 My name is Melissa Silk and I'm from Sydney and I currently have a wear a couple of different hats in my employment I'd really like to thank Moodle for inviting me to talk to you today about STEAM and STEAM education I'm not quite sure how you found me, but it's really good that you did because What I would like to do as a teacher is to share some of the Curriculum development that I've been working on so that we can we can actually push some of that curriculum boundary-pushing together and I do have a relationship with Moodle which I Would just like to tell you a little bit of history about that. Okay, first of all, this is the school where I teach on the on the left The two images there's one of them looks like a teed box down the bottom It's a it's an inner-city campus at International Grammar School It's very close to UTS which is on the right and I also have a position at UTS in Studying first-year students in design I'm also a very very shaky doctoral student at UTS as well So because they're within five minutes walking distance of one another for me That's my that's my local area. They're my peeps and that's where I like to hang out a lot The other thing that I have is actually down there in the left-hand corner. That's a steam pop Which is a very small a little start-up that's got to do with Developing projects that are along the lines of embedding the arts into science technology engineering and math and by the arts I mean subjects such as music drama dance in in the Australian curriculum we we include Visual arts and media in the the area of the arts It's also broader than that So it's it's about bringing all of those really creative subjects in alignment or in conjunction or Intersection with science technology engineering and math It's what the steam acronym stands for and steam pop is Smashing together. It's a hybrid word that that I've developed for my company because pop was a project that I was very Very interested in pushing out as well, and I'll explain a little bit more about that later Right, I would just like to play you something now as a little bit of a starter Which is kind of strange. So just bear with me Oh, hang on a minute I'm not quite used to the system Hands up if you if you can think of it you've got a hand up over there Big loud voice, right, so it's about Yeah Right, so the impact of sound on on a surface. That's right. This is um, it was actually just hot off the press It's one of my disruptive Steam project. We've just finished that last week in year 8 at IDS So the entire cohort of year 8 spent some time learning about the mathematics and science of sound and then in partnership with little bits which are the Magnetic electronic components that snap together to create circuits They they have a partnership little bit for a startup from that based in New York and were developed at MIT and They were they also have a partnership with Korg synthesizers and so they have these hits called since hits which we Resourced the year 8 cohort with so they could work in groups and create their own synthesizers To create their own music with certain criteria to be addressed and those criteria was to do with the self Because we're talking about year 8 and all they're really interested in is themselves So most of the projects that I'll design for stage 4 and 5 Which is in New South Wales anyway from some sort of early high school before the senior years Most of the projects will be something to do with the the self identity Learning more about what you bring to a subject and what you what you take away And so if we can combine most more subjects together We've got the possibility of bringing more to a subject and taking way more away For our students the teachers were also involved in that project when I presented it to them Which was about nine weeks ago now and we had a pre-service teacher from the con the conservatorium of music She and her colleague were just in the last section of that video presenting that project back to her peers She's not yet graduated, but I have to say in The beginning of the project when she came on board She really didn't see the point of why we were looking at the mathematics of music and sound and why we would be bothering to Visualize that with scientific experiments And by the end of it. She had a very good understanding So the the gap that I can see in training teachers Which is where I would like to take these these ideas further is to be able to recognize or acknowledge That your subjects are now in mesh Okay, they they actually have an interconnectedness and it's up to the young teachers or the new teachers that we're training to be able to recognize the Possibilities and the potential of putting Embedded stem content into what is normally a disparate subject area somewhere within the arts or even English You know beyond that So I call that disrupting disrupting the content and I've been doing that for a while Just to take you back to the word pop in my little Company named steampop on the left here. We have an image which is an intaglio print So it's a fine artwork that was created by in the year nine student a little while ago in a project Within that was entitled the possibilities of the parabola. Now if I run a school Whoops, if I was to open a school and run a school I would choose one mathematical theory or function or Concept and I would teach my entire curriculum By that concept in each year group because I believe that you can so that was a parabola You can probably see why it was x squared in there if you're looking closely That was just treated as it in an artistic way more on that later next to it that flimsy looking object is actually a class set of numeric values associated with the the mathematics of mazes and labyrinths That was like the end product of another unit of work where we discovered what was going on in the development history and cultural aspect of mazes So these are disruptive Disruptive delivery this leads me back to moodle and I use moodle as an LMS at school where I teach I think I'm probably the biggest user because I quite like what it what the potential of moodle can do But quite a few years ago now maybe six years ago now I decided in my previous role which was head of design and technology at international grammar school. I decided that I wanted to get Respect the sustainability focus that the school had and still has and just get rid of paper exams We're required to examine our students, you know, which is probably something that's content. It's anyway So in years seven and eight in design and technology really an exam is is a quiz So I decided that we would just hold