OE Global Voices 78: Frontiers for Young Minds === Intro Music, Opening Quotes, and Welome --- [00:00:00] Caroline Lea-Carnall: When you're at school and when you're little, I think you can sometimes feel like it's hard to contribute to society. You're a child and not many people ask for your voice. Not many people hear you. And this, they were almost like the bosses in a way, for that moment. It was, they were running the show [00:00:28] Laura Henderson: I think Minita really touched on something that is almost a byproduct of what we do, but a very important one, is that we get this feedback repeatedly from, particularly from authors involved in our process, that quote, "This has helped me to communicate outside my research community." unquote. [00:00:49] Hedwig Ens: For example, in the original manuscript it said something about, eating cookies before dinner and forgetting about it. And the kids were like, we don't relate to that because we would never forget eating cookies. So it was really nice how the kids pointed out small things, but then also came back to the bigger things. [00:01:08] Alan Levine: Hello everybody, and welcome. This is another episode of the OE Global Voices Podcast. This is the podcast that we do at Open Education Global, bringing to the people and ideas, behind, open education from around the world. And I'm your lucky host, Alan Levine, coming to you from Central Canada. I'm lucky 'cause I just get to be part of all these conversations. And I'm really thrilled because we have with us, people who are part of an amazing project, Frontiers for Young Minds, which was recognized this year in 2024, with a Open Education Award for Excellence in the Significant Impact OER category. And when I think about Frontiers and. I was seeing it a few years ago when I got to meet Laura Henderson online and learn about this project. And I really think this totally, and you'll understand as we go through this conversation, really meets that criteria. I, it's just so good, to have this conversation, get a chance to know how this amazing project works. And so first of all, I'm gonna, turn it over to our guest and we just want. to hear, obviously who you are, where you are, and maybe, what from your spot right now. And then, we can you can just give the brief synopsis what you do on, your regular daily basis and then we're just gonna dive in. Meet the Guests: Laura Henderson and Team --- [00:02:32] Alan Levine: And so I'm gonna stop talking 'cause I've been already talking too long and really pleased to introduce, Laura Henderson, coming to us-- she'll tell us where. Good morning. Good afternoon, Laura. [00:02:44] Laura Henderson: Hi, Alan. Good afternoon, in fact, from where I am. it's lovely to be in touch with you again and thank you for having me and all of our guests here today, on the podcast. hi everybody who's listening. I'm Laura Henderson and my pleasure is to act as head of program for Frontiers for Young Minds, and that basically means that I get to spend my days telling everybody publicly about how wonderful this project is. But once you get to meet some of the people involved, you will see just how fantastic it is. I'm coming to you today from Lausanne, as I mentioned in Switzerland. So I'm very fortunate. It's a beautiful full day or autumn day, depending on whether your, choice and so we, I'm sitting here looking out from my office window over the, Lac Léman or Lake Geneva. and there's an autumn mist hanging over that with the French Alps behind it. So I do count my blessings when I'm in the office. I know not everyone can say that on a daily basis. and, I also have with me, a member of my team, a core member of my team, Hedwig Ens, who is our senior specialist. I'm gonna let her speak, tell you where she's coming from as well. [00:03:52] Hedwig Ens: Thank you for that, Laura. Indeed. My name is Hedwig and I work underneath, Laura In the Journal, I basically oversee everything that's happening in journal and make sure everything runs smoothly. I'm calling in today. from my home office, I'm sitting in the living room watching my ginger cat in a way too small, box, trying to fit in. And, just like Laura, I'm based in Switzerland. [00:04:17] Alan Levine: Wonderful. And, let's, hear from our scientist. [00:04:22] Caroline Lea-Carnall: Hi everyone. I'm Caroline Lea-Carnall. I'm based at-- I'm a lecturer in neuroscience at the University of Manchester. And I, my day job involves either being a research scientist on computational neuroscience and neuroimaging projects or teaching, anything to do with neuroscience really. I'm based in my office at the University of Manchester. I do not have a view of the Alps out of my window. I just have a very grotty office building across the road. But I do have all my beautiful plants behind me, so they bring a bit of the outside in. [00:04:58] Alan Levine: That's a great setting and, we're gonna get into this soon after we, we meet our next, team members, but, we have some secrets to reveal. Okay. Hello to our mentors. Yeah. [00:05:12] Ildikó Csizmazia: so we are Ildikó Csizmazi and Minita Franzen. She's my colleague and my supervisor and we are sitting in a meeting room currently, but I can see a window somewhere far away and a very rainy day outside. So maybe we are a little bit lucky that we cannot see it right now. [00:05:36] Minita Franzen: Yeah. We are