Velkommen til lørn.tech - en læringsdugnad om teknologi og samfunn, med Silvia Seres og venner.

Silvija Seres: Hello and welcome to Lørn.tech. My name is Silvija Seres and the topic today is ed tech, gamification of learning, facial and body hair, we will see where we end up. My guest is Jo Røslie, a very colourful norwegian running the company Science Addiction, welcome.

Jo Røslien: Thank you very much.

Silvija: You are a part of Katapult Accelerator.

Jo: Yes, I’ve been that for many, many weeks now.

Silvija: Very cool, and you want to make science sexy again.

Jo: Science is sexy, a lot of people just don’t realise how sexy it actually is. So we try to help people understand that science really is sexy.

Silvija: We are really looking forward to understanding how you do that. We try to make people understand that technology is sexy through this podcast, and I think a part of the problem or the solution might be making it concrete. Making it down from abstractions and theory to something you can play with or at least understand the point of.

Jo: Definitely, we are teaching science in a very abstract way for many, many years. For those of us who like abstractions, it’s a great way of teaching and learning. It turns out though, that most people like things to be concrete, something they can watch how it feels and smells. We are human beings, so we have to give human beings something they can live with and breathe in order for them to understand what it is. So, to be concrete is key. 

Silvija: Before we get more into the sexiness of science, tell us about you.

Jo: I am a mathematician at heart, I did my master in science degree in Trondheim, did a doctor engineering. Got fed up with the oil industry and rocks and all that dead stuff.

Silvija: You could have gone back to the university to teach, but you didn’t.

Jo: No, I didn’t. I started working in medical research, I was a postdoctoral for a few years, then at some point someone called me up and said Hey, we are going to make television about mathematics and statistics. Do you want to be a part of that? And I am a talker, I talk about the things I love, I talk about science, math, statistics, and all of a sudden I ended up in front of a camera in a huge NRK production. I gave them math series, wrote another one, and then I ended up in the public domain, doing science communication. But I didn’t actually truly leave the university either, I am still a professor in medical statistics at the university of Stavanger, but my heart lies in the combination between hardcore science, learning, teaching on the one hand and public domain and understanding science on the other. After I went from hardcore academia to the public domain, I realised that a lot of the stuff we do in academia, the way we teach science, the way we try to motivate people into tech, science and maths, it is not working at all. It is actually pushing people away from us. So I started re-doing my teaching classes and I started teaching other scientists about how you actually talk to people, so that they understand what you say and engaging in what you are actually trying to teach them and tell them. 

Silvija: My question then is, do they listen to you? 

Jo: Yeah, they do.

Silvija: Good job! Why?

Jo: Well, it turns out that a lot of scientists and tech heads, they want to reach out, they want people to listen to them, they just don’t know why because they never studied communication. So when a tech head like me comes along and says hey, I have been in the public domain for a while, this is what works, this is a thing you should do, this is what you shouldn’t do, they listen to me. So I travel across the country having dosens of talks a year to scientists, teachers and others about how to actually communicate tech and science.

Silvija: Tell me your basic principles.

Jo: First of all, force never motivated anyone. We live in the age of choice, people can choose whatever they want to spend their time on, so you have to make them choose you. Tech isn’t cool in itself, science isn’t cool in itself, being a popstar is cool in itself. If you look at popstars, they are really, really good at making people interested in their own personal projects. The way they talk to us, they engage with their audience, the pictures they take of themselves, the music videos they create, they create engagement and interest in what they do. So what we have done on TV, films, short films, YouTube, online, we are sort of stealing the tricks or trades that the artists use, and using them on tech. And all of a sudden people flock to science, because it is actually cool, you just need to talk the language people actually use.

Silvija: It’s cool, because it’s relevant.

Jo: Yes.

Silvija: Why do we need people to know more about science?

Jo: Basically, because science, technology is fuel in the innovation and economics that we live in. Without technology, without science, we have nothing. I mean, the roads, computers, the telephones, medicines, everything, that’s innovation. Most of it is technological innovation, mathematics, physics, and if people don’t want to pursue those carriers we are basically screwed. 

