Audio Transcript

Published: 26 May 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, May 26). The importance of scientific literacy & student-led project-based learning [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/the-importance-of-scientific-literacy-student-led-project-based-learning/

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: Isabelle Kingsley is a very, very busy person. She’s a programme producer at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, which heavily involves her not only with science events and programming for adults, but she also manages the Sydney Science Festival and the MAAS Lab Discovery Space in her museum. On top of this, she’s currently working on a PhD into informal science communication too. She does a lot of stuff, and in this chat we get into the importance of teaching students about how science actually works. We discuss experiments that target common student misconceptions about our world. Plus, we talk about trying to grab students’ attention, and turns out that sometimes it can go bad, especially when trying to use a Kriss Kross song as an engagement tool when they’re too young to get the reference. Everyone, get ready to jump, jump.

[00:01:02]
Announcer: This is the FizzicsEd podcast.

[00:01:05]
Ben Newsome: No, I just did a Kriss Kross reference. Yes, it’s that sort of podcast. Welcome to the FizzicsEd podcast. My name’s Ben Newsome. You’re here to learn about science education, ways people have been doing it in classrooms and, as described at the start, we’re going to be speaking with Isabelle Kingsley. She’s a fantastic educator and she has a lot of insights into how kids understand science, how we can teach science better. And she’s currently doing a PhD around this too. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy the podcast with Isabelle Kingsley from the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.

[00:01:41]
Announcer: This is the FizzicsEd podcast. For all about science, EdTech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s Fizzics spelt F I Z Z I C S. And click 100 free experiments.

[00:01:58]
Ben Newsome: Welcome, Isabelle Kingsley. Thanks very much for coming along on the FizzicsEd podcast.

[00:02:03]
Isabelle Kingsley: No worries. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:05]
Ben Newsome: No worries at all, especially in the middle of April. We’re in the middle of school holiday programmes. Everyone’s running around going nuts with all sorts of science and things going on. Isabelle, can you just let everyone know what is it you actually do?

[00:02:18]
Isabelle Kingsley: Well, I work at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney and my job is basically I produce STEM events. For example, as part of my role, I get to run the Sydney Science Festival. But I also happen to be a second-year PhD student at the University of New South Wales and there I’m researching the educational impacts of informal STEM education. I’m basically trying to find out if the events I do at the museum are successful at educating the public.

[00:02:51]
Ben Newsome: Wow, fantastic. So basically you don’t sleep.

[00:02:54]
Isabelle Kingsley: Basically, I don’t sleep, but that’s all right.

[00:02:57]
Ben Newsome: Sleep is for the dead, whatever you meant to say with that.

[00:03:04]
Isabelle Kingsley: You sleep when you’re dead. Yes.

[00:03:05]
Ben Newsome: You sleep when you’re dead. That’s right. It’s almost like an old Bon Jovi song or something. Okay, so you’ve got a lot going on. When you’re producing events at MAAS, some people may know it from a former life as the Powerhouse Museum. It’s not just the STEM events, turn up for a special festival. You’ve got ongoing stuff going on. For example, tell us a bit about the sort of hats you wear even within that role.

[00:03:31]
Isabelle Kingsley: Well, I’ve worn a lot of hats at MAAS actually. As you were saying, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences has three sites. The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Observatory, and the Museums Discovery Centre in Castle Hill. So I wear hats between all those sites, but also in my time here at the museum. I’ve been here for six and a half years now already.

[00:03:53]
Isabelle Kingsley: I’ve done more formal education where I worked with young people and schools and teachers. I spent a lot of time doing video conferences. And now my current hat is I look after doing STEM programmes, mostly for adults. So 18 and over and it’s mostly things like, I run events after hours, so that adults can come to the museum and sometimes adults don’t want to share the space with kids, so I do STEM programmes for them. And then the biggest hat is the Sydney Science Festival hat, which is my favourite hat.

[00:04:40]
Ben Newsome: The Sydney Science Festival is off the chart. There’s lots of stuff going on with that. What a great position to be in when you’re in your second year of your PhD for informal science communication. That’s got to be unreal for your lecturers and people who are looking after you. What have you been able to find out so far with your work you’re doing there?

[00:04:58]
Isabelle Kingsley: Actually, it’s really interesting what I’ve been able to find out. Basically last year, I did a little pilot study. I just wanted to test out my method and get a feel for what the research was going to look like. And I used four events during the Science Festival. I got people to do surveys before an event and then after an event. And I compared pre and post to see if they had changed their attitudes to science, their understanding of how science is done, about scientific practice and the nature of science. And then I also asked them about their trust in science and scientists.

