherine Spirou: They remember the experiments. They remember the things that happened in the classroom. Sometimes they go wrong for the wrong reasons, but sometimes they go wrong and you know what? The kids actually remember what happened in the classroom. I remember when I was at school, we were playing with sodium—back when you could actually play with sodium—and we had to evacuate the classroom. I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve never forgotten that sodium and water don’t mix. It’s things like that that make you realise that science is a lot of fun.

[00:20:15]
Ben Newsome: I do a lot of community events as well, and the number of people who come up to me—parents, grandparents—they all often tell me, “I remember when Mr or Mrs So-and-So sent us out of the room.” It’s almost the same story! They’ll talk about the evacuation. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen that often though.

[00:20:35]
Cherine Spirou: No, it doesn’t happen often. But when things go wrong, we actually go back and say, “Okay, now why did it go wrong? What did we actually do to make it go wrong?” They actually go through the science behind it, and the kids love it. They do remember the science when things go wrong. That’s why the Chinese proverb about “show me and I’ll remember, and let me do it and I’ll actually understand it” is so important. Get them to do it, and they’ll be the ones who remember the whole thing.

[00:21:10]
Ben Newsome: Completely. Actually, way back in Episode 1, I was speaking with Adam Selinger from Children’s Discovery Museum in Wollongong. He now deliberately has it rigged in some of his lessons so it will fail, so the kids have to pick the issue. I think they get a little bit wise to it these days, but it’s so effective.

[00:21:35]
Cherine Spirou: Yes, it is. My Year 11 and Year 12 students just want to do practicals. We made mayonnaise the other day, and it was disgusting. I wouldn’t eat it if you paid me! But we tried, and it failed. We talked about why it failed and what happens when you put oil too quickly into the egg. They realised it’s going to separate and just not become mayonnaise. They want to do it again, but unfortunately, we don’t have time. But at least now they know how to do it and where they went wrong.

[00:22:12]
Ben Newsome: I remember when I was working at CSIRO a long time ago, we were shaking a ball to be able to churn butter. It would work perfectly fine, but the problem was you would impart the “flavour” of the ball itself! Then you had to get something else hard enough to work that wouldn’t bash and crack the sides of the containers we were using, because kids do it quite vigorously. It all tasted okay-ish until we realised, you know what? Butter just does really need salt.

[00:22:50]
Cherine Spirou: Yes! And that’s the thing people don’t realise. I actually put salt and sugar into the mayonnaise, but it didn’t make any difference—it still tasted disgusting. But that’s all chemistry.

[00:23:05]
Ben Newsome: Mind you, that’s a learning experience too. It reminds me when we make sherbet and I deliberately say you’re in charge of the stuff that tastes great and the stuff that tastes terrible. If it doesn’t work, whose fault? And the kids say, “Yeah, ours.”

[00:23:25]
Cherine Spirou: Sherbet is another thing we love to do. We did popcorn the other day for physical change. The kids love the fact you do popcorn at school in science. Sugar crystals! With STEM, we did it today, and the kids loved it. We do a lot of fun stuff.

[00:23:45]
Ben Newsome: I bet the beauty about that is as the students walk out of the room, they’ve had their lesson, they’ve got their bags of popcorn or whatever you’ve got them to make—that’s going to create a buzz across the school. “Hey, where’d you get to make that? Where’d you get to do that?” That’s got to be good.

[00:24:05]
Cherine Spirou: Yes, they always want to know what we do with the slime and how we make it. We try and do it for National Science Week especially. We actually take the whole week off from our normal classroom activities and actually just do science experiments the whole National Science Week. We find it important for the kids to actually take something away from science. Even if they don’t do it in class normally, they’ll do it in that one week.

[00:24:35]
Ben Newsome: National Science Week is off the charts. It’s so busy right across Australia. You know what we do—you always come to our Science and Maths Expo event.

[00:24:50]
Cherine Spirou: Yes we do! It’s the largest National Science Week event in the South West for school kids.

[00:25:02]
Ben Newsome: Let’s describe that a bit more. We’re talking over a thousand students, and we have a ball.

[00:25:12]
Cherine Spirou: A thousand students! Basically, we start the day off with a laser show and a multimedia presentation where we look at science and maths in society and what science and maths have done in society and how important it is. Then we have you guys come out and do a show. We have Ruben Meerman, the Surfing Scientist, come out and do a show—the kids love it. Then they go out into the foyer of the university and have hands-on stalls where they make slime, do UV lights with their hands, look at STEM, and 3D printing. It’s just a wonderful day.

