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Podcast Summary:
Sara Robberson Lentz, STEM Education Officer at AUI and COO and Head of Partnerships at Tumble media, joined Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities Studio with some exciting news for STEM education, accessibility and representation in STEM fields for the BVI.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $1 Million to a team comprised of Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI), Oregon State University, Independent Science (ISci) and Tumble Media.
The team will study podcasts as a classroom tool to engage blind and visually impaired students, focusing on representation and accessibility in STEM fields.
This initiative is a major step towards promoting inclusion for all children learning science.
Education and content experts from Tumble Media will lead the development of teaching resources based on the research findings, focus groups, and testing within selected classrooms.
Sara gives us an overview of the teams and how this experience is impacting the way Tumble Media is producing their popular children’s podcasts. How they describe the educational storytelling to be the most inclusive that they can be.
Be sure to check out all the Tumble Media podcasts:
- Tumble Science Podcasts for Kids on Apple Podcast
- Tumble Science Podcast for Kids on Google Podcast
- Tumble Science Podcast for Kids on Spotify
For more information about Tumble Media and the STEM initiative go to https://www.sciencepodcastforkids.com and be sure to subscribe to their newsletter for great educational science stuff!
Thank you Marshall Escamilla for all the music used in this production. You can find the sound packs in the Teacher Store from Tumble Media.
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Full Transcript
STEM Education for the BVI is Going Inclusive – Sara Robberson Lentz, STEM Education Officer at AUI and COO, Head of Partnerships at Tumble media, Shares the Excitement
Sara:
We really want the episodes produced through this project to shift the listener’s mind about the limitations of BVI individuals, both the students and the teachers.
Jeff:
Please welcome Sara Robberson Lentz.
Sara:
We’ll be also creating a curriculum for teaching both sighted and BVI students how to podcast in the classroom as a tool for them to share their own knowledge.
Jeff:
COO and Head of Partnerships at Tumble Media and STEM Education Officer at AUI.
Sara:
Yeah, our latest episode is a fun one with the soundscapes from the James Webb telescope, which I think is just really exciting.
Jeff:
and without further ado, here’s Sara. We hope you enjoy.
Jeff:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio, we have Sara Robberson Lentz, and she’s the COO and Head of Partnerships at Tumble Media Incorporated. Sara, welcome to the show.
Sara:
Hi, thank you for having me.
Jeff:
So Sara, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Tumble Media?
Sara:
Sure. So Tumble Media is a kids educational podcasting company. We currently have three podcasts that are out for people to listen to. We have our flagship podcast, Tumble Science Podcast for kids, and then we have Tumble En Espanol, which is the first ever Spanish adaptation of a kids podcast. And then we have a yoga podcast for younger listeners.
Jeff:
And I saw on the podcast for kids, 186 episodes.
Sara:
Yeah. I’d have to go check that number, ‘cause it’s so many, I have lost track, but that sounds about right. We’re about to launch our eighth season in a couple weeks.
Jeff:
And I just saw that James Webb telescope one just dropped. That’s how I know it was 186, ‘cause that dropped just as I was looking at it, all of a sudden it popped up and it was like, hey, a brand new one today.
Sara:
Yes!
Sara (podcast audio):
Hear that? That’s cosmic clips in the Karina nebula, made from an image captured by the James Webb space telescope and turned into sound.
Marshall:
Wow, that’s really beautiful. But how do you turn an image into sound?
Sara (podcast audio):
A team of scientists and musicians working with a member of the blind and visually impaired community assigned different musical notes to the colors or frequency of light in the images. Then they played the image from left to right.
Sara:
So that’s actually, during the summer we tend to do re-releases and give some updates on stories that we really loved. And the James Webb telescope has been, I’m sure you’ve read all over the news, just like amazing things coming out of it. And recently a team of scientists released soundscapes of some of the images that have been collected. So we did sort of an update on that episode and then the episode itself was actually recorded before the telescope launched, and it was interviewing the engineer who helped design the telescope and was part of the team that figured out how is this giant, you know, the biggest telescope we’ve ever launched, how do we get it out into space? And how does it unfold itself without breaking?
Jeff:
I also like that in the show notes are some links. So you can go to the sonification, the sounds, there’s links to that. There’s links to other information about it too. So it’s quite a great resource.
Sara:
Thank you. Yeah, we come at it, we’re two of us, Lindsay and I are both science reporters and then Marshall, who’s the co-host, is an educator and has been teaching for over 20 years. So we kind of combined those and we’re really thinking about teachers and parents who want to like allow their young learners to go further into our stories, with everything that we make.
Jeff:
So podcast as a medium for education, that’s kind of a new approach. I mean, a lot of people seven years ago, when you started podcasts, you’d have to explain to ’em what a podcast was, but now it can be used as an educational tool.
