Audio Transcript

Published: 24 May 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, May 24). Why establishing science clubs for preschoolers works [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/why-establishing-science-clubs-for-preschoolers-works/

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.

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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.

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Ben Newsome: Adam Selinger has been teaching science for over 25 years. He started as a science educator at Questacon in Canberra and has since gone on to work at Edinburgh Science Festival. He’s run science shows at the United Arab Emirates. He was a co-founder of the Children’s Discovery Centre, uh which ran out of Western Sydney for quite a while, and uh he’s been running an electronics outreach company called MadLab in Australia too. Look, he’s a busy guy and uh in this session, we get into talking about how he’s been putting science for preschoolers into Australian libraries, as well as heading up the Early Start Discovery space out of the University of Wollongong. Uh in this, we talk about not only teaching science, but also the importance of creativity and nurturing a discovery mindset. Plus, well, just because we can, we start talking about strange science experiments including air pressure using cornflakes. Yep, demonstrating air pressure with cornflakes.

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Announcer: This is the FizzicsEd podcast.

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Ben Newsome: Hello, welcome to the FizzicsEd podcast and uh really looking forward to this one because I’ve speaking with a good friend of mine for many, many years, Adam Selinger. He is a science communicator of great standing. He’s been on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of science shows and workshops, not only in Australia, but in the UK and around the world, including Canada, China, Indonesia, New Zealand, South Africa, all over the place. And um, look, I’m really looking forward to this. Uh Adam and I get into talking about how he’s been working on his programme called Little Bangs, which is a um programme for uh base primary uh not only primary kids, but actually preschoolers. Uh from the ages of three to five and teaching science in libraries. Uh we talk about uh his thoughts around creativity in the classroom and what allows kids to actually get excited and uh, you know, learn a bit about their world in and their own way. And we also talk about the value of um failure in an experiment. Uh so look, stay tuned with this. I really I’m looking forward to it. And later on we’ll look at our top three learnings of the actual uh podcast, plus a whole bunch of tips and tricks that might actually help you around teaching creativity in your classroom. Anyway, without further ado, here’s Adam Selinger, uh from the who’s the creative director of the Children’s Discovery Museum, as well as uh heading up the early start programme at the University of Wollongong.

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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 spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

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Ben Newsome: Welcome Adam Selinger to the uh FizzicsEd podcast.

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Adam Selinger: Thank you very much.

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Ben Newsome: Thanks very much for coming along mate. I mean, I know it’s been a very busy time what with uh Easter long weekend, now Anzac Day long weekend, and the kids holidays. I imagine you’ve been front and flat out.

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Adam Selinger: Yes, yes, yes. It’s it’s crazy. This this school holidays. It’s a it’s booking them into all sorts of exciting activities and um and then playing taxi for, you know.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s right. You’re uh you’re doing daddy daycare today.

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Adam Selinger: I’m doing daddy daycare. Well actually no, the kids have just gone back to school so I did the drop off and I don’t have to worry about them until uh pick up.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah. It’s our life. I think that’s every working working person’s life these days. No, actually yeah, you actually have had a bit going on. Um I only recently noticed that you’re um launched something up in Newcastle only recently.

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Adam Selinger: Well, that’s right. So we’ve got this project where we’re really trying to effectively upskill libraries and librarians in um their STEM offerings. And we’ve initiated a a project that started in Sydney with just one library and then expanded to about 25. And then we sort of got some inquiries further afield. But um, you know, it it it becomes quite time consuming and expensive to to send our people out to run these programmes. So we sort of hit on the idea of perhaps we could train librarians themselves to deliver some of our, I guess our junior programmes. We train them and um, you know, show them how they can get hold of the gear or buy from us, simple materials. Um then they’ll be ready to run these things themselves.

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Ben Newsome: This is fantastic. This is the Little Bangs programme, right?

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Adam Selinger: It is the Little Bangs programme and that’s what just got launched in Newcastle um just the other week.

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Ben Newsome: How do you find um working with, I mean librarians are really you know, talented people with a lot of things they’ve got to, you know, juggle, they’re almost like they’re spinning plates all time with lots of stuff going on. Um how do you find um train them in STEM, um particularly if they haven’t got a background in it?