the exam online and the entire cohort would do their exam online The school didn't want to go as far as saying yes to the fact that I didn't want it scheduled I just wanted it open within a time frame and students could go away and do it at their ledger within that time frame But there was a bit of contention because oh, but what if they're going to talk to the person next to them? Well, that's okay in my opinion. It's still learning. There's some conference there that can go on You know, it could lead to the retention of knowledge. Who knows? It was disruptive but anyway, they said no to that So we have to set everybody up in the hall as you can see looked really regimented. I quite like it It looks they look like robots, you know, they had they had to be quiet because it was exam conditions They had to have working laptops what you can't see in that in that image is at the back end of that Just setting it up having all of the questions which were mainly closed answer questions There were probably 85% of it was closed. I think you can probably Guess why we didn't have to mark it Because it's a useless waste of time doing all that marking for questions that are multiple choice if you can do that online It's great And even that the questions that were extended responses were easier to mark because it was just all in the one spot There was no danger of losing bits of paper here and there and and whatever but what we can't see in that picture is the tech guys that were at the top of the of the hall Who were watching the spike in the in the network usage and and things cracking So and this was a while ago The the current head I'm not really sure if he will actually go go down this path with this exam But for at least five years We've been running with amendments the same type of exam and it's a beautiful way Well to test if you need to I'd still like to just take it completely outside of the exam schedule and the scheduling process, but I'm not in the position to do that anymore, but that was kind of fun So thanks Moodle for helping me with that one Most of the courses that I've delivered have been Paperless and they have been set up as just delivery on Moodle I was talking to somebody just earlier about the fact that I only know probably like you know 7% of what of the potential of Moodle in terms of teaching and stuff that you know It's been going on at this conference has opened my eyes as well But as a method of delivery, this is an older version This is this brings me back to the courses that I've put on Moodle The design and technology is 7 to 12 all of the coursework. I did there was on Moodle possibilities of the parabola was an entire course based in Moodle Thinking hyperbolically is where all of this began about or maybe eight years ago I started to look at putting curriculum together What about if we designed math and science units that would were actually sort of related to psychology or they were related to visual arts or they're related to music and I worked with the head of Mathematics at my school to develop this project. We were luckily in enough to get the permissions to run with this project Thinking hyperbolically and the exclamation mark is actually part of our our branding and we just ran with it for about three or four years in terms of Expanding the the possibilities of ways of teaching for year nine and ten So they're around 14 15 16 years old and there was no prerequisite that you had to be able in mathematics Or that you had to be considered creative in inverted commas what we found and I'll show you a little bit more about this No, I can't in fact what I really need to Dress here is that every course that I show you here is another entire presentation So I've tried to smash all this down for Francis I've tried to smash it all down into just enough time to give you a taste of what what we've done, but I've presented Thinking hyperbolically as a standalone because it's so dense with information as a steam course in other context You know contact me and I can come and do that for you happy to do that. What else have we got there? See music that music to two music programs that I'm working on the first one that you just saw Or the most previous one is that is our current one Some of you might have heard the cake tin lid that was a cake tin lid with some stand from the sand pit from preschool With it with an old speaker and a camera on a coffee stand. So it's like a science experiment Just really the simatics The science of sound of visualizing sound is where we got all these ideas from and you might have seen them Heard the vibrations of that cake tin lid. So it's not perfect But I can tell you now that the year 8 students that came and gathered around to watch those bits of sand jumping To the tune of the sounds that they made through their little bit synthesizers all about themselves There were some words in there that were describing themselves It was a really beautiful moment Actually, just last Thursday that we brought all of that together What's the last one on there? Galleries of work, of course, I put lots of galleries on Moodle so that we can share them. This is one gallery This is a in my opinion when you're when you're running a Curriculum that smashes ideas together you need to be able to exhibit that somewhere the best possible Example of that is high-tech high in San Diego where they they they're integrated learning is always exhibited We've got some fantastic sort of samples of Integrated on transdisciplinary work that's all around the school I have some of these samples from the possibilities of the parabola project up here Which I'd invite you to come and have a look at after after we finish or just you know before you go and have Your morning tea because it was a project that I designed that came out of the thinking Hyperbolicly course and I brought it into design and technology It was it did have outcomes those outcomes were mandated by the Board of Studies in New South Wales at that time So it did have to be within curriculum guidelines But just just stretching it enough to be something really conceptual Which doesn't happen much in design and technology at schools or in design courses at schools because They're mainly just about making stuff, you know breadboards boxes that sort of thing taking home It's really good because making is very important, but this one had criteria where the students had to make their Their objects that were vessels. I'll just hold on up here a vessel So it had to vaguely hold something And they had to make it with whatever we had lying around the workshop so we were not buying in materials It