[00:05:44]
Isabelle Kingsley: After the event, I found that people had a little bit of a more positive attitude and were a little bit more trusting of science and scientists. But weirdly enough, I also found that people after an event had less of an understanding of how science is practiced. How scientists do science. So that was really interesting and a bit of an eye-opener. We think that everything we do has a positive impact, but that’s not necessarily so and when you start digging, you might be surprised at what you find.

[00:06:21]
Ben Newsome: Well, that’s insane. Obviously as a science communicator myself, we want to do the best we can for whatever audience we’re in front of. But gee, it almost sounds like the risk you run is confusing them about what we’re—

[00:06:33]
Isabelle Kingsley: Absolutely. And I think it’s just about, I guess the great thing about research and finding these things out is that then you can tweak things to make them better. And so I really think that when we’re doing science events, we all just want to talk about the wonders of science and talk about discoveries or talking about the really cool facts that we know. But I think that one thing that’s really important is also talking about the process. How we know what we know. What is evidence? What are observations? How do we make inferences? How do we come up with hypotheses? How do scientists work with other scientists through peer review to come to consensus about scientific knowledge?

[00:07:16]
Isabelle Kingsley: All those things are really interesting but also really, really important and we should embed that into what we do a little bit more. And I think just adding that into our science events would make a difference. So that’s what I’m hoping to find out this year.

[00:07:33]
Ben Newsome: Wow, so obviously that’s really awesome for anyone who’s in a cultural institution, whether it’s a museum, zoo, aquarium, science outreach company, anything like that. I imagine that could be directly useful even from an early primary or even preschool level onwards sort of what is science, period, as opposed to the content within it.

[00:07:51]
Isabelle Kingsley: Absolutely, 100%. I guess I was really, really lucky to work on this amazing project a couple of years ago called MAAS Lab. And that’s what the MAAS Lab was all about. We went out and we asked teachers, okay, we’re going to create this education programme, and we’re going to use a recreation of the Martian surface and some really awesome cool robots and rovers that kids can use to do science. What do you want from our education resources? And the teachers said, well, we really struggle to teach science as a human endeavour, which we know is a big component of the Australian Science Curriculum.

[00:08:40]
Isabelle Kingsley: So we set out on a mission to make sure that we could achieve that. So the MAAS Lab really uses, really embeds and puts the young people in schools into the shoes of scientists and gets them to really do real authentic science. So we use a project-based learning approach. And the experience is about a month long and young people come up with their, so they generate their own research questions. They plan their investigation. They then work in groups to drive the rovers across the Mars yard from their school, so it’s done via video conference.

[00:09:25]
Isabelle Kingsley: And then they get to use the instruments on the rovers to collect data. They analyse that data and then they present to experts in the field. So astrobiologists and scientists and engineers, they present their data to them. And what we found from those MAAS Lab experiences was that the authenticity was, basically the kids were doing exactly what NASA scientists are doing on Mars, but they were doing it from their classroom. So they were doing real science.

[00:10:06]
Isabelle Kingsley: And they had autonomy, so they were able to choose, have a lot of say in their scientific investigation. And they really came out the other end understanding what science is and how science is done. And it’s just about being creative and letting go in the classroom. We don’t give young people enough credit. They are capable of so much more than we think they are, but we just need to hand it over and give them some autonomy and let them do it and they will blow us away.

[00:10:27]
Ben Newsome: And that MAAS Lab place. For astrobiology, anyone who’s wanting to really just geek out on space science in general. This place is fantastic. And if people have never actually seen this place, imagine it’s a chunk of red rock and dirt and dust and a robot running around, but computers on the side to control these things. It’s fantastic, but I wonder, just knowing not everyone always will be able to connect with you with the MAAS Lab, as much as you’d love that to happen. I wonder whether it’d be cool whether schools could almost pair up and almost pretend to do that themselves, even with Lego robots or something like that. One school trying to talk to the other school, sending code or whatnot to make their robots do stuff. Have you ever seen anything like that happen?

[00:11:11]
Isabelle Kingsley: I’ve heard about some programmes where schools, a lot of teachers often think if we’re going to do a video conference, we need to do it to an organisation or to some place special. But you don’t have to do that. You can video conference between schools. So your other teacher friends just get them to collaborate on a project together and get the kids in your class to work together with kids in another school, either in the same city or town or across states or across the world.

