Page 32 - Journal 2018A

Become a Churchill Fellow!
An extraordinary professional development opportunity
Winston Churchill Memorial Trust
Around nine Churchill Fellowships are awarded to South Australians every year. The recipient
of a Fellowship is awarded resources and funds to travel abroad to explore an interest of their choice. After their travels, Fellows use the knowledge they have gleaned to the bene t of the broader community. Mike Roach (pro led elsewhere in this edition) used his Fellowship to help resource
and gain support for his Space education programs. Here we pro le three other Australian science educators who have received Churchill Fellowships. What would you do were you to receive a
Fellowship?
“The key factor in student engagement is often an incredible teacher,” stated the Chief Scientist for Australia, Dr Alan Finkel AO in a press release recently calling for nominations for the 2018 Prime Ministers Prizes for Science.
Dr Finkel said training a diverse workforce starts with making science, technology, engineering and maths subjects accessible and approachable for every student and that is exactly what outstanding teachers, who have been awarded the prestigious Churchill Fellowship, have been dedicated to achieving over the past 50+ years. The impact on science education from these Fellows continues to evolve as they strive to present science in ground breaking ways that is already laying the foundation to building a stronger science innovation workforce into the future. Their ongoing commitment to making science education a priority in the minds of future generations has not gone unnoticed or unrecognised.
Ben Newsome is a quali ed science teacher, a former CSIRO Education member. He founded Fizzics Education in 2004 to deliver science education across Australia which now reaches 300,000 students a year with staff in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra.
Ben travelled to Canada and the USA on a Churchill Fellowship to investigate best practice in science education via video conferencing.
“I am from a small town and I know rst hand that kids in the regions just don’t have the same opportunities to see things like a metropolitan kid does, so I just wanted these kids to have access to the same resources as those in the city when it came to learning about science,” Ben said.
Ben has since co-founded Virtual Excursions Australia, a not-for-pro t venture which has now grown to include over 40 major cultural institutions and works closely with departmental distance education managers to create collaborative video conference events and to share tips and tricks on best practice.
In 2015, Ben co-founded another non-pro t called the Pinnacle Education Collaborative, a network of over 30 cultural organisations in North America that delivers virtual excursions to schools, retirement homes, remand centres and more.
Fizzics Education is the proud recipient of the 2018 Australian Small Business Champion Awards for Children’s Educational Services, the 2015 and 2016 Australian Small Business Education Services Award and several Pinnacle Awards from the Centre for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.
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