was a sustainable project. They had to make them entirely without glue they had to think about the ways of construction and Stability in the three s's of engineering, so we've got strength service ability and stability and They had to what produced them and then we exhibited them So we exhibited them luckily enough with the Australian design center that was called object at that point Gave us a little space in an exhibition space And so the students were able to exhibit their work in an external environment Which made them feel very very special and that's another thing that we need to do with steam Learning is to actually engage with museums and institutions that are outside of school To be able to exhibit what the students have produced inside of the school because it's important that that they get that Exposure, so I've got a couple of these here for you to have a look at Please feel free. There are some on the images up there We took that project into one when the desktop 3d printers were That came into schools. We bought one, you know, I learned how to use it and Wrote some instructions for the students based on the parabola Everyone knows the parabola. Yeah, the curve. Yeah, cool I spent at the back end. I've spent about a day writing really detailed instructions In the software that we that we had at the time which is vector work, which is predominantly Architectural software and we use that for architect projects But that was all we had and I thought well, you know, I'll give that to them It was before we'd really engage with anything that was free like you know tinker card and sketch up and this sort of thing So we had that in the school and I said, okay away you go. Here's the instructions They're online. They're on noodle and I had the students saying oh, but miss. What do I do now? Just read the instructions. That's all I did the entire lesson I've spent so much or invested so much time in creating instructions that I could understand as a newcomer to sort of parametric modeling So I thought well if I could do it, you can do it So I didn't actually help them. I said read the instructions and then they produced these forms and I think they're really beautiful This is a while ago. So These were presented back at the Australian Design Center in terms of a 3d printing PD professional development that I did with some other teachers and I realized at that time looking at the work that was being exhibited in that particular Exhibition which was called control P I Realized that my year 9 and 10 students had produced these beautiful forms Not by just pulling down some file from thingy verse and printing it but they produced them from scratch as the Americans like to say and They were really stunning and they were kind of way way beyond what what was being exhibited as Professional work by some of the other contributors to that Exhibition and I thought yeah, this is really disruptive. This is visible. This is science math visible Okay, but it really is about art and it's about conceptualizing Creative objects and creating aesthetic objects that are based in something really pure and original. I Hope that makes sense. The next thing that we did was we turned some of our parabolic curves into textile prints Don't know if you notice, but I was wearing this at dinner last night This is a textile print digital prints from the parabola. Okay, it's very nice Come and have a look at that. There's so much that you can do in all dimensions with with the with the one curve and That makes it visible and tangible. You can touch it. You can hold it. You can feel it You can wear it That led me to create a course in biomimicry These are just some of the objects. We're lucky enough to have a laser cutter in the school Which you know, I would like to use with students and teach students how to use it Basically, you can see some of the mathematics in there. So we're talking about iteration repetition Reflection all of those terms. I won't spend too much time on that It's just about exhibiting the work that students produce. I think that that was our pilot course for what eventually turned into paper-folding biomimetic course Now we're going to backtrack to we're actually going to lower lower the year groups now They've got year five and six now on the screen, but we're going to move forward This is the steam camp that we ran just recently just this year a holiday camp where kids that were interested in Visualizing their mathematics could come and you know have a play it was really hard work and Their brains were really really hurting and some of them were I think Resenting the fact that their parents had put them in this camp Which was meant to be fun and they had to think really really hard but it was so cool and some of them I would say probably 80% of them got some real value out of having an immersion couple of days in Really alternative types of mathematics Mathematical thinking you'll see there the the image of the well. We've got a hypercube. That's what the boys holding there first So we're talking about you know Dimensions we have some 10-segrity structures, which are just fabulous could talk to you for 40 minutes on them alone but next to that is the The representation in three dimensions of the maze artwork that I showed you at the beginning So we cut the mazes that they produce from the mathematics the numeric values that are associated with creating What is called a nine level labyrinth? And we put them together and it's about this big this little artwork and we use refracting or edge refracting Acrylic because it looks really cool and they're all fluro, which is also really cool and the little guy at the end There was I found this space to actually put the maze in which has some really really horrible ceramics in there So I worked out who belonged to them and said could I have the key and took them away and put the maze in there The little life on it and I found this guy just just staring at it after school one day It was in the winter so it's getting bit dark and I thought perfect got his permission and took a photo In fact, I know his mom so it's got her permission as well So I just thought that was a nice moment of this thing that glowed it came from the Perm of an idea that we had way back in thinking hyperbolically and it's still relevant We can still return to it and I will return to it again in other context So it has to be visible is what I'm stressing Whatever you produce has to you know in some way or form be aesthetic and visible tangible products now we did assess thinking hyperbolically and I'm just going to leave this view for a moment so that I can show