[00:11:51]
Isabelle Kingsley: I’ve seen that happen a few times and it’s really, really valuable. But I think not everyone can access a Mars yard or maybe do all these cool things, but I think the most important thing that I got out of the Mars yard or the MAAS Lab project was that the more authentic the experience is and the more autonomy you give young people… I’ve been a teacher in a classroom. I know that you like to have control. I know that you want to control because you want to make sure that they get what you want them to get out of it. But if we just learn to let go a little bit, I promise the kids will blow you away.

[00:12:31]
Ben Newsome: That’s stunning. Actually, I was lucky enough a couple of years ago to jump on a Churchill fellowship and one of the museums I was visiting was at the Challenger Learning Centre out of Rochester in New York, well Upstate New York anyway. And what they did was, they just had two rooms separated whereby one room was mission control and the other room was a spaceship on its trip to Mars. And they were sending information back and forth between these rooms via video conference. Now I suppose, in classrooms, you could do it via Skype or Zoom or whatever your web conferencing platform choice is.

[00:13:05]
Ben Newsome: The kids had spent a month or two of preparation to have this two-hour immersive experience. They arrived in effectively spacesuits to really act out their roles, whether one person was in charge of oxygen levels within the spacecraft, whereas someone in the spacecraft themselves was in charge of navigation and they worked together as teams and it was really fantastic. And when you said authentic, I mean, that’s the real deal. Just watching these kids go, they were in charge of their mission, whether it worked or whether it failed, it was unreal.

[00:13:33]
Isabelle Kingsley: Absolutely. Just put it in their hands and let them go with it. But you know, another thing that we found from this MAAS Lab experience was during the whole experience. So it was about a month. The young people got to interact with scientists and engineers in the field via video conference. You know, from people here in Sydney, to we hooked them up with some people in NASA as well. We had some really great video conferences with NASA scientists and engineers.

[00:14:38]
Isabelle Kingsley: But just access to experts is so, so valuable and something that we forget often, but also I know that sometimes we think, well, those experts are so busy. They don’t have time for us. But they really do. They really do and I think that teachers should just feel comfortable approaching scientists from universities or different organisations and sending them an email to invite you to our classroom. It can be by video conference, but it can be in person. There’s heaps of scientists everywhere. So they’re always keen to go visit young people. It’s really, really valuable. Actually, CSIRO have a really great programme called Scientists and Mathematicians in Schools. And that’s available to everyone. So just look around and I really encourage teachers to get the experts in their classroom and get their kids interacting with experts because that just is a really valuable part of science education.

[00:15:12]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely right. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be from the whizz-bang institutions either. I’m really aware of a, there’s a scientist up near Gresford, which is, for those people who may know in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. She’s been out to motivate their primary school and high school to set up Dungog’s main street with science activities right down their cafe and not just one cafe, real estate agents and all these other different businesses engage in a big science shindig in the middle of Australian Science Week, which is just unreal.

[00:15:46]
Ben Newsome: And of course, that scientist, she is a very busy person working in environmental work. But to be able to take some time out of her day just to get involved with her local community is fantastic. I mean, you don’t have to necessarily have to approach the big institutions. It could be just someone down not far from you, who’s working in water quality, whatever it is. Who just want to give away their time.

[00:16:06]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, absolutely. Agreed.

[00:16:08]
Ben Newsome: Actually, this actually brings up the point now. Clearly, you know, we can hear you’re very much a Canadian resident once upon a time. How did, like in Canada, I know that you did a bit of work up there, as well as at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. What were you doing there?

[00:16:24]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, I was doing basically the same thing. I’ve been doing this kind of thing for more than 10 years now.

[00:16:31]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, it just keeps on ticking, doesn’t it?

[00:16:33]
Isabelle Kingsley: But yeah, so at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, I was an education officer there as well and looked after National Science and Technology Week, actually, that’s what it was called. And before that, I was a high school science teacher. So, yeah, I’ve just been in the field of education for a while now, but I guess in Canada, I just got to do a lot more of the hands-on stuff. Lately, I’ve just been behind the scenes, but in Canada, I was the one doing, you know, in front of people, giving the workshops, blowing stuff up, doing science shows, that kind of stuff, which was really, really fun.

[00:17:15]
Ben Newsome: And so obviously to go for more than 10 years in this type of career. I mean, I’m guessing you’re clearly science is your thing. When did that start? Like did you go to uni going, you know what, I’ll just join this, or do you think like I was eight years old, this is my thing? What is it that’s made you want to jump into this?

