It’s the exhibition day at Educhange 2017! Holly and the team arrived at the hall early in the morning with many boxes full of tricks and goodies to set up our stall for the day. We were ready to meet all the education enthusiasts coming to the Royal Melbourne Exhibition building today!

https://www.facebook.com/fizzicseducation/videos/10155820656973384/

It was wonderful walking around chatting to like-minded people, all incredibly passionate about education! We met so many Australian teachers from every state, as well as international ones from Singapore, South Korea and even the US! There was a diverse range of exhibitors showcasing their education products, from jewellery-making workshops that can teach science and maths as well as practical crafting skills, to international food tours and cooking classes that allow students to experience an important part of other cultures.

Play area full of toys as you walk into the exhibition building!

I met Connor and the team from Aurora Reality, who came up with a game combining augmented reality and learning maths! The end result is a physical book you can colour in, and when hovering a tablet camera over it in the app, turns into a 3D pop-up book on screen where you can play mini maths games! How cool is that!

The team from Aurora Reality showing me how to play their cool augmented reality maths game!

Our friends from the Children’s Discovery Museum were also at the exhibition! I had a great chat to them about all the interactive museums they have set up around Australia, and marvelled at all the fun toys they had on display!

Hanging out with Adam and Carmen from the Children’s Discovery Museum!

You can hear more about the Children’s Discovery centre in a podcast interview produced earlier this year.

A couple of stalls down from ours were the lovely people from Ginnie & Pinney, who have published a series of books aimed at 3 to 8-year-old’s. The books are a collaboration between writers, developmental psychologists and academics in education, carefully crafted to teach children about ethics, empathy and ethics. I have spoken to a few people working towards similar goals through the use of other media forms such as apps, who claim there is a demand from teachers for innovative resources on social and emotional development for children.

The Ginnie and Pinney books are available in both English and Chinese!

At lunchtime, we unveiled our tasty surprise and made liquid nitrogen ice cream, right there in the hall! Patrons watched on as Holly mixed the liquid nitrogen and the chocolatey cream, fog pouring steadily over the sides of the bowl. Everyone agreed that our ice cream was super creamy, since it’s cooled down so much so quickly the fats and water freezes at the same time meaning the crystals formed are particularly tiny (here’s how to make your own ice-cream at school!).

Girls eagerly awaiting their free ice cream as Holly gets to work!

Ben telling liquid nitrogen jokes and funny stories while everyone enjoys their ice creams!

Holly getting interviewed!

The Fizzics team had an absolute blast today at Educhange 2017, bring on Thursday! To find us for more free ice cream and heaps of experiments, just follow the loud bangs, weird noises, and laughter!

Happy teaching,

Jaqueline Kao

Free science experiments!

NEW Primary science teaching book!

“Be Amazing! How to teach science, the way primary kids love”

Want more ideas for teaching science?

Subscribe to the FizzicsEd Podcast!