you the assessment Outcomes that we had a look at for the teachers in the room just so that I'm actually creating a validity here Let's go in here So the assessment that we came up with for these kind of steam smashing together curriculum things were Outcomes such as this type of thing Some of them are quite dense some of them are easier to understand That one's very easy to understand that one's probably likely given This one not as easy to grasp if you're a parent reading a child's report and thinking hmm I wonder how they did in that outcome? But nevertheless it validated what we were trying to do and I think I have one more Okay, which is probably the most important in this You know steam zeitgeist that we've got at the moment stem to steam even Malcolm Turnbull left out the a At the beginning of the year which is interesting because the Australia Council for the arts then went oh what about the arts and Invited people to provide Provocations to their board so that they could respond to the innovation agenda that was released in March and I was lucky enough to be the education spokesperson Provided provocation at that time with two other people from the arts industry Here's the board. I don't know what they did with that because it was all very hot hot, but it was pretty exciting. I have to say So moving on from assessment Unfortunately at schools we always have to assess children students and And in fact at universities we all know we have to assess and sometimes it would be great to just throw that out the Window and just think well. What about the experience? What how what's the value in the experience? Couldn't we just assess that? What do you know? What can you tell me? What emotions did you bring to this? There's a whole bunch of stuff that you can research on the internet as you know To do with to do with steam learning or to do with the way that science And I'll include mathematics in the broad title of science and the way that science and the arts have been Intersecting for many many years, you know for thousands of years. This is just one example This is from the Museum of Modern Arts at MoMA in New York It's a fantastic website if you'd like to just note it down. It's totally interactive It's got some fantastic ideas and great examples So these are things that we would engage in during the research phase of any any unit of work related to steam Also other things that you find on the internet are actually really really interesting This is this one is just that I'm not going to play the whole thing, but it's a It's the explanation of turbulence as it relates to patterns and to then goes Dari-dari night, so I won't play the whole thing. Have a look at it So it's about turbulence flow and they relate it back to the artist and the artwork It's a really really lovely little video, but it's one of millions Um What I'm calling steam engines here are the collaborations that I think are important when you're designing any type of cross-curricular or transdisciplinary Experience for people to engage with and these are people of all ages So I've provided this slide to Fran maybe if you would want to if you want to get in touch And send it out. These are all links to people. They happen to be mostly women and that's not Conscious decision except that I do think that in in the tech industry that the balances is really is quite good But when I've been on my journeys in steam I've met a lot of women who are both educators or CEOs or directors of Certain steam incentives and they've really been standouts and they've been working with with guys as well But it's just been my experience to bring these people to your attention to Angelina Russo is the one on the top left. She's at the University of Canberra She's been working with a guy called Steven Barass to create visualized data for a long time now They're worth looking up. The links will be available to you. That's her data beanie. Okay, that was knitted on the 1970s hobbyist Knitting machine that was marketed towards girls because when everybody had a hobby so she's got one of them She knitted a data beanie. I think they've collected that data data data from the I think it was this the seal Migration somewhere in the Southern Ocean some some portion of land They've collected this data and they've created it into a beanie, which is kind of cool We've got Linda Keane who is from Chicago underneath that next dot CC is is her creative commons website that has got a myriad of steam related activities for Students who engage with she's fantastic Below that is Lucia Montage and she's standing next to John Mitre who was the kind of Father of design thinking at the Rhode Island School of Design very very influential people in terms of how science and the arts Meet and create, you know, beautiful forms Lucia works at a place called the nature lab Which is part of Rhode Island School of Design in North America? Which is just a wonderful place to go and visit have a look at their website Cindy Lawrence is the director the other CEO of Mo Math, which is the museum of mathematics in New York I'm really lucky to have been able to present some of the projects that we have developed at their museum If you're in New York, it's not it's five years old. He was open late 2012 It's coming up to being five years old and It's a really good museum that in brings students or brings anyone into contact with the way that mathematics can be visualised and played with In a great big complex. It's very very. It's a wonderful place. Please go there next time you're in New York and below that is actually a form one of the The polyhedron type of forms that was created by George Hart With a school group you can't quite see Anita you because she's in that group of people next to what's called a harm on a graph That she made with her little steam club and I met her at the Museum of Mathematics. That's why they're all grouped together and she introduced me to the work of George Hart who's a Mathematics Mathematics she's a lecturer somewhere in Stony Brook University on Long Island and he is a he's a wonderful Visualizer of mathematics as well for kids just above them is Cindy and one of my students just earlier this year when Cindy and her team visited Australia just by chance They're on their way to Singapore and it happened to be Chinese New Year So they couldn't do what they needed to do so they had four days in their calendar So they came to Sydney and they met some of our four unit mathematics students in that in that instance and then some of our year 8 students and had a bit of a We're lucky enough to get a bit of press around that visit, which