[00:17:31]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, it was a gradual progressive kind of journey, I guess. I went to uni to first be a physiotherapist and then halfway through my kinesiology degree thought, well maybe I’ll be a teacher. And then I thought, well a teacher of what? Well, I guess I could teach science because that’s what my degree is.

[00:18:01]
Isabelle Kingsley: And then got into the classroom and really loved it. And then after four years of that thought, well, wouldn’t it be great to try something else. I really like this teaching and education thing, but the classroom isn’t the only place that you can do that and an opening at the Canada Science and Technology Museum had come up and I thought, well, that sounds pretty cool. So I’ll go for that. And it just gradually evolved into me doing a lot of science education, but I never started off thinking that that’s what I was going to do. I was going to be a physiotherapist.

[00:18:30]
Ben Newsome: It’s always interesting just listening to how people’s career trajectories take them. Often it’s a chance encounter or something that’s way more strategically planned. It’s always interesting to see where people end up and where they’re going. It’s quite wild. No, I get what you mean completely. I guess actually just throws the question in there is sort of knowing that you’ve got a lot of things that you want to get achieved. Clearly you wouldn’t just engage in a PhD just for the sake of it. I mean, that’s a fair bit of work. What are you hoping to do with that research? I imagine that would be obviously accessible for universities to learn from, but where would you go from there?

[00:19:07]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, that’s a good question. I ask myself that a lot lately. Where to next?

[00:19:12]
Ben Newsome: Yeah.

[00:19:13]
Isabelle Kingsley: I’m not really sure but I know that I’m in the right field, so it might just be a little bit of a side track or path or something. But I guess what I really love about STEM and in particular, the S in STEM, the science, is that it’s really everywhere around us and scientific literacy is becoming increasingly important.

[00:19:49]
Isabelle Kingsley: You know, people really need to be able to think critically to make informed decisions about science-related matters, in their own lives, and also politically and socially. And same with technologies because I kind of see science and technology as pretty much inseparable. And technology is just expanding into every single aspect of our lives and I just think that it’s so important to in order to just be someone who can effectively function in society. You need to have those skills and knowledge and understanding. And I guess I’m on a mission to make sure that that happens and that as many people as possible can enjoy and at least understand and appreciate science.

[00:20:30]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. And of course, it’s a wonderful thing and actually that I’ve got to ask. Obviously, doing a lot of science outreach and whatnot, you’ve got to have your favourite experiment. Like what is the one that you go, you know what, if I get a chance to do it, I’m doing it now.

[00:20:46]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, I guess it would, it’s one of the simplest but the most effective because you just get a reaction every single time and I’m very easily startled, so I jump every single time. But it’s the Milo tin with liquid nitrogen in it and so as soon as you pour the liquid nitrogen in and you put the Milo tin lid back on, the pressure builds inside and all of a sudden the lid pops off and it can go really high. So I always love that one. The kids love it and I honestly, I just get scared every time. So it never gets old.

[00:21:27]
Ben Newsome: I mean we visit a lot of schools. We visit hundreds of schools and workshops and the one thing, whenever we do that particular experiment, you always check for a data projector, lights, and anything else above your head that might go bang and break. But certainly that is an unreal one. Actually when you said simple, one of the ones that I must say I’ve really enjoyed just doing, I was only doing it yesterday at a workshop, it’s such a simple experiment whereby you get kids to hold and tell you which of these two materials feels the coldest. And you have to be very careful with the word feel. Which one feels the coldest? One being aluminium and one being a piece of plastic.

[00:22:04]
Ben Newsome: In fact, in our kit, we’ve got these very strictly coloured, they’re both black squares, they’re both the same size, same volume, same surface area, the whole lot. So the kids touch these squares, one’s aluminium, one is plastic. And you say which one feels colder? And they inevitably say the aluminium because it does, it feels like it’s colder. And so you’ve got this sitting down on the carpet right in front of everyone and the kids are all sitting in a ring. I really don’t care whether they’re high school or primary. It just works every time.

[00:22:36]
Ben Newsome: You say, righto, so point to the one which feels colder and they all confirm it’s the aluminium. And I go, okay, so if I get two ice cubes and place it on these two blocks, on which block will the ice cube melt the fastest? Of course, it’s going to be the one that feels hotter, right? So they all point to the plastic. And so I put the ice cubes down after saying, well, maybe I could have been really particular. If I was going to do proper science, I probably should have weighed the ice cubes to make sure they’re the same volume and weight and trying to be all like scientific.