based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and, yeah, we were part of the author team. Our PI, the, project lead, Ruth Van der Hallen could not be here today. So we, are part of the co-author team, that worked on the, paper. And, yeah, that's, from where we are joining right now. And thanks so much for, having us, for giving us the opportunity. The Origin Story of Frontiers for Young Minds --- [00:06:03] Alan Levine: I can't thank you enough for being here and I'm so excited to, to learn and share about this- this project, can, can you give the overall the picture Laura of, obviously of what Frontiers, we know the general description, but I'm always interested like, how did this start? What was the origin story? [00:06:23] Laura Henderson: It's a good story. so Frontiers for Young Minds, yes, we are, as we say publicly, we say we are a "science for kids edited by kids". So there's a lot of good websites out there that support young readers, getting them to read good science from good authors. But we go one step further. We not only work with the best of the best-- as, are our authors here in the call with us, but thanks to the good offices of our science mentors like Caroline, we get to involve the young people directly as gatekeepers for their peers. So they get to say whether the articles are actually fun to read and understandable for others their own age. And those are ages, either eight to eleven or twelve to fifteen, which we ask our authors to aim for when writing. So the origin story of this comes from, our founding chief editor. We have two of them, professor Bob Knight at UC Berkeley, and Professor Idan Segev at the Hebrew University in Israel. And Bob Knight tells the story that he was sitting in a neuroscience conference, having a meeting about this article that they could not get published. And saying to his colleagues, "honestly, kids could do this better. Why can't we get kids involved in the peer review?" And then he went away and thought about it and thought, "no, hang on. That really is that there's a germ of something there." There's really something there. Why can't we get kids involved as gatekeepers of good information and get them started much younger than the kind of key stage 12, 16 to 18 pre university years, much younger than that, to keep them science literate and to make them feel that science is for them. So he came and he pitched this, to Idan Segev and to the founders of Frontiers. And Idan was already heavily involved, he being a fellow neuroscientist like Bob and like our wonderful researchers who are here in the call as well. and they together, pitched this to the founders of Frontiers who felt that this was an ideal project for the Frontiers Research Foundation, which is a Swiss nonprofit, who agreed to fully fund the project, with support coming in from external funders in addition. And so this was born, 10 years ago now, slightly over 10 years. And the first few years were very small. It was a network effect of our editors, reaching out to their colleagues and getting, nieces, nephews involved basically. But in the last sort of three to five years, it's really taken off exponentially. and we've seen our impact triple in the last three years over the previous seven, which is really significant. And that is thanks to the fabulous articles such as the Secrets article that we're gonna be featuring with our two authors and science mentor here in the call to today. But for us, this is really seeing something that started off as just an idea, now become a global leader in science engagement and science communication to the point where we're winning awards recognized by the Open Education Global. And that really is a, dream come true for us, for me and my whole team. [00:09:35] Alan Levine: That's fantastic. And so we're gonna open up the secret of how this article came out. And I think it's also remarkable as we were noting in the opening conversation, because of the way we work, this is so the first time that many of you have met, but still all this collaboration has gone so, so wonderfully. So can we start with the end product? What is this article, that's been published? And about and, who wants to speak to the, finished product? [00:10:05] Laura Henderson: Perhaps I could let Hedwig, summarize, what the, what the process, when-- how these people were involved in the process that are in the call, and then maybe if the authors want to summarize what the article is about. The Review Process: Kids as Gatekeepers --- [00:10:18] Laura Henderson: Perhaps we can do it that way. [00:10:20] Hedwig Ens: Yes, I can absolutely do that. In short, we have, authors, scientists writing a short article for us, just 1500 words, two, three pages. Not too much. And Laura already mentioned, we then actually involve kids in the review process. Now, as these kids are between eight and fifteen year olds, they need someone to guide them. That will be the science mentors like Caroline. They go to the kids and they introduce them to what is science, what is peer review? Why do we need peer review? And what do you think of this article? And then together they read the manuscript and they- they think about it and they think about if they enjoy reading it, they think about if the figures were interesting. They think about if it's a story, if it's clear, if they would like to recommend it to their- to the