[00:25:55]
Ben Newsome: What I love about that event is it’s driven by teachers, which means it has the outcomes and everything else. You know what will grab kids’ attention.

[00:26:12]
Cherine Spirou: Lachlan Macquarie College is run by teachers. It’s not run by anyone but teachers, and I think that’s why it’s probably so successful as well.

[00:26:25]
Ben Newsome: There are people listening to this podcast all over the world. I know some places are incredibly enthusiastic and do fantastic events, and in others, there is less happening in their country. What sort of advice would you give to some highly experienced head teachers who want to start forming something like Lachlan Macquarie College or your Expo in their country? What would be the first steps?

[00:27:05]
Cherine Spirou: Lachlan Macquarie College was formed because Lachlan Macquarie Boys closed down, and it was a promise by the previous government. With Lachlan Macquarie College as a virtual college now, you need to have a partnership with a university. I’ve got a very strong partnership with Western Sydney University, with the School of Health and Science, the School of Education, and the School of Maths and Computing. You really need to have that partnership set up, and that takes a couple of years, but you can do it. You just contact the university and ask someone to be there for you.

[00:27:50]
Cherine Spirou: You also probably need to organise a working party, which is basically a couple of head teachers, maybe a deputy or a principal in there as well. We meet once a term and we say, “What are we going to do?” and we work on it. You also have to start getting yourself a network. It does not work if you don’t have a network of teachers. That’s one of the hardest things that you can actually get. A network of teachers is something that you need to have to be successful.

[00:28:30]
Cherine Spirou: I’ve got a network of 850 teachers on my list. That’s a lot across the state. I guess that’s where people understand that what we do is great because everyone comes on board. The Year 8 days, the Science Maths Expos, the chemistry days—they all get booked out within 24 to 48 hours. The teachers know now that once I send an email out, they have to get on board really quickly if they want a spot.

[00:29:05]
Ben Newsome: Seeing your network is quite extraordinary. With it booking out so fast, has there ever been a request to do that at a regional level? Rather than being in Western Sydney, to take that to other places and have other people run it?

[00:29:25]
Cherine Spirou: We have tried. Myself and Associate Professor Gary Edols from Western Sydney University, we’ve actually taken it over to—say our polymer lecture for instance—we’ve taken it once to Casino or Lismore, and we’ve also taken it out west. Gary does that polymer lecture, which is focused on the Year 12 core. We have done that. It does cost a little bit of money. We don’t make much money at all out of Lachlan Macquarie College; it’s just cost recovery basically on resources and our time in terms of being released from school.

[00:30:15]
Cherine Spirou: They could always contact me and ask me as well. I’m always available on Twitter. My Twitter handle is @cherinespirou. That’s C-H-E-R-I-N-E capital S-P-I-R-O-U. Also, the Facebook page Awesome NSW Science Teachers—I’m also the admin on that as well. You can always contact me through that, though you have to answer a couple of questions to join. There’s also my Department of Education email. I’m always on that and I normally respond within 30 minutes to an hour if I get a chance and I’m not in class.

[00:30:55]
Ben Newsome: We’ll put those links all in the show notes. I really encourage people to get in touch because I love the idea of teachers leading teachers. Congratulations; the fact you can produce these events that literally sell out within 24 to 48 hours—gosh, it sounds like you could set this up for several years to come.

[00:31:25]
Cherine Spirou: I’ve been doing it since 2011. I was actually employed full-time at Lachlan Macquarie College for two years, but then I came to Fairvale High School and I do it actually in my spare time. I don’t actually get released for it and I don’t get any time off for it. I do it in my free time and basically, I do it because I love what I do.

[00:31:50]
Ben Newsome: It really shows. And those people who want to pop over to the Novotel Parramatta next year, definitely do so for that two-day event. It will be advertised through the Facebook page and through Twitter. 19th and 20th of October aligns with the Invictus Games next year here in Sydney. We’ll actually have one of our keynote speakers as one of the Invictus leaders as well.

[00:32:22]
Ben Newsome: That’s a big deal actually! I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re going to keep on growing these things. Good on you, Cherine. Thank you very much for jumping on the podcast. Have a fantastic afternoon.

[00:32:40]
Cherine Spirou: No problem at all! Thank you!

[00:32:52]
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.

[00:33:10]
Ben Newsome: Yes, thank you very much, Cherine, for jumping on the Fizzics Ed Podcast. I know we had a bit of an audio issue, and thank you for those listeners who don’t like that too much. I get it; it’s not always that fun when the volume drops down a little bit. But the interwebs fought us, but we got there in the end. Hey, I know you’ve got a little bit out of this, and I’d love to hear what you have to say. Send us a line, drop us an email; it’d be great to just know what you think. And certainly for my end, there are a couple of learnings I could take away.