[00:23:02]
Ben Newsome: But you place these ice cubes down on these two blocks, and on the aluminium, the ice cube just melts so fast. And these kids just go, whoa. And I must say, just something so simple. You think how can I hold, you know, I’ve held 45, 50 students in front of me just doing, seriously, sometimes I’ve been watching this experiment going, I’m holding 50 students melting ice. This is unreal.

[00:23:26]
Isabelle Kingsley: But when presented well, and especially when it’s something that’s completely against their conceptions of how stuff works. That’s the best thing that grabs kids’ attention. Yeah, I mean, I agree with, like we can do all this elaborate stuff and get all this tech involved, but sometimes just the simple things. Absolutely. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And isn’t it great to just see kids’ faces when they finally get something and they just go wow and then they get really excited about it. That’s the best part.

[00:23:58]
Ben Newsome: Oh, absolutely. I know for a fact, I had kids just tugging on their parents’ sleeves on the way out going, you’ve got to see these blocks. It’s the coolest thing. Which I’ve got to love. Actually now knowing that obviously you’ve taught in high school, just imagine that you’re back in high school, and you’ve got someone fresh out of uni, or actually just finishing off their university course to become a pre-service teacher. They’re about to start teaching. If you had to give them just a piece of advice to survive that first week in school in science teaching, what would you suggest to them?

[00:24:32]
Isabelle Kingsley: Oh, man, be hard. Don’t be friendly right away. I know that it sounds like it’s so not what I want to say, but it’s the truth.

[00:24:50]
Ben Newsome: I’d imagine they’d be sort of nodding away in their cars or while they’re walking the dog or whatever it is, they go, yes, yes, yes.

[00:24:59]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, I mean, you know, I just remember being fresh out of teachers’ college going into my teaching my first class and I thought, I’m going to be the best teacher ever and the kids are going to love me and I’m going to be cool and no, no. They will walk all over you. So, no, just be firm and be hard at first and then you can ease into it I guess.

[00:25:28]
Ben Newsome: I mean I’m yet to meet an experienced person who has not said something of that effect, certainly. So we all want to be cool, but let’s be honest, some of us just aren’t. So there’s nothing you can do about it. But I totally get it. I was just wondering then, in your first year, it kind of feels like a grilling. I’m just out of interest, can you just think of a lesson going, you know what, that just didn’t work, no matter what you tried to do?

[00:25:57]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yes. Well actually, yeah, there are a few examples. I just remember teaching chemistry, year 10 chemistry and I had to teach them how to do chemical equations and using the crisscross method. Do you remember the crisscross method?

[00:26:17]
Ben Newsome: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:18]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, the students just, no matter what I tried, no matter what I did, no matter how I said it or what I did. They just, they couldn’t get it and I was at a loss. I didn’t know what else to do. And so I decided I was going to sing a song by Kriss Kross to make it a little bit clearer. Which totally failed because they were too young and didn’t know who Kriss Kross was.

[00:26:47]
Isabelle Kingsley: So they didn’t want to jump jump. And I thought I was being hilarious, so I was laughing, but nobody else was. So not only was it a fail in terms of me getting the content across, and them understanding, nobody understood, but also I looked like a fool because I thought I was hilarious and they didn’t get my joke and I just felt really old. So there you go.

[00:27:10]
Ben Newsome: The reason why I asked that is inevitably as an educator, you’re going to have the occasional fail. You have less of them as you go along, but in your first year or two, you’re going to have some complete clangers. But that does make me think though, that’s half the issue teaching is not just about here’s the science and deal with it. It is a cultural job. And so the work we do, we have to keep pace with what the kids know and understand and appreciate. I mean, that’s half the issue, obviously as we get older, the kids stay the same age. So we have to be able to keep up with what they know. And that’s sort of half the trick, isn’t it?

[00:27:46]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, but I think that one of the best things that I learned was that when I started teaching I thought, well, I’m supposed to know all the answers and then I’m supposed to teach this knowledge that I have into these empty vessels that don’t have the knowledge. And now I have a completely different view of education.

[00:28:13]
Isabelle Kingsley: And it’s not about that at all. It’s about co-learning and being part of the learning process along with the students. You don’t have to know the answer. You don’t have all the knowledge. They have sometimes more knowledge than we do on some things. So it’s about facilitating an experience and coaching them or teaching them how to learn rather than teaching them stuff they should know. And just going on that journey with them I think is really important. So that’s yeah.

[00:28:47]
Ben Newsome: Be a guide.