other kids they know. Then they directly interact with authors and they give the comments to the authors and the authors have to listen to them because if the kids say they don't like the article, we will not publish the article. So the kids, via the science mentors, will have a direct interaction with the authors and together, they make the science story better. Once the kids say "Yes", then we at Frontiers at the research foundation, we actually published the article online, and it's free to read for everyone. [00:11:42] Alan Levine: That's fantastic. So, for this particular article, what was the initiation. for this coming into the flow of the process? [00:11:50] Ildikó Csizmazia: So well, I. It is an interesting beginning because I was actually a master's student when my, supervisors, actually offered this possibility that Frontiers for Young Mind is a journal that publishes articles for young, readers. And so maybe we can form groups of peers and we can turn our research topic, into an article like that. And so when I signed up, I was a master student working on researching secrets and I actually, I was writing my master thesis on this topic, and so we formed a group of five students and two supervisors, and then we started to write the article. [00:12:38] Minita Franzen: Yeah, and I think the ideas, and also from the supervisor perspective is that we also wanted to give our master students the opportunity to also reach out and have a first taste of, the whole publishing aspects of academia., But I think even more important level than what we academics usually do is publish for other academics and using difficult language and staying in our niche and in our vocabulary that we think everybody understands, but that we often very much forget that this is not the case. And to really reach out to, the kids that are also potentially our future students and our future colleagues in that sense, to also shape the future of research and also the future of, in our case then, psychology and clinical psychology specifically. And, yeah. And I think it's a great opportunity, to publish within Frontiers for Young Minds, in that sense and to get the input from our actual readers. And, I think it was a very valuable, but also a fun experience to, to hear back from the kids and, yeah, to interact with them directly. So I think that makes the process even more beautiful and to also then give the lead to our master students to, to gain that first experience. [00:13:54] Alan Levine: So when you sat down to write this first draft, what did you have in mind and is it radically different from what was ultimately published? [00:14:05] Ildikó Csizmazia: Secrecy research is now getting a refreshed line. And so there are new, topics and new articles, coming out. So we have a little bit new information on this topic. And we also thought that it's very common and it's, it's part of our everyday life from a very young age, but it can also have consequences like emotionally and physically on secret keepers. So it might be nice if we raise a little bit of awareness also among kids because they might not be as aware of these negative consequences. So they might not be able to ask for help when needed. So we thought that simplifying a topic a little bit and explaining it to them and also giving them a set of skills with which they can handle these situations might be a good benefit for them. [00:15:00] Alan Levine: Okay. And, can you just repeat again the title it article is? [00:15:05] Ildikó Csizmazia: Secrets and the Way They Affect Us. [00:15:09] Alan Levine: Very good. I think it, it's very appealing obviously to, to kids because they, know what secrets are, but they're gonna get into the science behind it. And, where did the, chil-- the kids come from that worked on this project with you? [00:15:24] Caroline Lea-Carnall: Shall I take that one? Yeah. Firstly, can I just say that is such a fantastic idea to get your Master's students to write these? We were just so grateful and we were actually on the waiting list for a long time. We got an offer to take on a paper and we didn't get back to you quickly enough because I had to liaise with the school .And I said to the teacher, "we've gotta do this faster next time." So when it came along, we were just so grateful to be able to be involved in it. It was a fantastic experience from beginning to end. So this is my local primary school, and it was the sixth grade or year six science club. So these were kind of 10 and 11 year olds. and I think we had about 12. We had many more than I was expect-- I wasn't expecting as much interest and I also wasn't expecting them to be so engaged in the project. They blew me away. these are pre-teens. they don't take any prisoners. If they're bored, you're gonna know it [laughs]. So I was-- I didn't know how this was gonna go. We'd never done it before. But they were absolutely amazing. And I think the beauty of this particular article specifically was that we had their role as scientists, which they took on. They couldn't have done a better job. but they also had a real personal engagement with it. They were getting to an age where, they may have secrets or their friends may have secrets or, they told a lie once or whatever. So they had this real a personal- a real personal engagement. So it was this two-sided coin that we had. And it was fabulous. It was really-- I