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Adam Selinger: Well, it’s interesting. It’s it’s a bit of a self-selecting audience. We’ve we’ve it’s a bit like when you run um, you know, science camps, you you tend to get the children, in this case, you’re getting the adults who are actually generally quite motivated and keen to do it. So firstly, they’re interested in in doing it. Many of them have done something or played in the space already. Yeah, there is a genuine concern um from their side and ours about sort of having a a good science knowledge. And of course, in an ideal world, you’d want to have people with science background um delivering these kinds of programmes, but that’s not the world we live in, not yet. That is perhaps a wider ambition. So look, what we do is we we start with a programme which we’ve called the Little Bang Discovery Club and it’s designed um for preschool children, sort of between the ages of um three and five, and their accompanying adults. So the actual content is very much geared around the the learning capabilities of young children and the abilities of non-science background parents carers to facilitate both when they’re working with us in libraries and later at home. So the the it’s a bit of a journey for everyone, which is fine. And it’s you know, the the fear of not knowing is sort of taken away because it’s a shared journey and it’s very kind of fundamental. So it’s really, you know, to to give the outline of the programme, it’s a four-week programme, it runs for an hour, you know, each each week, and each session sort of builds on the what’s been gained from the previous session. And it’s really the fundamentals of of thinking scientifically and it starts with just looking around the room and naming objects. Um and it’s as simple as that. Then then it’s a kind of collecting bits and pieces, collecting items together, and sorting them. You know, you know, if we’ve got bits of of wood or bits of plastic, bits of toys, bits of things from nature, um or just coloured paddle pop sticks. We encourage the the children and we encourage the adults with them to sort these materials in any way they like. And that’s getting across the notion that there’s no right or wrong way of doing this. It’s just a kind of personal choice and or what makes sense or what’s going to be useful.

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Ben Newsome: Can we give me of a um almost like a a kid a mini maker setup in some ways?

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Adam Selinger: Well, yeah. I mean, these are all those basic skills which um, you know, you’ll see that once you start with a three-year-old getting these skills of sorting uh objects out, you know, those skills get reinforced when they do the next kind of level of sophistication at five and six, they go into science clubs and then, you know, do the maker movement. Um those are the basic skills. And and it makes it very accessible for these children, makes it very accessible for their adult carers, and makes it very accessible for the librarians. And actually gives everyone the confidence, hey, I can do this. I can think like a scientist. I can be inventive, I can make things, I can talk about what my ideas are. So the librarians are actually finding this um, yeah, something they can do and it’s not so prescriptive that they can they can apply any of the local conditions to their their version of the Little Bang Club.

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Ben Newsome: Little Bangs is um obviously taken off. You’ve got 25 odd um libraries going on. You’ve just launched up in Newcastle. I mean, there’s clearly a need. Um just out of interest, have you ever had to um like you really you’ve got some interest from a librarian, they’re really keen to go, and they’ve had a bit of pushback within their own council to, oh, maybe this is not our thing.

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Adam Selinger: Look, it’s interesting. Yeah, look, you get this, you get this from schools as well. There’s um there I don’t think I’ve seen pushback from the council level, but there there has been some what I call really quite concerning remarks that we’ve heard back from, you know, maybe it’s only one or two librarians. And I think of an old guard, you know, one of them says something like, oh, no, we couldn’t possibly do science. That’s that’s way too high brow for our for our, you know, our community.

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Ben Newsome: What do you do about that?

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Adam Selinger: Well, we we kind of I recover from the shock but you know,

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Ben Newsome: It does exist though.