[00:28:48]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, absolutely. I think the word teacher should be changed to facilitator. Or guide. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:28:56]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and actually some people are trying to break down barriers. We go to some schools where they just refuse, and mind you it must say it’s rare, it’s more in some independent schools, but they go, no, we’re just known by our first names. We’re just here to help. We’re not Mr or Mrs whatever. Mind you, they can imagine some people would say it could be quite disrespectful, and I know we’re here to teach respect with kids as well, but trying to break down as many barriers as possible for kids to actually engage is part of the job.

[00:29:24]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:29:25]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, so obviously, project-based learning floats your boat as it does a lot of people. Is there anything sort of cool in development in the horizon that you go, you know what, I just can’t wait till this thing comes out, like what’s coming in the pipeline with you guys?

[00:29:38]
Isabelle Kingsley: Well at MAAS here, I mean we do some pretty cool digital stuff, I must admit. So we have our new digital lab called The Lab. Very original name, I know.

[00:29:56]
Ben Newsome: Hey, it tells them what it is.

[00:29:57]
Isabelle Kingsley: It is what it is, it’s very Australian of us. So we’ve got really cool digital workshops happening. Lots of augmented reality but virtual reality. I can’t say too much about it right now, but there’s some pretty cool things.

[00:30:15]
Ben Newsome: No one’s listening, it’s just you and me.

[00:30:17]
Isabelle Kingsley: It’s just you and me. It’s all okay, you can say what you want. Awesome. But yeah, I think that it’s exciting because we’re entering this really great space. I remember just a few, well it feels like only just a few months ago, might have been last year, we were sitting together imagining the future of museums, but also the future of education and what that would look like.

[00:30:43]
Isabelle Kingsley: And I feel like we’re already there with the ideas that we generated and the stuff that we talked about in terms of personalising experiences and virtual reality and it’s just, yeah, we’re already there. So that’s all I’m going to say, but yes, there’s exciting stuff happening here.

[00:31:02]
Ben Newsome: Virtual reality, augmented reality, all these realities. They really, they grab kids’ attention. You can use so many different pieces of kit to do it, but the fundamental idea that you can augment, obviously, change what’s actually in front of you, then learn more as an outcome is stunning.

[00:31:22]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, yeah. And not only are we building these really great VR experiences, but we’re also teaching young people how they can do it too. So through our coding workshops and all of our digital workshops. We’re actually equipping young people with the tools to be able to do it themselves. And again, you know, we’re just blown away at some of the stuff that they come up with. They are so creative and talented and if they get their hands on something that they really like and they’re really interested in, it’s incredible what they can come up with. So we’ve seen some great projects.

[00:32:03]
Ben Newsome: No, totally agree. Just you may not have one, but I always like to know what guides them, what guiding principles sort of steer them and what they do. Have you got any particular, I don’t know, education quote, some sort of mantra, something that sort of says, you know what, that’s my thing and that’s what I’m trying to achieve. Is there anything that someone may have said to you that you go, you know what, that’s what I’m trying to live up to?

[00:32:27]
Isabelle Kingsley: I don’t have an education quote per se, but someone I work with here at MAAS in the education department, his name is Peter Mahony. He’s really done a lot to change my perception of how education should work and how it should work. Basically his way of thinking is that there’s no teacher at the front of the classroom offering up knowledge and the kids are there receiving it.

[00:33:01]
Isabelle Kingsley: It’s very much a fluid kind of co-learning space and he always says, let kids drive their own learning. That’s what I aim to do, not only in the formal education space like when I interact with kids in schools, but also in my current, with my current hat on of the adult learning, just provide them with experiences where they can drive their own learning and just teaching people how to learn rather than teaching them knowledge. And so that’s really stuck with me and I know that we’ve talked about this throughout the whole chat that we’ve had, but that’s really just that’s my guiding words in terms of education is just let people drive their own learning.

[00:33:46]
Ben Newsome: That’s it. And I love how you’ve grabbed onto effectively like a mentor. So this is where we’re at to go with and just a slight tweak of what you’re doing and now look at all this stuff’s coming out. It’s unreal. Look, Isabelle, thank you so much for coming along with this. Obviously, you’ve got a lot to offer and of course there’s a lot of stuff happening at MAAS. And so if people wanted to connect with you in any different way, what are some ways they can get in touch with you?

[00:34:10]
Isabelle Kingsley: Yeah, look you can get me at the museum, isabelle.kingsley@maas.museum. So that’s I S A B E L L E dot K I N G S L E Y at M A A S dot museum. So that’s the best way to get me. I’m on social media and stuff, but I’m really bad, I don’t check it very often or anything like that, so that’s the best way to grab me.