Sara:
Absolutely. We have seen that so much in the kids space of, first, like we had to prove do kids even listen to podcasts? There weren’t any podcasts for kids out there really, and we had to really go in and show that kids are listening, kids are engaged, and now we’re really trying to show that they can be engaged in the classroom as well. We have teachers that write in from all over the world who use our podcasts in the classroom, and that’s been really such an inspiration for us, and we just wanna keep diving into that deeper. It’s just such a part of our mission to have science be more multifaceted. We just don’t want it to just be about learning stuff for a test. We want people to, you know, be able to understand science and to have conversations about science. And so we think storytelling is just such an important part of science education.
Jeff:
Either I got a little kid in me or I’m interested in science, ‘cause I saw the road trip, “Journey to the Center of Your Brain,” and I’m like, hmm.
Marshall:
Hi, Tumble listeners. We’re still here on our summer break and I’m embarking on another magical adventure. This time, the expert shrinkologist at Tumble HQ shaped up and shrunk me down so I can ride on a microscopic submarine to explore the human brain. We’re making our way up to the cranium, but while we’re journeying, here’s some great Tumble episodes about the brain for you. We hope you enjoy I’ve asked G swabs, let’s dive into our first episode. Do dreams have meaning? That’s right. Dive, dive. Oh, no, it’s an antibody.
Sara:
Yeah. You know, we actually have a lot of adult listeners as well who write in, and we also have quite a few listeners who are English language learners, who are scientists who really love our show too, because it’s a great way for them to learn scientific terms in English and be able to be pulled into the storytelling in an approachable way.
Jeff:
Well, I like the storytelling part of it, the podcast medium, because it takes the visual out of it. And me being visually impaired it’s automatically audio described in a sense that you put it in a fashion where you’re gonna understand it by the words you’re using and describing. And the music is good too, that it’s accessible, it’s inclusive just by default almost, but you guys are doing a big initiative towards that through the National Science Foundation grant that you were awarded- well, the team was awarded and you’re part of that team.
Sara:
Yes. Thank you. Well, we recently were awarded an ITEST grant, which stands for Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers. And it was a little over a million dollars to fund a large team effort to explore that exact question. I mean, I think intuitively we think podcasts are accessible, but are they? To what extent is the language we use in podcasting actually accessible? How much do we rely on potentially having past visual experiences in our storytelling? And then also is the podcast technology itself accessible? We have an amazing dream team of Associated Universities Inc., where I have a dual appointment with them and with Tumble Media, working with Tim Spuck there and then Oregon State University with their STEM education research center, Kelly Riedinger and Martin Storksdieck and Independent Science, which is an amazing organization of blind and visually impaired scientists who work towards making science education more accessible. So together, we’ve been working over the last year and a half on this idea, and we’re so excited that it got funded and we get to dive in.
Jeff:
You know, STEM, which is science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and some people wanna include art so they call it STEAM.
Sara:
Yes.
Jeff:
That’s an interesting area because that’s kind of one of the areas in education that blind and visually impaired students have been excluded from. I remember when I took astronomy and we had a lab component to it, that the teacher says, I don’t know how you’re gonna do the lab thing. I said, well, we’ll see. It was interesting, but that was a few years back when it wasn’t, you know, inclusive wasn’t the key word running around the corporations and businesses and schools, education area. And now it’s changed a little bit. And STEM is the main focus of what your team will be doing.
Sara:
I think your personal story there hits home for me as I’m new to this space, and learning more about stories of BVI scientists. And we put in our proposal a story about Mona Minkara who is a computational bioengineer who has been very public about her obstacles as a BVI scientist, not her own limitations, but rather the limitations that were imposed on her by her teachers, with people just generally confused and coming with this misconception that only non-disabled people can do science. So we really believe there’s a power here for podcasts to counter that misconception. And we really want the episodes produced through this project to shift the listener’s mind about the limitations of BVI individuals, both the students and the teachers.
Jeff:
I think it’s an important part about the teacher’s component, because when you go into the institutions and the curriculums for teaching, that the teachers need to know how to teach or have an idea how to do it, and I was looking at the Tumble Media website, you have an actual section for teachers where they can gather, I mean, this initiative hasn’t gone yet, but teachers can actually get information worksheets and kind of a little miniature curriculum to some of the episodes.
Sara:
Yes. And that’s the goal throughout this three year project, we’ll be working with groups of teachers, both in inclusive classrooms and BVI-specific classrooms to really evaluate not only the episodes’ effectiveness but creating an entire catalog of materials that will be made public, free for teachers to use in the future, to incorporate podcasting into their STEM learning.
Jeff:
Independent science. I read the article and they’ll be traveling around to study this and basically take notes and this’ll all come back and be compiled. And then your job kind of in a- well, I shouldn’t say what your job is, but your part is to put it into an educational type of format.