think I said to all of you, thank you so much for the opportunity to do this 'cause it was-- wait, it was worth the wait. I'll say it that way. [00:17:22] Alan Levine: The material that the kids saw first was this 1500-- it was a draft of, the research. What else was in, was there, like data and charts and research? What, did they, first see when they sat down to do this review? [00:17:37] Caroline Lea-Carnall: So we had the paper. And within the paper there are diagrams and figures and, all of that. And they also-- we had some instructions, which I apparently did not read properly, which is probably why ours was the more interesting one. You can maybe cut that bit out. But, yeah, so we had some instruc--, some very helpful instructions from Frontiers as well as the-- as well as the paper itself. And, so me and the science teacher we met, we gave the children the, paper, we gave them their instructions and we gave them a few days to go and read it by themselves. And to mull it over. And then we booked a few hours the following week for me to come into the school and to sit with the teacher and the children and we were going, to go through and they turned up that day. When I tell you, I dunno how many of us around this panel have sat through a PhD viva. But when, okay, so, they turned up that day, they had their notes, their sticky notes, their highlighted sections, their page. It was incredible. We went through every line. And, we-- they dissect, they had, they dissected it. They didn't like, if they didn't understand a word or if they wanted further clarification or if they thought something was the wrong color. We even got to that level. But they were amazing, so we were there for a few hours. I thought, I'll let them guide me. I hadn't done it before. I didn't know how long it would take. I'll let them guide me, but we sat for a whole morning and it was lively and they were super engaged. So yeah, that's how it, that's how it worked for us. [00:19:21] Alan Levine: So they were not intimidated by these scientists. They were-- they just got in and made a lot of judge-- [00:19:27] Caroline Lea-Carnall: Oh, they were mini- yeah, they were mini reviewers. They were born to do this job. They were, not intimidated at all. I didn't know, like I say, I had no clue how they were going to-- if they-- I didn't even know if they would've read it, quite frankly, but they did. They read every line, I think multiple times. I think they probably asked their parents a few questions, we got, "could you answer this?" And they don't-- they'd really thought about it when, we came to meet. [00:19:59] Laura Henderson: Toughest audience ever. [00:20:01] Alan Levine: I'm thinking just some of the mechanics. How do you synthesize this and what do you send back to the scientists? [00:20:07] Caroline Lea-Carnall: So I made notes. I was furiously making notes throughout the meeting and annotating. I made many more notes than I was expecting to make, and then I tried to summarize. I think we sent it back in the form of a kind of a, normal review where we answered the general-- generic-- we, we had general questions that we had to answer, but then we also had specifics that we'd, commented on the text. They didn't understand, this word needs a bit of better explanation, or they didn't like this example, or, so we-- I tried to group the comments as best as I could and-- and send them back and they- I sent them the finished product. They were just so empowered by that, once it was published, they couldn't believe it. They've got the, kind of di-- the score emblem on there and they made a real difference. That's how they felt, and that's the truth. [00:21:04] Alan Levine: And then for our scientists. Okay. You get the review back. The Impact of the Project on Kids and Scientists --- [00:21:08] Alan Levine: What was your first reaction when you saw this? [00:21:11] Minita Franzen: Honestly, I thought... also thank you so much, Caroline for now sharing this because I think, your enthusiasm and specifically your pupil's enthusiasm really came through also in, in the review. And I think that's what made it also so special for us to, react to, our reviewers comments then, because it definitely also made a difference. From us we structure it here is we also block, an entire afternoon where our then Master students get together and have the idea of, okay, brainstorm together, create a structure. We have multiple Frontier for Young Minds projects going on at the same time, and they give each other feedback as well. So on that day, we've been writing three different Frontier for Young Minds papers, actually. And then, also already giving some peer feedback in that sense. And then, also leaving it, to, our Master's students to then get back to our, young reviewers feedback. And I think specifically the really nice examples from their point of view is okay, can you use a different type of examples because this is how we actually see ourselves better in a situation where we, for example, keep a secret and help other people react. And I think that made it so special and hopefully also then that the, the kids felt more, yeah, thought and, heard in our paper because we, really tried to integrate it as much as possible. And yeah, I don't know if you wanna add. [00:22:41] Ildikó Csizmazia: Yes, for me it was very interesting to see how proud their thinking was about