[00:34:35]
Ben Newsome: Busy teacher. I get that. What we’ll do is we’ll pop all that stuff into the show notes as well so people can check that stuff out. And look, much appreciate for your time. I know it’s pretty frenetic around school holiday time. What have you got going on at the museum these school holidays?

[00:34:49]
Isabelle Kingsley: Oh, we’ve got Egyptian mummies here as our main exhibitions. So we’ve got mummies upstairs which is this beautiful exhibition. And then for the young ones, we have an enormous dig pit in one of our big spaces. So you get to dig and look for archaeological artifacts and it’s just really exciting and once in a while the pharaoh comes by and makes his little appearance so you can hang out with the pharaoh as well. So lots of really cool stuff happening at MAAS.

[00:35:26]
Ben Newsome: I want to come play too. Very cool. Thanks again Isabelle Kingsley for popping over. Much appreciated and enjoy the rest of your afternoon.

[00:35:35]
Isabelle Kingsley: Alright, thanks.

[00:35:37]
Announcer: This is the FizzicsEd podcast. For all about science, EdTech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s Fizzics spelt F I Z Z I C S. And click 100 free experiments.

[00:35:56]
Ben Newsome: This is the FizzicsEd podcast. What a fantastic chat with Isabelle. Look, she is a phenomenal educator and full of energy and the kids really get into it. I know that her current hat is dealing with adult education, but her work with students I’ve seen and look, they really enjoy it. And I thought we might just go through just my top three learnings, at least. And I know you could have more than three here, but let’s just go through three quick learnings which certainly you could take away and implement in your school.

[00:36:25]
Ben Newsome: Have a think about, number one, project-based learning. Is there something that your class or two classes, your grade, or even your entire school if you wanted to, is there something that you could be building or creating over a long-term basis? Often we’re so caught up with our calendars that we’ve got to get history in, then we’ve got to get science in, and we’ve got to get whatever it is we’ve got to do during the week in, which means that your experiments or your lessons or your projects can be quite small. So over your four-week teaching period or whatever you particularly do in your school, find a way that you can have kids collaborating with each other, and hopefully even across classes, to get a particular experiment or project to work. And this is really modelling real-time, life, work outside of school. Collaborations are important and projects are really the fundamentals of any industry.

[00:37:21]
Ben Newsome: Number two, be a facilitator. Try and get the students to get a bit more goal-directed themselves. Yeah, it can be tempting to always be the lecturer at the front with all the sage wisdom, but if you can help sort of flip this a little bit and get the students to drive their own learning and you’re there to facilitate and help them find the answers they need and solve problems as they go, students will become undoubtedly better learners for the future.

[00:37:50]
Ben Newsome: And another one which was fairly easy, and you would have heard this back in as you went through your university or college before you entered as a proper teacher, is entering a classroom, be firm, be tough and be cool later. Some of us aren’t that cool, I know I’m one of those people, but the thing is that it’s so easy to want to be their friend, but you’re their teacher first, and after you establish the whole boundaries and routines and things, then you can ease off a little. But that certainly can help.

[00:38:21]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the FizzicsEd podcast. Love your science? We do too. Here’s this episode’s education tip of the week.

[00:38:29]
Ben Newsome: Grab your pencil and get ready to make some notes. EdTech has been a big thing and there’s so many apps around these days and I thought I might highlight one which we actually use in our business and I’ve seen in others as well. It’s a programme called Slack. And some people may be aware of Slack, it’s a team collaboration tool. And the beauty about this, it allows you to get rid of a lot of your email. I know what it’s like. You’ve got all this email just pouring in for you from parents and within the school and even outside of the school, and it’s completely unfiltered. It’s a big stack of emails you’ve got to sort through.

[00:39:02]
Ben Newsome: The beauty about Slack is people who are collaborating with you, who are working with you, can presort your emails as they send them to you. They can be short text messages through to long prose messages if they need to.

[00:39:15]
Ben Newsome: Picture this. Think of like a series of channels. So whether it’s about lesson planning, whether it’s about organising the upcoming excursion, or I don’t know, science lab materials that you need to get sorted. If you were just using your email, you would just get a stack of different emails all in one inbox and you’d have to respond in kind and sort them as appropriate. A way around this is sometimes these messages just have to be just one short one-liner, and your person who’s sending them could easily send it into a channel that you follow. You could create a channel in Slack which would say, this is for laboratory orders or this is for the upcoming excursion to the local museum or whatever it is. People collaborating on that channel can put their messages into the channel that you create. And what this does, it really saves you having to look through a big stack of inbox for that one email that you need.