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Adam Selinger: It does exist. And this is kind of this is kind of what we’re seeing in the wider community with this, you know, almost dislike of expert opinions and everyone’s opinion is the same, is that we kind of got to say, look, for it’s not science and we deliberately don’t call it science. It is a discovery club. Uh and so we we just going to do it by example. We say, look, let us come in and just do a session with a bunch of bunch of kids here and and just give you a demonstration of what it is and and how engaging it is and you’ll hear from the children, you get the feedback. And you know, we take it as a very positive uh a very positive approach by saying, look, our view is that librarians are in in fact, you know, they are the gatekeepers to community knowledge, access to community knowledge and communication because libraries are no longer this place of you just go there and you borrow some books or DVDs and then you leave. Uh or you go there for the quiet quiet space to do, you know, your HSC or, you know, just access the internet for certain purposes. They have this in our view, they have this really growing and critical role in communities um to be a knowledge centre. There’s so much new information coming out. Libraries are an ideal place for people to gather and and, you know, not just receive, it’s very two-way. You could you could actually bring in some of those so-called experts. Uh or strongly opinionated people and there at that grassroots, that’s where you can have these kind of conversations in libraries. Supported by the kind of science clubs and maker spaces that, you know, are becoming more popular.

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Ben Newsome: Look, these things are fantastic. And I kind of I kind of wonder like even just looking back over like Little Bangs is not the only thing that you do. I mean, you’ve been heavily involved with early start out of the University of Wollongong, science communicator, University of Sydney. You’ve been, you know, you run your own MadLab Electronics outreach, uh Edinburgh Science Festival. I mean, just thinking all this stuff that you’ve been doing. I mean, thinking back right to the start, I’m actually just interested. I mean, what made you think, you know what, I’m just going to be a science communicator like right at the very start. Like what said I’m going to go join Questacon. I’m going to go start doing this stuff. Like where did it come from?

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Adam Selinger: Well, look, you know, in a way, uh, you know, your your home environment is so influential on your decisions and there were no no the sort of lawyers or doctors or accountants in my family group. I just had scientists. My father’s a scientist, my mother was uh uh was a communicator. She was instructing tertiary students on especially those from overseas and how to improve their communication skills. Um, you know, I was influenced by these cool things my father would bring home on the weekend, methylated spirits burning steamrollers and and other bits and pieces. Um,

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Ben Newsome: So you were really um you were really caught up right from the start. You had no choice.

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Adam Selinger: I started. Yeah, it was it was kind of there from the start. But you know, I was also just a naturally I grew up in Canberra. I was naturally curious. I was out in the yard all the time, messing around with stuff, playing with stuff. And that kind of curiosity and inventiveness, you know, I loved Lego. I still love Lego. The idea just to build with whatever you’ve got. Kind of testing yourself, what’s the best thing I can build with these limited resources, you know, isn’t that the truth these days?

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Ben Newsome: Hmm, that’s true.

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Adam Selinger: Um so, you know, I I was interested. I did science at high school of course and, you know, I wasn’t very good at it to be honest. I wasn’t a great student, but things that interested me I did well at. And so when it came to choosing a university degree because I had no choice, I was going to university. Um, I chose science subjects, but I chose things that were of interest to me. Not I wasn’t sort of steering myself in any direction at all. What was interesting though, is that about year year 10, 11, um Questacon, um which was still in the old primary school at that stage was was running public lectures. And my father was interested in that and he was dragging his two sons along. And they didn’t really get a lot of it at the early stage, but by the time I was sort of in year 12, year 11, you know, I was understanding these lectures and, you know, they were interesting. My my parents had a secret plan um to introduce me to a peer group that would not be involved in, you know, anything untoward. Um and so, you know, Questacon invited all the young or anyone basically. They said, look, if you’ve attended a whole bunch of these lectures, you’re obviously very interested in this and, you know, we’re inviting you to come and train as an explainer um at Questacon and when we moved to the new building. Uh and that’s what I undertook.

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Ben Newsome: Right.

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Adam Selinger: So I was an explainer on the floor of Questacon for my three years of my time at at the university.

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Ben Newsome: What was your favourite thing there? I mean Questacon’s like an, you know, for those people that don’t know, it’s a uh it’s our national science museum here in Australia and it’s got a lot of cool stuff in there. And I mean, all these different floors are different things. I mean, what was the one like, oh, great, I’ve got this one. Awesome. What was the one that you go, this this is you know, this is going to be a good day.