Sara:
Yeah. So my job, I’m the principal investigator on the project. It’s really sort of a captain’s chair position, project management of bringing everybody together. So we have so many strong partners that are all experts in what they do, and so my job is to help facilitate them working together on their interdependent pieces, and then bring everyone’s work into like a cohesive whole, so Independent Science is gonna be playing a really important role in consulting us in this BVI space. And then they’ll be partnering both with Oregon State University in the research they will conduct early on in the project around current attitudes around BVI in the classroom, resources, pitfalls, using podcasts in the classroom, and then Marshall Escamilla, who is the cohost of Tumble Science Podcast for Kids is actually leading the education initiative where he’s gonna be working with an advisory board of teachers to create a curriculum around the findings from the research.
Jeff:
And at some point that’ll be available for the masses.
Sara:
Yes. That will all be available on a public website that will be built by Independent Science. So we make sure that all of the materials are fully accessible with tactile graphics and, you know, make sure that the web technology is also fully accessible.
Jeff:
Yeah, because I think inclusion in the classroom is one of the biggest parts of it. That same day, the same moment something is happening, that there is some form, some way of participating as a peer.
Sara:
Absolutely. And I think we would really like to show how podcasts can help broaden the participation for BVI students. We’re specifically focusing on upper elementary school students and using our show as a model, but then providing that for both teachers within other podcasts who are interested in creating content for the classroom of this is how you can do it to actually effectively impact learning outcomes and make teachers’ lives easier, hopefully, in the long run.
Jeff:
Hmm. So the teachers can actually help get some local podcasts out for their students to learn from as well.
Sara:
Yes.
Jeff:
Yeah, because I’ve been in college where a teacher has this handbook or a little pamphlet or something they created, I’ve never been in a situation where a teacher had a podcast. So that’s interesting.
Sara:
Yeah. There’s so many tracks and we’re continuing to tighten this as we launch in October. But one of the other parts we really wanna focus on is both the content of podcasting, which we’ve been talking about, but then also the process of podcasting, which you know so well, and how can that be a tool for the students themselves to enter into conversations. Can they make podcasts, you know, instead of writing a paper, could they make a podcast about a report or could they engage in interviewing? And we’ll be also creating a curriculum for teaching both sighted and BVI students how to podcast in the classroom as a tool for them to share their own knowledge.
Jeff:
Oh, that’s interesting. You know, what do you got tonight? I gotta write two papers or now it’ll be I gotta do two podcasts and a paper.
Sara:
Yeah! And it’s such a great, I mean, there’s so many tools out there, it’s become so much more accessible in terms of like, cost. Anyone with a cell phone, really, some sort of smartphone or access to like a laptop or a tablet can do podcasting. And so we just really wanna present like the guidelines out there for the technical side of it and the storytelling side of it so that they can get practice doing that.
Jeff:
What got you interested in podcasts as a- seven years ago, that’s when it was basically giving birth to podcasting.
Sara:
Yeah.
Jeff:
I remember those days, you’d have to explain it like, okay, mom, a podcast is like a radio show, but you can take it anywhere you want, at any time.
Sara:
Exactly. Oh, how did I get into podcasting? Well, so I always thought, honestly, that I was going to be a scientist. I have like a STEM background and going to college, I just always assumed that was what I was gonna do from very, very early on. And then in college it just really struck me how many people kept themselves from learning anything about science? Like, forget just going and taking a science class, like they didn’t even wanna read the news about it or really learn about it ‘cause they had sort of separated themselves from that world and thought, this isn’t something I can get into. So I sort of got into science writing as an effort to pull more people into the science conversation. And then I was listening to Radiolab at my office job as an editor and just immediately fell in love. And this was like in 2011, and then I went to a pretty prestigious sound workshop called the Transom Story Workshop, where we got really great training from all of the greats within the audio world. And they were really big on podcasts. You know, it was a lot of radio people, but people were saying, oh, podcasting’s so great because you can push the medium and you can do things that are different and you’re not constrained to the three minute slot, like you would be on the radio. So that’s really how I got into it, was just sort of this love for this very intimate form of storytelling, longer form and conversational, yeah.
Jeff:
Well, with Tumble Media, I see some of the episodes, I have skimmed through and looked at the titles. It’s all educational. What twist did you bring in to go for kids and then educational? I mean, I suppose wanting more people into science, that fed right into it.
Sara:
Yeah. So Lindsay and I always joke that in public radio and science writing in general, you sort of write for a fifth grade level anyways, because that’s where the average adult science literacy actually stops. So when we translated that into writing for kids, it’s not a huge difference in terms of really trying to break something down, and audio, you have to really be focused on what you’re telling and have a very simplified way of talking about complex subjects. It’s very different than you would if you had some sort of second layer of a visual medium. And so translating that into then talking to kids was a very quick leap for us. And then it just, bringing in more humor and the topics we focus on, we love to go off of kids’ questions. One of our favorite episodes is where we found out that trees do in fact fart.