the whole idea because there were, for example, places, and steps where we were like, okay, this might be an important part to share, but there is not really much research on that, so we cannot say anything. So I just didn't say anything in the article. And then kids were like, "okay, but can you tell us something about it? Is there research on it?" So we're like, oh, okay. We really have to emphasize it, that it is an Im important and interesting part, but we don't really know much about it. So yeah, I really liked that feedback. And also they were very nice. I really liked that they also picked upon the positive things because, these were really-- this made us enthusiastic to, to continue and incorporate their feedback. And we really thought that okay, we are contributing and doing something that, that younger readers also find very important and, nice. [00:23:44] Alan Levine: How often does it happen that you get feedback that surprises you, that says, this wouldn't come from a review by scientists. [00:23:52] Minita Franzen: Also like specifically also the positive aspect and the, oh, this is great, you keep up. And, here are just a few things to improve. I think that aspect in a normal review process by adult scientist reviewers barely happens. It's always about the negative and the big improvements. I think in that sense also, just the general experience, it, made it, it makes it more fruitful for I think both sides. And the direct communication and also, I guess via Caroline, it makes it even, more fruitful in, in that sense because it's a direct back and forth and, yeah, like basically really writing the paper together, not just us writing something and there is feedback coming, but it's also that the kids genuinely suggesting direct things, which we were able to integrate in the end, hopefully at least. [00:24:46] Hedwig Ens: If I can indeed comment on that, it's, just I've been working for this journal for several years and it always keeps amazing me how willing these kids are to collaborate with this author and the scientists, how willing they are to help them improve instead of just saying, this is wrong or boring, to say, okay, it's not right. Like not there just yet, but maybe if you do X, Y, or Z. And what I really loved about the review of this manuscript was indeed how the kids focus on the bigger story, but also they like gave small comments on how to change things. For example, in the original manuscript it said something about, eating cookies before dinner and forgetting about it. And the kids were like, we don't relate to that because we would never forget eating cookies. So it was really nice how the kids pointed out small things, but then also came back to the bigger things. [00:25:33] Alan Levine: Subjectively, do you think it, changes the kids' perspectives of scientists, like seeing them more as, people, like, because they're having this interaction with them? [00:25:44] Caroline Lea-Carnall: Absolutely. I think that the, what they learned by doing is really this idea that-- when you are little, it's like Science. It's this thing, it's a done thing. There's a, there's an, answer or there's a proof or there's a discovery, and it's no, scientists are just people and reviewers are just people, and everybody are just people. And actually science is never done. Look, here's some science, and now you have added to that science and now there's new science. And it's like that can keep going almost forever. And I think it was, I think the reason I wanted to do this since the very first moment I heard about it, was exactly that. Like just. Just tearing down those, wall-- walls that people have that aren't involved in science, just to try and show them there's a whole process here. And you can contribute to it if you want to. And I think it really-- I'm. I had, I know a few of the parents and they had-- they were telling me the kids were so excited. They were just they ran home with the journal, with the article. They were reading it all weekend, they were asking questions and they were, they just, they loved it. They loved being a part of it. And I think the other thing is when you're at school and when you're little, I think you can sometimes feel like it's hard to contribute to society. You're a child and not many people ask for your voice or for-- not, many people hear you. And this, they were almost like the, bosses in a way, for that moment. It was, they were running the show and they really did run the show. I. None of those suggestions were mine. they were theirs. Everything that, that we wrote down, was theirs. I guided the conversation a little bit, but har-- hardly at all. So it really, I, think it was just wonderful and I do think they all took something quite special from that very unique opportunity that I hope will stay with them. [00:27:57] Alan Levine: Okay. And so the, article is reviewed and rewritten by the scientists, I assume, and sent back to the kids. Is that the next step? [00:28:06] Caroline Lea-Carnall: It's published on-- online now, so I, I did send it to them. As I said, I mentioned, so they've all gone on to high schools. They were the year six, so as it was published over the, just recently, right? It was a few weeks ago. Or just at the end of the summer. So I sent it to the teacher, the head teacher, the science teacher that we worked with, and, to as many of the