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Adam Selinger: Well, you know, the the funny thing about Questacon is that, you know, they threw together, you know, a whole bunch of like-minded people and we ranged in age from sort of 16 up to, you know, 96. So there was this this amazing pool of young people who were trained by Mike Gorr, Dr. Gorr, who was sort of the guy who started Questacon, you know, in the 80s. Trained by him, uh and effectively empowered to explain how everything basically worked at Questacon. So there we were some 17-year-olds and we were explaining the physics of, you know, the Foucault pendulum and biological slides and earthquake machines. I mean, there were there were literally hundreds of, you know, interactive science experiences that we would train to explain, but also train to to tell people when we didn’t know things that we didn’t know them. So that was the real buzz. And it was always that going back to that kind of Lego thing, you know, throw anything at me, I’m going to give it a go at explaining it, even if it’s just how to use it.

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Ben Newsome: Well, what I was thinking, I mean, it’s um it’s obviously in science communication role, you can easily get caught up with all the cool and the big and the wow and the big explosions and all the rest that goes on. Um but then again, for there’s not always what happens out in classroom. And you’ve done a lot of outreach over the years going to, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of schools over the time. What experiment or two or whatever you can come come to mind that you go, you know what, this has just been run really well in class, which actually doesn’t need much fancy stuff.

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Adam Selinger: Yeah, look, you know, my training, you know, one as an explainer, I was explaining whatever was on the floor there. I I then sort of got the opportunity to join the Shell Questacon Science Circus, which is this one-year graduate diploma in science communication. That’s it’s offered by both by Questacon and the uh Australian National University. And at the time, it took 10 recent science graduates and and trained us, you know, as explainers, but trained us in the art of performing science shows and and taking those science shows out to schools. Uh and because we’re travelling in mostly regional remote parts of Australia, we couldn’t take really high-tech fancy gear with us. I I think the most high-tech thing we took with us was a was a vacuum pump and dewar’s of liquid nitrogen, you know, still very cool stuff today. But, you know, we we could give really effective science demonstrations from uh items such as bubbles, soap bubbles and balloons and and straws. Um and it’s really about the story that you weave, you know, you demonstrate phenomena with these low-tech gear, but it’s it’s it’s hitting curriculum mark whether it’s, you know, you know, the primary school or even even HSC level.

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Ben Newsome: Absolutely. I mean, actually, just even thinking about the bubble side of things. I mean, I was just running a holiday science programme last week, uh with kids on variable testing and so we were just making which solution makes the best bubbles. And we had to define what what what what subjectively means a best bubble. So we had to work that out. Playing around with we put salt in it, sugar in it, glycerin in it, what is it? Um and then then there’s the kids with a strong observational bent who will look at it and go, oh look, there’s there are rainbows. Why are there rainbows in these bubbles? And so you could really deep dive into it. Actually, no, there’s a science museum up in uh I think it’s like the Malaysia or somewhere in Southeast Asia that teaches molecular bonding using bubbles. So it’s pretty good stuff.

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Adam Selinger: Yes, that’s right.

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Ben Newsome: That’s fantastic. I mean, so what’s um just think about all the different stuff you’ve seen around. I mean, what’s the just the funniest thing you’ve seen happen in the classroom like something’s gone a little bit left of field and we’re just going to run with it.

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Adam Selinger: Yeah, well, I think I think um children mucking around with you know, they they they want to emulate what you’ve done. And um so you go and you’re doing your science shows and they’re going, all right, well, now you’ve done that. I want to kind of do the same thing there. Um, you know, one one one of my favourites and, you know, it’s all it’s all good to make a mess in your own place to go and make a mess in the school room there. So we we have this um audio tube, which is this sort of long, it’s about a metre long, it’s sort of ribbed PVC piping. It’s quite flexible and you hold one end and you spin it around and it makes a lovely sound. And that’s because the uh the spinning end is effectively pulling the air up and the air vibrates in the tube and you’re getting a sound. You go fast, and you get one sound, you go slow, you get a low sound. Um and to demonstrate to everybody that there’s actually air going up because you can’t see it, you you sit this tube, the still end that you’re holding, um over it’s like a bowl of cornflakes or something like that. Cool. And um the cornflakes go and it sprays around and then we of course, you know, in some of these schools, we go, okay, guys, we got a whole bunch of these come out here and give it a go yourself. So, you know, eight kids out there, each with, you know, a packet of cornflakes and they’re just running around the place, spraying cornflakes everywhere.

