Teaching The Scientific Method

by | Feb 24, 2009 | science, Uncategorized

My project with my kids this month is to teach them the scientific method. I think that this is perhaps one of the most important things we can teach our kids. They obviously aren’t doing a good enough job of it in the schools. If they did, I wouldn’t have so many bozos say to me “science doesn’t know everything” when trying to justify their irrational belief in Jesus or crystal healing or Mayan predictions of the end of the world. So it’s up to us to teach our kids why the scientific method is the best way that humans have so-far devised to work out what is likely to be true when it comes to working out how the universe works. It’s not just important for sorting out fact from fiction when it comes to things like religion, either. Having a solid evidential view of things is important when politicians tell you things such as “Saddam has WMD – believe me.” As a society we need to start asking “show me the evidence” to our religious, political, military and corporate leaders on a more regular basis.

So on the weekend I set my kids a project to give me a 5 minute presentation on the scientific method before they could turn the XBOX on. They knew nothing about it before they started. So I told them to Google it and to specifically look for sites that explained it in kid-friendly terms (bonus lesson contained within – how to create good search terms in Google). I told them to answer four questions in their presentation:

1. What is it?
2. Why is it important?
3. What is the process?
4. Who invented it and when? (trick question but worth asking so they get some perspective on the history)

They came out after about 30 minutes and presented what they had. It was about one minute long. They basically just wrote down a one line answer to each question which they had copied and pasted from different sites. When I did the Q&A they failed. So I sent them back to expand on it a bit. This process went on about 3 or 4 times until they were finally able to present on it credibly for 5 minutes including a Q&A.

Later that day I re-inforced their understanding and ability to communicate it in the pool when we played “science swim”. This is a variation on a game I often play with them in the pool, the other variants being “spell swim” and “maths swim”. The basic idea is that I ask them both a question. In this case “What’s the first step in the scientific method?”. The first person to answer it correctly gets a pass. The one who either gets it wrong or is too slow, has to swim two laps (bonus lesson contained within – improves their swimming ability).

I’ve kept it up over the last couple of days while walking them to school, asking them to explain, in their own words, why the scientific method is the best way to determine fact from fiction. They are getting pretty good at it. I’ll keep this up for the next few weeks until it’s drilled into them. Then we’ll start on the theory of evolution.

The Universe is a Giant Hologram?

by | Feb 5, 2009 | Uncategorized

Read this article from New Scientist (quickly, before they hide it behind their firewall) and it will blow your frakking minds.

Craig Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

Cameron Is Available For Hire… and Needs Your Help

by | Jan 30, 2009 | Podcast, Uncategorized

As some of you know, the main source of my income at the moment is producing podcasts for companies and government departments. Check this site for the basic pitch. I can produce podcasts for anyone anywhere in the world. Obviously video podcasts are limited to where I can get with my camera, but I’ve been recording audio interviews with international guests since 2004.

Who needs a podcast? Anyone in:

– Marketing
– PR
– HR
– Training
– Internal Comms

Especially in this time of financial tightening, podcasting is a tool more companies should be using. It’s a very cost-effective way to reach the key members of your audience on a weekly basis. And, of course, if you’re going to produce social media, you should work with someone who has actually some experience producing media for large audiences and isn’t just all talk.

There are a few different kinds of podcasts my clients tend to be using at the moment:

1. The External “Transparency” podcast – this kind of podcast aims to make a client more accessible to their clients. It can be either video or audio and involves me doing interviews with people inside the company about what they (and their division) actually do. This typically suits a very large org that wants to soften or humanise it’s image. The strategy is that their clients/customers will subscribe to the podcast to get a better understanding of what each of the divisions is working on and how best to engage with them.

2. The External “Value-Add” podcast – this kind of podcast usually has content completely unrelated to the actual services and products of the org, but which is designed to be valuable to the target audience. Typically it might involve interviews with world leaders in the same field. Each podcast is wrapped with an audio or video header and footer, “This podcast is brought to you by….”, to keep the client’s message and brand in front of their audience every week.

3. The Internal Management podcast – this podcast involves video or audio interviews with members of the management team (CEO, CFO, COO, HR Director, etc) on a regular basis to go out to the employees via their intranet. It allows the senior leadership of an org to efficaciously communicate business updates with their teams around the country and world on a weekly basis and in a personable manner. It might also involved interviews with employees throughout the business. Who are they? What do they do? What is their focus? This is a great tool for encouraging cross-collaboration in large orgs.

4. The External Product/Service podcast – this podcast has to be handled cleverly. Most people aren’t going to subscribe to a podcast that’s just a marketing vehicle UNLESS it’s actually cool and informative or very funny. Often the best way to handle this kind of podcast is to get your customers involved. Get THEM talking about or demonstrating your products and services. Make it about THEM, not about you.

Demographics: There’s a common misconception that podcast audiences are still only the young tech savvy folks. While this was probably true back in 2004/5, it certainly isn’t any longer. The success of Apple’s iPods and iPhones, combined with the marketing of podcasts by mainstream media like the ABC, has actually skewed the demographic to a 40+ audience (according to the surveys I run on TPN’s audience each year).

So, here’s how you can help – if you know of anyone who might be interested in using my services, make sure you point them in my direction. In addition, if you email me the names, email addresses and telephone numbers of the people in your company that fulfill the above roles, I’ll contact them directly and give them the pitch (ideally using you as a point of introduction but, if you’re not comfortable with that, I’ll leave your name out of it).

Here are my contact details to make it easy:

Cameron Reilly
CEO, The Podcast Network
tel: +61 400455334
email: cameron@thepodcastnetwork.com

Thanks for your support!

The Scorpion and The Frog

by | Jan 17, 2009 | Uncategorized

A few of us were talking on Twitter tonight about this famous story – which I’ve always assumed was written by Orson Welles for his 1955 film “Mr Arkadin” – about the scorpion and the frog.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyVvSWvL764&hl=en&fs=1]

I’ve used this as my expectation of people ever since I first saw the film 20 years ago. People will do what their character demands.