[00:40:06]
Ben Newsome: Now I know that we love a search box in your Outlook or whatever you particularly use in Gmail or something like that, but the sheer ability of large teams, I know there’s some schools with well over 30 teachers, it can get quite cumbersome trying to sort out what’s important, what’s not, and what’s for the future. Slack solves this.

[00:40:26]
Ben Newsome: And in a way also too, it holds all your various messages, whether everyone posts notes or text messages, whatever you do currently, it becomes this one-off thing that can be used across your mobile phone, your iPad, your Android device, your computer desktop, whatever it is. Slack will work across all these things. And look, I really recommend it. And if you want to know a bit more, just go onto the Fizzics Education website and type in Slack into the search box, as usual it’s Fizzics spelt badly, F I Z Z I C S education dot com dot a u. Type in Slack and you’ll find a short blog post which shows you why you could use this and how you could use this within your classroom.

[00:41:06]
Announcer: This is the FizzicsEd podcast. We’re excited about science. Grab a copy of our new book, Be Amazing: How to Teach Science the Way Primary Kids Love, from our website. Just search Be Amazing book. It’s available in hard copy and ebook. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s Fizzics spelt F I Z Z I C S.

[00:41:28]
Ben Newsome: Yes, and I was asked the other day about is it okay to fail in front of your students? Is it okay to run an experiment which completely doesn’t work at all? Do kids learn from this? And turns out they absolutely do. So here’s Adam Selinger from Little Bangs Discoveries Club. He’s got a bit of a take on this about how he runs his lessons and how he deals with failure in front of his students and actually how he can make this work for his lessons too.

[00:41:53]
Adam Selinger: So when things go wrong, and I say when things go wrong. You can talk your way out of it and you can say, and this is what happens when, blah blah blah, and you can talk, and that is then part, it’s a valid, it’s a valid way to run a lesson. Because things are not always going to go right, and it’s good if you can perhaps even say, hey, this didn’t go right, who’s got ideas? What did I do wrong? Sometimes in my shows and workshops I will deliberately make things fail, by deliberately leaving things out, because I want these people to be thinking.

[00:42:25]
Adam Selinger: I also want them to understand that even a so-called expert, and they’ll perceive me as that if I’m up the front of the class, will get things wrong. Yeah, we’re all human. And the more we can show kids that we can, you know, grow from failure, that we can fail then fix it, then fail then fix it, the more they’ll model it and they’ll mirror it and they’ll take it on board that they can well, handle stuff when things go wrong. Look, apart from learning how to do science, it’s a good life skill to learn, and it’s part of our job as teachers.

[00:42:52]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the FizzicsEd podcast. Sign up now for our fortnightly email newsletter. It’s loaded with details on new experiments you can do, STEM teaching articles, new gadgets, exclusive offers and upcoming events. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. Scroll to the bottom and add your email.

[00:43:09]
Ben Newsome: So that just about wraps up this episode with Isabelle Kingsley. It was a fantastic time to have a chat with her and I really wish her all the best. Look, if you want to do more science and of course you do if you’re listening to this podcast, jump onto the Fizzics Education website, you will find over 100 blogs and articles around how to teach science in different ways, from teaching science in the canoe, yes that is there, through to tips on teaching science by video conference and well beyond that. Just jump onto fizzics, F I Z Z I C S education. Yes, we cannot spell. But you’ll also find not just blogs, but over 100 free experiments which will help you with your lesson plans.

[00:43:46]
Ben Newsome: Whilst you’re browsing there, just check out, you’ll find there is that science book, Be Amazing: How to Teach Science to Kids who are in primary school, in the way they actually love. Please join in next week as we’ll be interviewing with Maddie and Luca from the Education Changemakers. They do a fantastic job really accelerating education and learning in schools in a number of countries around the world. And I’m sure you’ll enjoy that. Of course, as usual, please jump onto the iTunes and leave a message. We will help you out and answer all your questions and comments, we really, we really do. We read them all.

[00:44:20]
Ben Newsome: And if you could please leave a rating for us, it does help us out of course. But beyond that it’s about helping other teachers know that there are these things like these podcasts out there that can help them teach science in the classroom. And as always may your science lessons be fun, informative, and grab your students’ imagination. My name’s Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education and you’ve been listening to the FizzicsEd podcast. Bye for now.

[00:44:42]
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.