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Ben Newsome: That is awesome. I mean, we’ve um I know those tubes. We’ve often just blocked the end um just with our hands, but cornflakes. I mean, that’s quite cool. You could almost try all sorts of stuff. You could you could get quite nasty too. I suppose you could use glitter.

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Adam Selinger: Oh we can. Yeah, yeah, well, that’s right. And that’s sort of game with this. So the kids got creative and inventive, they were trying to, you know, say, can you get rocks going up there? Oh, no, the rocks didn’t work. Little pebbles, no. We say, yeah, you could, no, don’t, no.

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Ben Newsome: It’s very staticy. Um we deliberately ended warn people say, we’re going to just see what happens and yes, we’re prepared to clean this up. Uh we were running a Van de Graaff generator experiment and uh we thought, let’s just see what happens when we put glitter into a cup and turn the Van de Graaff generator on. Yes, it does exactly what we thought it was going to do. Up and everywhere and quite sticky.

[00:32:30]
Adam Selinger: Always like it when a prediction comes true.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, it is awesome. Actually, I love those lessons where the kids just go, let’s do this and then let’s do this. And then by the end of this lesson, you’re thinking, okay, we’ve got our outcomes, but gee, we went down a rabbit hole.

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Adam Selinger: Yeah, look, I I get the I mean the greatest thrill is when those kids start being creative. You you started you’ve sparked something in them and they’re gone, oh, all right, so I wonder if I do that. I mean, it’s always helpful if they actually try and explain what they’re thinking is before they do it, but otherwise, you know, I I do another programme as you mentioned the MadLab Electronics workshop and the the general programme is, you know, here’s your bag of components, follow the instructions and placing everything into the board the right way around. Here’s how you solder. And those who are just going slowly and carefully will get through it in their own time. Those who’ve, you know, done before, quite quick, you know, get through it and then you sort of say, well, now you can sort of deconstruct it and change things around and and that’s when they get quite creative as well. They can say, oh, so I don’t have to follow exactly. No, no, but you’ve, you know, work out what you want to replace and what you think might happen, you know, different resistor or different lights or different you know. And that’s really cool when when they start saying, I’m going to do this and I think it’s going to happen. Then you then for me, that’s the outcome because I don’t we’re not just about, you know, the whizbang. That’s

[00:33:27]
Adam Selinger: a great way to spark the interest. The the ultimate thing is when when the children and adults when they start thinking for themselves. When they really start, as you mentioned that deep dive, they’re thinking, they’re innovating, they’re going, I wonder if I can do that and this happens. And if, you know, of course, that’s that’s what you want to see people, you know, leaving university with or not even going to university, just having that inventive, that curiosity and and, you know, that’s a great outcome for those those guys.

[00:35:42]
Ben Newsome: And there’s been a real movement towards this with um kids, you know, getting them their curiosity going and leading them to explore it. I mean, I wonder um have you ever come across a situation when you’ve just got these kids who are I don’t know, they’ve almost been trained since early on that no, we’re just going to follow the the lesson scaffold and we’re going to do that, and we’re going to finish and we’re going to repeat to the point of you ever have a situation where the kid’s just coming up with something new that isn’t guided by you is just almost unheard of. You know what I mean? Like it’s a have you ever had the situation where the kids just genuinely have a blockage to do this?

[00:36:59]
Adam Selinger: Yeah, look, um a lot of the workshops that run a bit like that. I mean, you know, I’d like to give them something that’s quite challenging. I don’t I steer away from too much of the the craft kind of um thing. So there definitely a place for it, you know, you’re you’re you’re following an instruction, you’re you’re making a a water rocket powered car. And that’s that’s great. You know, they’ve they’ve made that but what I’d like to see is, you know, offering a bit of the theory. I’ll say, look, it comes out of problem solving. I’d say, what I’d like to do is I’d like to move this this car from this side of the room to that side of the room. And I kind of want to do it as fast as possible. And here’s some gear for you to try and do that. And it may be a case of here’s an example you might have seen and I can give an example. I’ve actually started using YouTube now, because that’s just a cool way to say, here’s something that somebody else has done. I wonder if you you could try and do the same thing. I’m not going to give you any more instruction than you’ve seen that and here’s some gear. Or you can try something different. And yeah, look, a lot of children will struggle with that. They’ll they’ll go, oh, but I don’t know what to do. Yeah, you do. Just make something and it’s going to travel, you know, but

[00:38:52]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, that fear of um, yeah, what’s the grade mark? When you’re going, there’s no grade. Just get it from one spot to another.

