Nothing puts your lesson to the test than having students try to recall just what the content was. You can tell if you ask them to send you a drawing, especially if you ask for it to be sent a week after the fact! The trap of running a science...

Kids these days really love meshing digital media into nearly everything they do. Why not go with the trend and present biological science with portable laptops and digital microscopes? This week I was at a school running a station-based a microscopy lesson...

I ran into Anthony Stimson again a little while ago whilst running science workshops at Australian Museum’s Science in the City. Anthony runs Australian Wildlife Displays and visits schools to perform wildlife shows. As such its common for us to run into each other whilst at science festivals and environmental...

Remember Professor Julius Sumner-Miller, the lecturer who first brought simple engaging science experiments into people’s homes via TV? Wow, did he start something! Prof. Sumner-Miller’s ideas of demonstrating science using simple materials have been taken up by primary and science teachers throughout Australia; in fact you would struggle to get...

Who said that all reality television is complete rubbish? Sunday night’s Masterchef challenge contained some serious lessons about the importance of the scientific method. The challenge was to invent a recipe, and write it so that somebody following it to the letter could reproduce it perfectly.

Most of the time when I walk into a job, whether it be a school workshop, an event, or a birthday party, I get asked if I’m going to make something explode – and I’m not sure that this is a good thing. As a science student at uni, I...

I get irritated when I go shopping. More and more scientific jargon appears to be making its way onto the labels of products, and in many cases it is misused and doesn’t make sense. I’m a scientist, I use jargon all the time and I don’t have any problem with...

With the National Broadband Network (NBN) beginning to be rolled out across Australia, at an estimated cost of $35.9 billion, the general public is quite rightly wondering what they will get for their buck. Well, having just attended the Digital Outreach conference this week I can say from the education...

I am not ashamed to admit this, but for the last 12 years of my life, I have wanted nothing more than to be able to toss some Floo powder in a fireplace and walk through that beautiful green flame to the land of Harry Potter. With the last installment...

As most readers are aware, working with gifted children offers its own challenges when it comes to science. Our approach to any child, gifted or not, is to work with what they can do rather than concentrate on their particular age. Having supplementary material on hand is the best insurance...

As part of our Renewable Energy workshop today, I was asked why we can’t use the steam produced by the evaporation of liquid nitrogen to power a turbine and generate electricity. The short answer is economics –the amount of energy that would be produced by using liquid nitrogen to power...

A bet is a bet! We were playing around with Facebook and Karin suggested that if we got 50 “likes” by the end of the business day the Sydney staff could slime me. Of course I couldn’t resist the challenge :)

Beginning in 2007, NSW rolled out millions of dollars of video conferencing hardware to NSW public schools through the Interactive Classroom Project. So how can rural and remote schools gain access? Read on...

What is your local school doing for this year's theme? Here are some easy ideas that can be run in class!