was really was great fun. It was really good and then down below is Panna Panna of Vata Nana I think her name is but miss miss Panna says is her website And she deals with steam concepts for lower infant Age, sorry lower primary so infant schools. She's got a fantastic Fantastic body of work that is available and she's a real mover and shaker. I think she works in Taipei Those those are all available to you if you want later on So they're the engines that I've engaged with so the collaborators that I've had something to do with some of them And I just wanted to share that with you The reality is when you're teaching any steam Project is to actually base it into what work on this be applied So we've got the watercube as a really good example Chris bosses and Australian architect that they were the designers of the watercube all based on the Mathematics of soap bubbles That's a really good example. I'm not going to go too close into it We also have a look at nanotechnology and the development of Biomimetic forms in our research of a steam project. This is Leah Heiser's work and she's she currently works with biomedical groups in Melbourne as well as RMIT to develop information-giving forms that are on a nano scale that are based in some sort of natural type of Expansion so we we look at this in the context of origami the ones on the seed shapes on that on the left of the things That open and deliver information. She has other beautiful jewelry that is that is the delivery of insulin So that she's in development. So it's where artists meet Scientists where these beautiful examples of steam can occur and just being able to explore that with young people Really opens their minds in terms of what? What the possibilities are? So this is back to the music project. Have you heard of little bits the little bits? electronic components Great, there's someone nodding. That's fantastic. There's so much fun to play with So the little bits synth kits, you know, I knew nothing about Synthesizers before I investigated what these were so me and now a hundred and you know ten year eight students know a lot More about electronic sound, which is really really cool Whether or not they're all engaged, you know I can't I can't say but on the day that we were looking at the the production of their own voice in and And the correlations between their own sound made with a very short pop Which they recorded and then tried to meet in turn in an online mathematics software To be able to understand their the relationship between their sound and sine waves so where that occurs in maths So this is where we bring the maths teachers in and we say well This is what happening here. We've got frequency and pitch and this sort of thing and this is what it looks like mathematically So we created this kind of Group data based on those op sounds, which was kind of strange And that's but it worked. I think and they understood and that's when I did notice that there was like about 70% engagement probably like, you know Same as what's in the room right now But just playing with the kits please saw them in the video playing with these little kits and just making spooky sounds and Understanding what you're actually doing the science of those sounds is important because it's knowledge that you know Perhaps will be retained certainly will come up again at some point plus putting that into a context of what is the history of Synthesizers, you know, where did these sounds begin? You know, where did electronic music come from? I mean, they're all off listening to it now But where did it start? Why was it important? Where does it sit in culture and society and politics? Etc. Moving on there. They are having a bit of a go, you know, we sit on the floor muck around We required them to use their own devices in terms of their phones. They've all got a phone So we actually said well now that phone becomes a resource for this unit of work So you don't just a snapchat your friends at this stage you use it to record sounds We smashed around using a few iPads that we provided just to record sounds manipulate them Re-record that sort of thing. It was the only way we could troubleshoot around having only one kit between four kids You know, they're expensive as a resource and I have to say that not one piece of the kits was broken So they were very respectful, which was great of of This of the resources that we provided and let me tell you they're not an easy group They're not an easy bunch of year 8 students. They're probably the hardest that we've had at the school I'm telling you the truth Some more engines the thinking hyperbolically examples are on the left The engine that I'm talking about there is the fact that Myself and my colleague Jane Martin who is the head of mathematics were able to get permission from our principal at the time To run with this project that was completely, you know off the wall was very left field But she said yep go for it and it was very successful So at the end of our first year of teaching thinking hyperbolically We were able to actually have an exhibition of student work at the powerhouse museum, which is great And we could not have done that without the consent of leadership So where any of these incentives are going to work? We have to get all of our school leaders on board. This is the way that we go And they have to take risks and they have to actually be able to release teachers time to develop innovative Curriculum delivery and that's really important the research would show that as well on the other side is another Steam engine collaboration that happened only a couple of years ago And it's to do with a Japanese festival So I'm just going to play you a video of what that is and be quiet for a little while This is the shortened version of a longer documented Form from this day where other we interviewed other people the other stakeholders parents principal Etc. But this was a collaboration between Pre-service teachers, so we've got the University of Technology coming on board with another arts organization at the time They were called art waku waku because they were predominantly Japanese cultural arts organization and And our school and there was somebody else. I forget parents. I don't know part of the school community So we had a whole day of immersion steam projects going on based in a story That was the Japanese Tanabata story, which is about a constellation of stars at a particular time in the year It's a cultural festival in Japan. So we had this the science of astronomy We had the mathematics of a star. We had origami. We had making lots of making They we had from year one