[00:38:59]
Adam Selinger: It’s it’s and then kids come and say, well, can you show me the final product? I just want to I just want to I just want to make it quickly and then then I’m done. And that that kind of annoys me. There is that kind of, you know, kids race through it and go, I’ve done it. Is this it? Is this it? Is this it now? That’s not kind of the point. Um and and I kind of want to I want to tear them away from that. There’s the end product. Here’s a model, copy that and then you can go. It’s like,

[00:40:04]
Ben Newsome: No. Oh, yeah, I mean one of the things I’ve seen kids um struggle with and this is a lot of science experiments is um quote unquote, there was no result, so it’s wrong.

[00:40:14]
Adam Selinger: Yeah, that’s right.

[00:40:15]
Ben Newsome: So like, no, the no result is a result. It doesn’t do anything. That’s an answer. You you put it down. Top marks actually, if you say it doesn’t do anything and you explain why. Um and actually um I actually know there’s a little bit of research around this that this can actually come through um even on the teaching side where people expect a result all the time. And so when they do an experiment and doesn’t get a result, it’s treated as wrong, which is not actually the case. It’s just doesn’t work. Um I mean, even as we speak right now, um I was just trialing out different classic borax solution to crystallise some stuff out on some pipe cleaners. Um so they’re lined up on my window sill right now and I just I was actually just curious as to what is the minimum amount that you actually need to dissolve borax into water before it’ll crystallise out reasonably well. I’ve got several bottles there that are just completely doing nothing. Now, if those kids were the ones that just got only that sample of borax and water and, you know, obviously heat it up to get a bit of a saturated solution. If not much comes out, they’ll go, well, I can’t do it. So therefore, you know, it didn’t work. So I I I’m terrible at it. And um it’s not really the point.

[00:42:02]
Adam Selinger: It’s, yeah, look, it’s an interesting what’s it’s a fine line because at the end of the day, they are children, uh and they do want uh they do want to feel good about what they’ve achieved. And and it’s really important that at the end of their time with us that, you know, they feel good about what they’ve done. And if something is a a failure, they still feel good because they’ve they’ve demonstrated to us and to everyone else that that approach is not going to give us what we want, but that is just as valid as somebody who’s gone, oh, look, mine worked.

[00:43:18]
Ben Newsome: Exactly.

[00:43:18]
Adam Selinger: And you know, well, how did it work? What was different about yours? They go, oh. Okay, this is what we did. So, you know, a couple of things in that. Firstly, you know, that what we’re doing is we’re working collaboratively. And some people are working on this element of the experiment, some people are working on that, but everybody needs to share their outcomes. Otherwise, nobody gets a result. So then, yeah.

[00:43:41]
Ben Newsome: Every now and then though, I mean, I can imagine you’re up on stage, you want this thing to work and it’s just not working.

[00:43:47]
Adam Selinger: Oh, yeah.

[00:43:48]
Ben Newsome: What’s been the one of the ones where you just been it’s been a outright clanger. You’ve gone, I’m just going to explain my way out of this. There’s no choice.

[00:43:56]
Adam Selinger: Yeah, humidity is the killer or or the lack of. Static, soap bubbles get killed. You’re trying to do your big finale with a big, you know, a half half tractor tyre full of soapy water and you’ve got your volunteer standing in the middle and you’re about to like pull them up and put a human inside a bubble and the bubbles have gone shy. They’ve got stage shy. They’re just not not happening. Um that’s that’s probably the most difficult.