children whose parents I am still in touch with. So yeah, it's out there. They've, got a copy of it. and they'll, and like I said to them at the time, that achievement is forever. Your names not their actual names, but under the Dis-- Disley, Disley School emblem is forever. That's something that you'll always have, I think it's just wonderful. [00:28:51] Hedwig Ens: And not only that, so the pub-- like the article was published two months ago, like you said, and already in those not even two months, the article got more than 1400 views and downloads already. So the article is actually being read and distributed and, seen. . [00:29:05] Alan Levine: There's no "secrets" about it, obviously. But, for a, again, for our scientists, does this whole process do anything to affect, I'm thinking because you're involving your Master's students in this process, it helps them like work on their, skills as becoming science and communicators. So is, that the level of stake in doing these projects? Because you mentioned having multiple ones. [00:29:32] Minita Franzen: Yeah, I think, it's not only for, the Master's students that I think it's a learning opportunity, but it's also for us as the supervisors because, for us, it's also more and more important to communicate our science to the broader public and, for example, via Open Science initiatives. And I think it's always a challenge for us to, step down from our usual lingo and really make sure that we can communicate it to everyone. And my communicating to my parents who are non- academically educated, is already a challenge for me to find words that, they understand. Because for me, it sounds very normal, to use, but then I'm like reminded of okay, no, I can, make it, phrase it differently and phrase it more easily. And I think this is the challenge, but then also the opportunity for us to, to practice it. And for our master's student as well, and specifically for us, given that we are Clinical Psychology, a team and I myself am also, a therapist. It's also okay, how come, how do we communicate it to clients, in-- within therapy? And this is also something that, that the students, the Master students can practice with in, in different, with different audiences. And then Frontiers is, one of those opportunities. [00:30:53] Laura Henderson: So I think, I just wanted to add to that because I think Minita really touched on something that is almost a byproduct of what we do, but a very important one, is that we get this feedback repeatedly from, particularly from authors involved in our process, that quote, "this has helped me to communicate outside my research community." unquote. This is feedback we have again and again, even to the point where we have a Nobel Collection where we have featured to date, 30 Nobel Laureates, who have published their work with us. And for them, they're very busy people, as you can imagine. So we involve our science writer to help them create a draft. Otherwise, they wouldn't have time to do and we had, Bert Sakmann , who's in our first collection of laureates we published. He came to us afterwards and he wrote to us and said, thank you. He said, "Finally, my grandchildren understand why their grandfather won a Nobel Prize." He had literally never been able to put it in words that were sufficient to explain to preteens before, and with our science writers help, he had achieved that. So I think the further you go in science, the less opportunities, perhaps less training there is, to express yourself outside your peer review community. And it is something that increasingly in this world of, particularly misinformation online, being able to communicate accurately to a very broad audience is gonna become a huge part of what we value scientists for, is rebuilding that trust in science, publicly. It's gonna be a huge part of open education. If we are able in any way in this process with these amazing young people and their input to help people feel confident to do that in their careers, then that is an amazing byproduct I think. [00:32:44] Alan Levine: Hearing all this full story just really fulfills that original idea that was just like in, like literally like that light bulb, like the cartoon in, in the comics where someone has an idea. that, it's really been effective. so it sounds like Laura, Hedwick, like you have a lot of demand for scientists to get in the public. Is, this true? Is, are people waiting in line to be part of this process? [00:33:10] Hedwig Ens: Yes, we have many kids who vie, the science mentors sign up for us and, they're really eager and waiting to get a manuscript. And for that we are completely dependent on scientists, to write for us and come to us and write for us. So yeah, there is an amazing amount of kids who would like to get involved in it. And indeed, we currently cannot serve them all yet. [00:33:36] Alan Levine: And, this may be unfair question. Can you think of a really niche or obscure science research that, that maybe you were surprised or, said I didn't even think we would be able to publish something like this or make it understandable to kids? [00:33:51] Laura Henderson: We've had some, we've had some very good ones. For example, Game Theory by one of our Nobel Prize winners. This is an extremely complex mathematical model involving behavioral economics. And I, this is actually quite complex if you don't have a background