[00:33:45]
Ben Newsome: Number one for me: Create a network. Now we definitely heard about Professional Learning Networks—they are very important and you can find them on Twitter all over the place, but having the ability to meet people face to face is so important as well. Now start off with a small group and then grow from there. You’ll be amazed just how quickly it can go if you just keep on applying it and looking after each other as a team. That network will grow, and so will the value of that network. So I definitely—that was number one for me: create a network.

[00:34:15]
Ben Newsome: Number two: And this is something that Cherine’s working quite well with at Fairvale High School, is looking at integrating STEM as a specific part of the timetable. Now let’s be honest, that’s going to take a lot of effort. You’ve got to work with your technology and industrial arts teachers, trying to make sure that all the curriculum outcomes, all those syllabus dot points are being addressed. But meshing it into one subject, whilst it’s a bit of a mission, it will be very interesting to see where those students come out at the back end at the end of their high school if they’ve had several years of directly targeted STEM learning. Very interesting, and I’m very interested to see where that’s going to go. That’s very cool.

[00:34:45]
Ben Newsome: Number three: And this has come up a number of times through this podcast series, is use failures as a teaching tool. Kids love it! It’s a good way to actually critically analyse, “Did this lesson go the way it went? Did this experiment go the way you expected, and what was going on during that experiment?” So yeah, using failure, even deliberately setting yourself up to fail, is not a bad way to teach because students can stay awake in your class. That’s going to be a good thing. I’d love to know what you think. Drop us a line.

[00:34:58]
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.

[00:35:12]
Ben Newsome: This week I’d love to dive into what actually makes an awesome science presentation. A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged enough to be invited to help judge the Postgraduate Research Forum speakers at a 3-minute thesis pitch event at the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences unit. Oh, what a mouthful! But the point is that we had a number of postgraduates who were trying to pitch and show what they’ve been studying and where their research has been going in just three minutes. And you can imagine, you’ve got some really, really bright people trying to condense this into a three-minute pitch to run it towards a general audience who’s never heard what they’ve been doing.

[00:35:45]
Ben Newsome: Apart from watching these fantastic speakers, what came out were certain elements of a science chat, of a science pitch, which really allowed the talks to shine and come above the others. So, what are the elements that really grab? Number one: Engage your audience early. Open strong. The best presentations instantly grab the theatre’s attention. It’s all about stating the purpose of the study in plain language and using a vibrant image or a question to grab the audience to make them want to know more.

[00:36:15]
Ben Newsome: In some cases, it was worth breaking out of tradition and bringing along a prop, and that was very evident with one of our guests who did this. Number two: In the science chat, it’s all about emotion. You’ve only got three minutes, so you’ve got to grab a connection with your audience as early as possible and, more importantly, you’ve got to sustain it. Why are you studying the topic? What makes it so important? How is this research relevant to your audience?

[00:36:45]
Ben Newsome: Best presentations made this connection and, using simple language that stays true to the science but also made it highly accessible to the general audience, they made their research relatable. Number three: Keep your slides simple and few. It’s so tempting, especially when you’ve done so much research, to show as much stuff as possible behind you, but this is very much a case of less is more. If your presentation is only a few minutes, it’s far better to only have a couple of slides with basically just a simple image—a photo you can talk to, rather than a whole bunch of slides with more text and jargon and graphs which are really difficult to concentrate on.

[00:37:18]
Ben Newsome: Don’t be the narrator of text; grab their attention with visuals. Anyway, if you engage the audience with past, present, and future, your presentation progresses, and your audience should feel like they’ve got a strong grasp of what you’re presenting and why you’re presenting it. Critically, they should get a strong feel as to what the world was sitting like before your research began, where are you now, and where could the future hold? That’s really important. And finally, as your presentation starts to conclude, you need to finish strong. In the last 30 seconds of your presentation, summarise the overall project. Ram home that message you’re trying to convey. Why was this research so critical? Now you might be sitting there thinking, “Hang on, this isn’t really applicable perhaps to my area that I happen to work in.” Well, it doesn’t really matter if you have to stand up and do a three-minute pitch about your research. It really comes down to how to talk to an audience that you don’t know. What is the introduction, what is the body, and what is the conclusion, and why should they listen to you in the first place? So there you go, there’s a bit of a tip. Can you get your students to start thinking about their research this way, even if it’s complex?

[00:38:09]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.