[00:45:06]
Ben Newsome: I can remember actually um um we had a few years ago. So we, you know, obviously do a lot of um work around doing outreach stuff for Fizzics and um we’re doing a teacher PD with some um teachers and we were just going to show them how to do a cornflour slime. Standard Oobleck, pretty good fun. Um problem is that it’s part of sharing kits means you share problems. So the tub of uh so-called cornflour had been replaced by a tub of basically icing sugar. But they hadn’t been labelled. So it was mixing away and so in my um rush at the time, just let’s just get into it. And it was very shiny and kind of gooey-ish but it wasn’t really the properties. And just said, look, you know, okay, learning lesson. Label your stuff. So basically we found out the labels had been, you know, fallen off and just know it’s on and replaced it. But you imagine the silliest little thing can impact a lesson. In this case, it was uh 30 teachers. That’s happened. Um so just uh actually just think, if you had to have like, I don’t know, someone started with you at Little Bangs or whatever whatever you’ve got a lot of projects around. Just someone started with you or if you’re even if you’re in a classroom, you had to give them some advice about just start to teach science. What what would you say?

[00:46:55]
Adam Selinger: Yeah, look, there there know your stuff. Really, just know what it is you are attempting to convey. Um, you know, read about it, go to wikis, you know, look at YouTube. So really, so when things go wrong and I say when, 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 that is then part of a valid 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 an idea, 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, I also want them to understand that even a so-called expert, and they’ll perceive me as that if I’m in front of the class, will get things wrong. And I think that’s another that that research is coming out saying that’s actually a really important factor that that that people should understand that experts don’t always get things right. Um but, you know, they are they’re going to get they’re going to get it right more times than people who are not experts. So the idea of of of, you know, failures are fine. It’s okay. Um but if you’re going to be doing this and you’re going to be, you know, running lots of classes, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, just keep practicing it because you you’ve got to understand, you know, you know, how fast you might have to pull something or where things are on your table if you got to do things quickly and laying things out the same way. It’s like, you know, it’s like any kind of performance, whether you’re actually doing a show or you’re just running a class session. Knowing where your stuff is, labelling it correctly. And practice. Know your stuff and practice. I mean, you can’t go wrong. Having good gear helps too.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the Little Bangs Discovery Club and who is it designed for?

The Little Bangs Discovery Club is a programme designed for preschool children, specifically between the ages of three and five, and their accompanying adults. It was initiated to upskill libraries and librarians in their STEM offerings, beginning in Sydney and expanding to other regions.

2. How does the Little Bangs program address the challenge of training librarians and parents without a science background?

The programme’s content is geared towards the learning capabilities of young children and the abilities of non-science background adults, making it a shared learning journey for everyone. It aims to remove the “fear of not knowing” by focusing on fundamental concepts. Additionally, librarians are considered “gatekeepers to community knowledge” and are provided with lesson plans and resources, including video demonstrations, to build their confidence. The curriculum is designed to be easily understood, avoiding overly prescriptive methods, and encourages applying local conditions.

3. What is Adam Selinger’s philosophy on “failure” in science experiments within an educational setting?

Adam believes that “failure” is a valuable part of the learning process. If an experiment doesn’t yield the expected result, children and adults should still feel good because they’ve demonstrated that a particular approach doesn’t work. This is considered just as valid as a successful outcome. He also notes that even perceived experts will get things wrong, and acknowledging this is an important factor in teaching science, reinforcing that “failures are fine.”

4. Beyond big, flashy demonstrations, what are some examples of effective low-tech science experiments that Adam Selinger uses?

Adam emphasises that effective science demonstrations don’t require high-tech equipment. Examples include using simple items like soap bubbles, balloons, and straws. He also describes an experiment with an audio tube and cornflakes to demonstrate air pressure, where spinning the tube causes cornflakes to fly around. The key is using these simple materials to tell a compelling story that aligns with curriculum outcomes.

5. What advice does Adam Selinger offer to educators looking to start teaching science effectively?

Adam advises educators to “know your stuff.” This means thoroughly understanding the concepts they are attempting to convey, by reading, watching YouTube videos, and consulting resources. This preparation allows them to confidently explain what’s happening, even when experiments go unexpectedly. He stresses the importance of practice to understand the nuances of demonstrations and manage classroom dynamics. Finally, he encourages embracing “failure” as a learning opportunity and explicitly making it clear that it’s okay for things not to work out as planned, as even experts don’t always get things right.