Silvija: Now I am going to need a little bit about science communication with you. There was this great commercial infomercial at the airport about a year ago asking Do you think it is about skill set or about mindset, it would be lovely if it was one or the other, but I believe that the future require us to have both. You need a skill set on technology and science, but basically it is a skill set of not the deep mathematical theorems, it is about how do you use the new tools. Unless you understand a little bit about how VR works or how the new genetics work. It’s not that you are going to be a geneticist or a VR designer, but you can’t even use them as a communication tool or a question to a doctor or so on. What I would like to do is to build or set up technology drivers licenses. To drive your car you don’t need to know how the engine works and you don’t need to learn how an electrical engine works. What you need to know is how do I use the tool that the car is, effectively and responsibly. Maybe you need to try it a little bit, just to know what you are doing or to know how to use your interface. in that way, if we could give people fun driver licenses for the new tools of tomorrow, I think we would get those tools much better used.

Jo: Definitely, so one of the things that I have been working on for a while to pursue this addiction is to create a statistics class that teaches you statistical analyses in a way of driving a car. In the sense that you know how to turn the wheel, the gas pedal, brakes, you need to know where those are, if it starts to rain, you need to know how to turn on the screen wipers. Besides that, you don’t need to know very much. 

Silvija: You need to know where the road goes and how to interpret the road signs, but that’s the same with statistics, you need to know what you want to do with it. 

Jo: Exactly. One of the problems we do when we teach a lot of technology and science is that we do it too hardcore down to the maths of the theoretical physics, I mean, statistical analyses is based on mathematics, but still, it’s about averages, structures and randomness in finding patterns. You can do that without knowing the equations by hand and using pen and paper. Once you take a step back and you realise some of  the overall thinking, what is statistics, what is actually probability, what is driving a car, what is physics, then you end up where you are or you say you want to be. We have a lot of classes that takes a step away from the hardcore maths, and it actually opens up a lot of doors to people who could be interested in science, who could love tech, but are just pushed away because it is too math and heavy and too much theoretical physics. 

Silvija: I think what you said about statistics is also a very good example, because I think we don’t have the intuition to understand statistics . Yet, now with all the new AI tools etc, it is at the core of everything. You scare scare people away by asking them if they know the difference between a mean and a median, but really, what they need to understand is I can ask the tool to tell me about this kind of a pattern or that kind of a pattern, and I care about this in these situations, and I care about this in these situations, and then lets go. 

Jo: When we are writing these new statistics classes, we teach them actually twice. One part we tell people is what is the general idea, what are we trying to accomplish if we use this statistical tool, and I could also show you the math, so if you are interested, you can read the math page, but that is not really what you need, it is the physical understanding of what it is.

Silvija: So how does the tool work, it is a set of videos with the following extra reading? Or how do I go in to your school?

Jo: That is actually what we are working on right now at Science Addiction, we are trying to set up things that we want to learn people, we will match them towards existing curriculums, but also what we think people should learn, then we try to map up how can we actually demonstrate this using video, how can we use this concrete. 80% of all the information that we take in during the day is through our eyes. That is one of the things we humans are really good at, seeing something with our eyes and then understanding it. When you are not using video, you actually block out the most important thing that we have, our eyes. If you give people text books and black boards, that is not how the brain works. Of course what you need is also conversation, so one of the good things that we have are teachers, because teachers are in the classroom, they talk to students, it is impossible to replace the teacher. I think that is a place where many ed tech companies go wrong. They think that you can replace the teacher with fancy robot technology -or humans. Things that we know are to watch , another thing we are good at is to talk, we talk to one another and you can’t remove that conversation. What you can do is boost the conversation, speed it up, that is what we in Science Addiction wants to do by using video and film to make science more sexy. 

Silvija: Can we make Forskerfabrikken for grown ups? 

Jo: Absolutely. We should, and we will. 

Silvija: How do you structure the content, how do you choose what you are going to be teaching?