in what they're talking about. And yet there's this beautiful article, which is now being read and understood by, literally hundreds of thousands of people. [Unclear Name] said in an interview once that he believes anything, anything can be explained. we just have to find the right words and the right story to tell. I'm sure Hedwig can think of another example maybe than I did. [00:34:30] Hedwig Ens: It's, exactly in the same kind of sense. We have currently a very beautiful collection of articles as well about nano and nano materials, which is a quite niche, subject and, people think it's very hard to understand, but if you actually ask authors to sit down and think about which words can I use? Because a lot of times scientists use very jargon, very words-- they like, they, they developed to explain something efficiently. But if you go back, we develop jargon because we wanted to be efficient. But that means every jargon word can be explained in simpler terms as well. and that's why we now we have these beautiful collections on nanomaterials or soft robotics or anything that seems to be too technical for kids. But actually if we like, use the right words, the kids have intellectual access to it as well. So those are the things that at the moment spring out. But we have many other things on our website, that can answer the question that you just asked Alan as well. [00:35:32] Laura Henderson: And I think Caroline, you touched on something when you mentioned, that the kids gave-- there was these very specific examples that they picked out from what the authors had written and that they wanted to change. Because they saw themselves these were the examples they saw themselves in. And I think that's the key to it. If we can tell a story that makes the young readers understand how this involves them. How does this impact their lives? Why do they want to know this? How does this relate to their day to day or their future? And that is what's gonna get them interested enough to want to read and to want to understand. And then the rest, we can give them glossaries, we can give them figures, we can give them all sorts of aids to help 'em understand this, as well as storytelling techniques like metaphor and things like that. But it's really that, connection that has to be formed first, I think, to get them to want to dive in. [00:36:28] Alan Levine: And, I was gonna ask because I need help understanding. Do you have anything that works to explain, Large Language Models or Artificial Intelligence? [00:36:37] Hedwig Ens: We're-- we're working on those ones. We have a lot of, articles on language indeed published online, but the bigger language models, we do not have anything just yet. So if you know anyone who would like to write about it, please let us know. [00:36:51] Alan Levine: No. I would like to read the article myself! [00:36:55] Laura Henderson: Yes, me too. I use our articles all the time to understand concepts that I didn't study myself, so I find it really useful. We do have, some aspects of AI that are covered already in the journal, so you can look it up. For example, it will come in as applications into other things. For example, we had a collection we published with CERN. And the  CERN, campus held a, a, what they call the Spark! Serendipity Forum, where they had scientists studying in multiple different genres and disciplines come together and speak about what they felt was the future of health technology. And actually a lot of that does build from AI, from analyzing mass data, sets, through to, predicting, trends and epidemiology, for example. So a lot of that is AI based, so there is a lot of AI in that collection, for example. But yes, we would love to feature it more, and we hope to have some articles very soon about some basics on that and how the processes work. [00:38:02] Alan Levine: At any one time Hedwig, like, how many do you have running? And can you give any previews about what's, gonna be appearing soon? [00:38:11] Hedwig Ens: Sorry, I didn't hear the question. How many, what do we have running? [00:38:14] Alan Levine: How, many, like articles are you supervising and overseeing right now? And [00:38:20] Hedwig Ens: At the moment I believe we have about a hundred articles in different stages of the, whole review process. So it is, it's quite a lot to oversee. Exactly. And there's so many exciting things that are gonna hopefully come out soon. We have a whole collection that we just opened about the, Sustainable Development Goals, which is slowly filling up as well, that is explaining every, from every goal, it explains what it is and why it is important. We have a whole article sets coming up about the transplantation of organs. There are just too many exciting things happening to, to mention them all. [00:39:05] Laura Henderson: So many. So many. We publish a about 250 articles a year. So at any given time, you're gonna have a hundred plus articles in the pipeline. Yeah. so we do focus on these collections around themes, where we work with, say, networks of authors within a certain institutional organization. So with CERN on their Sparks, authors about Digital Future Health. or, we are working with the network of authors within the IPCC, the government, panel Cli- Climate Change. And they are producing now a collection of their, based on their latest IPCC report data to explain what their predictions