to year four so about 350 kids throughout the day in two sessions We started to make ninja stars because you know kids love them but we also made these things these are um Hyperbolic paraboloids as a few samples here So these are that fantastic piece of visible mathematics that you can play with and those when you put them together And understand what's going on in here create what's gotten the right the right form They will create a star of as many points as you want for instance. So that's a great project done that Beyond here as well. I'm just going to play you the next video These are a bunch of steam projects now that are all related to the arts, but you'll you'll see that the stem content in them Rube Goldberg machines Hands up if you've ever had to go one of them with you with your students or just yourselves. Oh, they're great fun So we decided to have a little bit of a play with the idea of force and motion in kindy last year And we created Rube Goldberg machines, which are mechanical sort of intricate mechanical machines to actually sort of Have an outcome at the end of it All out of the recycled materials cardboard in the tubes this sort of thing But we thought well, what can we produce with that? It's okay to take a marble from here to here But what can we do with that? So we created a giant artwork and so the kindergarten students had to go through the design process and do all of their failing and then retrying To be able to take the marble through the Rube Goldberg machine and smash over a little cup of ink Or at a cold die Okay, the giant piece of white paper and create this artwork that you'll see is on the wall Then we thought we'll take this a little bit further We want to share this with the parents so we embedded the videos that we've taken by the year six students of the Kindergarten students we embedded them using augmented reality into the artwork and then invited the parents in and said okay Well, we're not going to explain it. You just got your device off you go download the app. There you go And this is the outcome We had used augmented reality in a previous project, which I'll show you in a minute But that was a fantastic way of engaging parents in what their children are doing at school They're in kindergarten by listening to their stories without having the children come getting up and you know becoming Stage fright anyway, and so they were videoed They were much happier to video each other and then all we had to do was a bit of editing and then embed that into the Artwork to disseminate it you could also we said the digital file home So that many of the parents who might have grandparents or other family members or the wider community overseas All we had to do was just you know on share that that artwork image online and the AR would still work So we only made it live for the 30-day period that was part of you know the budget that we had But that's okay because I think things need to be a bit ephemeral Doesn't really matter if they don't last it was the experience is what we were after and it was a very positive one and Music if you just saw was also made by year eight So this year we actually incorporated little bits into the year one version of the force and motion unit of work Hello Oh, no, I just want to go back to this one So they're they're looking at force and motion again, but we use little bits technology to create these little machines That had to they had criteria. They needed to address again. It was the design process They were working with the incline plane, but they were also working with Sensors so their little machines had to be not motorized but had to work by gravity But enter our cave. There's our cave is a beautiful cardboard box and so that the light would go on I mean, you know, they're they weren't great They weren't fantastic machines, but these kids learned a lot. So we stepped it up We said okay now we're gonna learn about cogs We got all of the old Lego that wasn't being used from the Mindstorm kits and created these these these little cog Setups in groups and then we just put them all together and made sure they all kind of fitted vaguely and then we did some Mathematics and made some what's called dinosaur snowflakes. We're looking at fractions and scale and this sort of thing and within that that Collective artwork we've got a whole bunch of learning and then we invited, you know some of the members of the IGS community to come in so they would sit down and explain to those people what they were doing and again It was just a fabulous experience and one that meant that those kids suddenly started saying to their Teacher, oh, I love science. How can we do science today? We want to do more science. So I mean whether or not Projects will be that exciting that they do it. It needs to be recognized that they can be so the possibilities are there to actually step that up So you'll see all of the little bits components around the back. So all of our working, you know mechanical areas are around the back of the of the The smashed together units that we did But I think possibly and again, we've got year 8 students. They produce lots of music So I don't have to worry about copyright. We can just use their music, which is fantastic But the next project I think I'm proudest of Perhaps at a school level Because it is really beautiful and it was where we first engaged with augmented reality in the way that we would Produce a happening and have an experience for an audience again It's about visible learning. The learning is actually there on on show and the experience From the audience feedback is also part of the learning these masks were created by the year 9 and 10 visual arts class they were related to the asaro mudman tribe of New Guinea The music was created by the year 8 technology unit of work and music This is one of the tracks. They were they were inspired by the masks There were 15 masks so they had to be inspired by the masks and then we had a Happening we we just put this on again. It wasn't that there was going to be a beginning or an end to this happening You just came in got your device We had a few set up and had your own experience in this Location with the masks and the music and it's quite a delightful way We had a bit of in-pro there. You might have seen some students doing some in-pro. We did some musical Well sound it was about sound basically and a little bit of drama, but Everybody's in their own world there But they're all together in their own world So it's kind of a bit paradoxical It was a really beautiful and marvelous thing to experience and then we put the masks all around the school