Jo: First of all, a lot of ed tech companies and a lot of teaching focus on classrooms. We don’t focus on classrooms. Do you remember when you had music classes in school, you were sitting there and you were banging two wooden sticks against one another, it was really, really boring. But still, when you looked outside the classroom in to the real world, there were tons of cool popstars and rockstars, so you understand that music is sexy, so you pay attention in the class anyway. So what we do is that we want to create popstars and rockstars in science and mathematics, so when you are stuck in the classroom with mathematics or statistics and you think ah this is hard and why am I doing this, you see all those popstars in maths and stats out there, then you understand that it is important. Motivation is key, getting people to want to learn. So half of what we do is just making cool shit.

Silvija: I want to go back to this motivation and what we can learn from rockstars. I think a part of the ability to attract attention comes from provocation. How do you provoke people to want to understand, how do you ask the good questions, where do you find these questions?

Jo: One of the things that pop stars and artists do, is they give you something you haven’t seen before. Something different. Different is actually what runs our society. The difference that makes the difference is the difference that makes everyone turn their head and look in another direction. Someone who is wearing a dress you haven’t seen before. A band who is playing a song with instruments you haven’t heard before. Everybody turns their head. The problem with science is that we already present people with stories where we know what’s going to happen. Do you like going to the movies when you know everything that is going to happen?

Silvija: Some people say Yes I do.

Jo: Ha ha, yeah you watch them over and over again because you like them. But very often you like to not know, that is why we like true crimes, dramas. What’s going to happen? So one of the things we do is give people new takes on traditional storytelling in science. 

Silvija: Figure out the last digit of Pi.

Jo: Yeah, or maybe we just skip Pi already and look for important numbers. Or we tell stories about love, hate and drama.

Silvija: I think storytelling is key here. My father is a mathematician who got me into mathematics by telling me stories about mathematicians. If I ask him about non euclidian geometry, he would tell me a story of the Bolyai in father and son who tried to figure this out, one died and one made a promise that he wanted to go there, and he went there. I think it is about telling stories that will make people care.

Jo: Absolutely. So we try in Science Addiction to take story telling in to science communication, it means that some of the stuff we do, maybe you don’t learn very much geometry, but you get hooked on geometry and you want to learn it. Now you are ready to learn, now we can show you what it is. I think the problem with public domain is that you have either/or, either we have good stories or we have hardcore science communication, where are the good science communication stories? We have gotten better over the last ten years, but we still have a long, long way to go. We still have something called a book and then there is something called a popular science book. Why can’t the popular science book just be book? Why do we have something called science communication? Why can’t it just be a story? 

Silvija: I think it is a wonderful goal to have. Do you have a quote you would like to leave with our listeners?

Jo: I am a statistician, and what we scientists do is basically trying to understand the world by creating models. The models that we create are never the real world, but some of them make us understand the real world, and understanding the models that describe the world is key. Statistician Box once said “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. 

Silvija: That's a good one. For a moment I was afraid that you would say “Lies, damn lies, and statistics”, haha. That is a useful one to know as well, just in case people believe in statistics without understanding the underlying methods too much or too early. 

Jo: Absolutely, but statistics don’t lie, people lie.

Silvija: It is how you use it and what you hide.

Jo: Exactly. 

Silvija: We talked about a lot of things, but not hair as we promised. We’ll let people look at our photos. What should people remember from our conversation?

Jo: We in Science Addiction are trying to make science sexy using film and TV as our medium. We are constructing and designing an ed tech platform to showcase all these videos to help kids, teachers, parents to be motivated, to learn science and tech, but you have to have cool content. If you want to reach out to people, content is king. That is how we make science sexy, that is how we make people want to learn. 

Silvija: If you have something really important to say, you will get people to listen in the end.

Jo: Yeah. If they don’t listen, you can say whatever you want. Listen first, then talk. 

Silvija: Very cool. Jo Røslie, our super creative friend from Science Addiction, thank you so much for helping us to make science sexy.

Jo: Thank you for having me.

Silvija: Thank you for listening. 

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