Lindsay:
-which is why today we’re sharing the story behind a really silly question that leads to some serious science. Here’s the question.
Kid:
Mom, do trees fart?
Marshall:
Did I just hear do trees fart?
Lindsay:
Yes. Yes you did. You heard the three year old daughter of Mary Heskell. Mary Heskell is a plant biologist. Her daughter first came up with this question in order to avoid going to bed.
Sara:
Things like that. We like to bring in some fun lighthearted things that teach us bigger lessons about the world.
Jeff:
I saw the one, “The Science of Butts.”
Sara:
Oh, it’s great. If you haven’t listened to it, it’s wonderful.
Jeff:
Yeah, it was just so interesting. Like I said, the kid inside me or the science inside, I think it’s the science inside me that just never grows up. I just keep going through that list and all of a sudden it’s like inquisitive. Now I got some stuff to listen to and I will be listening to it.
Sara:
We love that. That’s our whole mission, is to inspire curiosity through the stories of science and discovery. How did scientists find out something, how do they know what they know? And that brings- anyone can be a part of that conversation.
Jeff:
Mm-hmm. How has working on the STEM project and blind, visually impaired, has that made you take a look back to see what you were doing in your previous podcast and what you might do in the future? Has it changed anything?
Sara:
That’s a great question. At this point that’s exactly what we’re doing. So the study is over three years and we will produce three episodes every year of the study that feature blind and visually impaired scientists in the format as we normally do. And then they will go through this rigorous process of evaluation each year, and then we will have to iteratively improve on how the podcast is, it gets into the ears of listeners, what our language is. I think that’s been the biggest eye opening thing for me in talking to the people from Independent Science, even this early in the project, is the language I’m using accessible? Not just that the audio is accessible, but am I describing something in a way that like assumes someone has had a similar experience to me? And I think that that’s such a great and important lesson for writers to be thinking about, particularly ones who are interested in public engagement.
Jeff:
It’s a different level of eloquence, isn’t it?
Sara:
Mm-hmm.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah.
Sara:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Well, I think this is great, what you’re doing. I’m excited to see the results. And when you say it’s coming out in three seasons, so it’ll be available in one season, you’ll be able to take that in, binge it and then wait for the next season.
Sara:
Yeah. So it’ll be within our broader RSS feed. So within the Tumble Science Podcast for Kids RSS feed, we will have three episodes per season, so- that will be focused specifically on this project. And we really hope that they’re sort of seamlessly integrated as well, like that’s a very important part of this is we want it to feel not othered, right? Like we want it to feel connected, and that just one of the many experiences that we’re presenting on the show.
Jeff:
And how can people find the podcast?
Sara:
Yeah. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. So we can find us on Apple Podcasts, is it Google Podcasts or Google Play now, Stitcher, wherever you listen. If you just google Tumble Science Podcasts for Kids, or even, honestly, science podcasts for kids, we’ll come right up.
Jeff:
Yeah. I put in Tumble Media and all three came up. Boom, right there.
Sara:
Yeah.
Jeff:
I was curious about the Spanish one and I thought that was really neat. That’s another level of inclusivity.
Sara:
Yes. And through this project as well, each of the episodes we create will also be adapted into Spanish, and we love that podcast is done with Spanish language partners, La Catalera, and they don’t just do like a translation, like it’s a full cultural adaptation.
[man speaking spanish]
[woman speaking spanish]
So again, like you’re saying, a whole ‘nother level of inclusive language adapting, so we’re really excited about that as well. So it will also be available in Spanish.
Jeff:
Well, that’s great. Love what you’re doing and thanks for coming onto Blind Abilities, and we’ve been talking to Sara Robberson Lentz from Tumble Media Incorporated. Thank you, Sara.
Sara:
Great. Well, I really appreciate you having me on the show and yeah, our latest episode is a fun one to point people to, because it does connect to this project broadly, with the soundscapes from the James Webb telescope, which I think is just really exciting.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah, for sure. We’ll put a link to that right down in the show notes. The biggest space telescope in the universe, not the world, the universe.
Sara:
Yes.
Jeff:
And a link to your website, www.sciencepodcastforkids.com. Once again, Sara, thank you so much for taking the time to come onto Blind Abilities, and thank you and your team at Associated Universities Incorporated, Oregon State University, and Independent Science. Thank you all.
Sara:
Thank you.
[Music]
Jeff:
And a special thanks to Marshall for the wonderful music straight from the Tumble Media library.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com and subscribe to the Blind Abilities podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. That’s two words, Blind Abilities. Email info@blindabilities.com, reach us at 612-367-6093. Give us some feedback, some suggestions, we’d love to hear from you. And from all of us here at Blind Abilities, thank you for listening, and until next time, bye-bye.