for a little while While again, the the AR was live so you could still access that music We had all of the other tracks because from the year 8 group also in a Soundcloud file so that they could they could also be accessed and we sent all of that home as well So parents could engage with with their students work I'm a bit of an overload. What are we going doing next ah? This is my current project that I'm working on with say it the kindergarten to year 4 because it is the International Year of the Pulse So we've been taking some microscopic images with our Bluetooth microscopes and the iPads of lentils and split peas and Smashing those through just you know a kaleidoscopic app Just and we're just at the beginning of this so I don't have the end result at the end result We're aiming to have a collaboration with another local primary school and create two textile projects probably a Quilt cover something like this and auction them and you know raise the money for charity But the main thing is that we're going to see what they do and we're going to see what we do We're going to Skype in and we're going to have a chat about that and again exhibit that work So the product is an aesthetic product that you're produced from this kind of scientific input I Think they're really beautiful when you look at these lentils and peas close up But you'll have to watch this space because that one's not completed yet but it's about the explorations and the possibilities and the Reaching out to other schools to come on board if you can or other universities to actually come on board with their pre-service teachers It's really important These are just a couple of images of what goes on in my steampunk's club And the sort of things that we access we don't actually have a location and we don't have a maker space But what we have is a sort of roving kind of Attitude towards resources that we can use at the school It's a really space-deprived school where I teach so there isn't any room to build me a maker space and There's no money either But what I have is a relationship with the people still in design and technology so we can use the laser cutter I have a relationship with the people in science so we can do some scientific, you know Work with light that we did for the shorts there That was actually scientific project the shorts and pencil cases were for National Science Week last year when it was International year of light or the theme for Science Week was was light waves So we produced photographic items that then we put into textile prints and then we made into items that again Could be sold at auction. We've got wearables. We've got electronics That the steampunks made by the design process So we were really after a quality outcome and not something that you would just think oh, yeah Meh, I'm just gonna throw that in the bin now. Okay, you want to go home and show your grandma What you what you've done or share it with everybody and then of course that leads me to the joy. All right joy Joy in making that's one of the things that I say There is so much joy in making all of these products up here that that I've exhibited to you were made by human hands Mostly in little hands at the moment. We've been working also on binary bangles Okay, so the whole bunch of mathematics in those black and white form. I'm gonna have to speed through we've been doodling 3d doodling the trees For a sustainable project So we're having to think about the plastic that we're using to doodle. So that's also for PLA Which is the the degradable one. I'm gonna quickly scoot on I need to get to the piece of paper Which is my project Okay, this is a big collaboration that I had when we presented our project called loomy fold at vivid and Those are all of the people that were involved So it was a great way to actually bring a lot of people together to provide an experience for people not unlike yourselves We did a teacher PD and then we did a general public Workshop that was just about making so everybody here would be making a little lamp which is somewhat like this guy here Okay, these biomimetic forms. This is actually a bit a bit degraded. It gets Handled a lot, but you're welcome to come up and have a look and we can light that up for you later That was a great project and the beauty of that project is right at the end when you light your lamp and you look up You've created a constellation of stars on the ceiling, which is really really wonderful That's a bit of a wow moment great. It's it comes from origami. So we always make sure that We relate these types of practices back to where they might be applied in the real world So on the one hand the same fold that we use in this this Lamp making is the same fold that is used in the heart stent Which is on the right hand side and similar types of folds and expansion have been developed for Things like the solar array built by NASA that goes into space So we have very very small and we have very very large so the scale of what you can do with Understanding the engineering what you make with your hands and you know the thinking hand what comes to your mind through your hands It's really important Not sure how I'm going for time, but I'm just going to scoot through so this is the project that we make I love my little animated gifts. That's kind of fun, but There's also something going on at the moment at the if you're from New South Wales the out of hand exhibition has got an Piece from this guy Matthew Gardner who uses the same concept that we use for the this lamp construction and But he's changed it he stepped it up a bit and he 3d prints some Articulated moving parts and he calls his project or robotics and it's actually on display right now in Sydney So if you are in Sydney the exhibition is called out of hand Another collaboration with another primary school again, we're thinking about patents We're thinking about binary thinking about mathematics, and we're thinking about making Okay, I'll just move on that's a school Just before I do this the IGS students where I teach down on the right-hand side Created their own lamps from their studies of eminence so they choose an eminent person and they do projects on This eminent person so this project-based learning then then we made there the image of those people on a lamp And we'd made a giant map of the world and place their lamp on the map of the world lit it And that was our constellation of knowledge. That's what we called it We skyped in with the girls that were at the other school and the questioning because they'd done a different type of project with A similar outcome and the questioning just culturally was really interesting for me to witness between the students So we didn't run that we let them talk to each other Which is a great way to actually really embed learning by asking peers, and they're all around ten years old I also took this project of Finland recently to the Bridges Art Maths Conference And these are a bunch of mathematicians doing the same thing and I can tell you right now That if you're ten years old you've bought about the same level of skill as someone who's 60 Who's been studying math for their entire life and is considered a world leader? That was really interesting We did two projects there this one, which is which we called a pattern squared Which is actually I'm moving that into being a binary bug Okay, that's a little artwork. You can have a look at the same type of fold which is called a glide reflection Which is actually patterned by using combinatorial probability and basically just flipping a coin So that's a project that I'd love to share with you at some time, but we don't have time And let me fold is the project that I'm most excited about because I'd like to actually take that further I'm currently looking for a way to be funded to take that outside of the privileged and take it out into the less resourced schools and be able to deliver these incredible kind of steam content in a way that is Meaningful for kids that don't have access to anything that would be that's my ultimate goal because I Want to spread the word I want to share that's why I'm really grateful for the opportunity of sharing with you today This is the last thing that I'm going to show you before we have any questions But before I do there's a lucky prize There's a little business card stuck to underneath one chair in here And I don't know which one it is because Petra put it on on the chair So have a feel under your chair, and I'm and you will receive a kit so you can go home and make a couple of lamps for yourself Who's oh there you go. You've got it. What's your name? What's your this is for you on On the on the steam pop website On the steam pop website you can go and find those kits for yourself But there are also two videos there that actually step you through the process of making the lamp because it's not easy It's about patience perseverance and the understanding of what you make it at the at the end of it It's just really quite remarkable in that these ones are really flexible What we call the loomie ball is really flexible, but the loomie tall which is a cylindrical shape. It's basically the same Pattern rotated 90 degrees, but it's incredibly strong So you'll need to test yourself on on questions. Why why is it why does that happen? Why is this? I'll just end today with a little bit of What happened at the vivid? That oh that much I'll end on this is some contacts Some if you like that's another slide that I've given to Fran that she can disseminate to to you I just put in a couple of links in there the young creators conference was something where we Took all of the work that we've developed in steam at IGS and put it all into a list into a website I like to go around and have a play with just about every web web site maker that I can just so I know which is the Easiest one for kids to use so they're all always you know different hosting But but that's got a lot more of the work that we've produced and down at the bottom I was lucky enough to receive the premier New South Wales Premiers teachers scholarship award Last year and I took a tour and met some of the people that I mentioned earlier And I've actually kept her there's another website Which is the log of that tour if you're interested you might be there's more information about Deam incentives going on basically in North America high-tech hires included in that that list of the tour anyway and I say the word freedom there because I think the stuff that I do you can free the kind of logical thinkers mind in terms of look I'm really really mathematical, but I can also create and it also can free the mind of the creative and think well I could actually start with the germ of an idea coming from science on that Okay, and I'm including engineering and technology in that Umbrella and so the freedom is to actually recognize the possibilities of what you can do Well, I keep doing that. I just want to play you one last thing here. We go Only about two So typically in a room full of people such as where we are now It's a little bit like a tourist video, but I apologize for that We just get a whole bunch of people making and sometimes I ask them to be quiet So I can record the sound of paper being folded by Which is also a really cool sound But the immersion that takes place when you're making something It's a really remarkable experience and that's what I'm most interested in and how long-lasting is that what do you take away from that? Would you remember in another year's time that you were actually working with them? Mathematic concept at that point or did you do remember the making? I know that students who studied with me Who have now just left school? But the possibilities of the parabola course Each one of them as I've met them in the corridor may or may not be teaching them again from from that time They they would if I said to them now, what do you remember most about that course? And it's a well the curve the parabola That's pretty good Nice moment when you do these workshops with a large group of people is when they light up It's a really beautiful thing human beings respond really well to light and If you can take them home what we did at vivid was we had a little bag that people went out into the festival with their bag of light that they made themselves and Because there was you know a limit on numbers obviously Everybody who was outside saying where'd you get them? So we'll have to run it again Pretty hard work, but it was really quite good. That's me I'd like to invite you to ask any questions, although I haven't we may have gone over time I'm not quite sure we have okay, but please Come and have a look at the at the at the things while they change the room around. Yeah, I'd like to say that was just inspirational I think that the combination of Taking that mathematical into everything else. It's just yeah It's a good thing. We can only do that in our middle course. It's just I mean I don't even know where to start but certainly something to think about so thank you so much And maybe if you want to try and grab during Melissa during coffee and you're out for the rest of the day I'm around until about two. Okay, so during coffee or lunch. I assume Melissa's gonna get Thank you very much so