are now for climate change. These are-- we focus when we are working with what we plan for the next year, we focus on those collections but we also have wonderful spontaneous submissions from authors who want to get involved, as well outside those. [00:40:04] Alan Levine: I have to say, like when I hear this, like the, word "significant" for the recognition might even be an underestimate. So I really, wanna applaud, Frontiers for Young Minds. and the fact that you've got demand, for this coming in, says a lot. Future Plans and Closing Remarks --- [00:40:21] Alan Levine: And, anything you wanna say Laura, about, what's on the horizon for this? What would you like to do? Do you wanna add to, the, plate of what Frontiers is doing? [00:40:33] Laura Henderson: Oh, it is a dangerous question, Alan. My ambitions are limitless. So I, I think for me, the next big step, is because what we're doing right now is producing these beautiful 1500 word or so articles, and they are being put online, completely free for anyone who wants to use them. But because they're targeted at, as I said, between eight and fifteen years of age it's usually the majority of our usership is kids browsing online independently. So either they've found it through our social media channels or maybe they've been assigned it by a teacher for homework and they're reading up on it. Actually quite a small proportion of our readership act as young reviewers. It's, that's, a much smaller, percentage. The vast number, 47 million readers worldwide are mostly kids browsing on a phone or a laptop independently. What we'd like to do, we know how busy teachers are, we know how difficult it is for them to adopt new materials into their curriculum. So what we wanna do is really support them with that. So we're, we've already conducted a pilot, last year with a partner, who are also a nonprofit foundation like us, called Bold. And they work to educate educators. so what we want to do is combine our materials with them to produce teachers packages on key themes. So that basically they do the introduction for the teachers and okay, this is the theme. This is how you wanna teach it for these certain year groups. And then we will give them materials that they can use. In their classroom from our stock of wonderful articles plus some activity sheets and everything they can easily adopt into any age of curriculum. And we'll split it across those two age groups that I mentioned before, either eight to eleven, so upper primary, or twleve to fifteen lower high school. And we'll be really looking forward to getting those live next year. So look at, watch this space. [00:42:38] Alan Levine: That, that's fantastic. I know that would definitely be an asset for teachers out there to have those materials. I just, I'm in awe of, what you're doing and just appreciate, your time to, to share this with our audience. And, I will do my best to get this compiled pretty soon and published because this is just a fantastic project and, I'm inspired by everybody's energy and enthusiasm here. [00:43:04] Laura Henderson: I, I must say that it's one of the great privileges of our work is that we work with the most engaged, the most passionate people, the researchers, the science mentors, the kids themselves. It's a kind of self-selecting group who come to be part of, of what we do. And the real common thread is always that passion and that engagement. So it gives us energy. and thank you so much for every, to everybody who's been part of our process, the people here on this call today, so Ildikó, Minita, Caroline, but also all of our authors, science mentors, editors, young reviewers who've been part of our process over the years. We've worked with about 900 editors and 9,000 plus young reviewers in 65 countries and however many authors, it's, an incredible number of authors. I think Hedwig might know that better than I will. but [00:43:59] Hedwig Ens: Yes, we have almost, four and a half thousand authors. [00:44:02] Laura Henderson: yeah, it, So four and a half thousand researchers from all over the world. And this is an incredible privilege for us to, act as a facilitating platform for them to engage 'cause that's really what we do. [00:44:16] Alan Levine: Most excellent and so exciting, and we heard Caroline's determination to make sure she got to be part of this, that, she's, she, jumped at that second opportunity. Kudos to you all and again, thank you for spending the time to share this story and we look forward to, sharing it through our podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode of OE Global Voices. This is a podcast from Open Education Global, and if you're listening to this, you got to the end of another fabulous episode. One of the best ones yet, and I'm a little bit biased, but I think you'll think so too. For each episode, we pick a different musical track. to use for the intros from the Free Music Archive because they're all Creative Commons license. For today's show, based on its theme, we selected a track called Science Summit by Serge Quadrado, and it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license. You'll be able to find this episode at our site, voices.oeglobal.org, and we hope you engage in follow up conversations with Laura, Hedwig and our other guests in the OEG Connect Community. And that is connect.oeglobal.org. You really should go there. It's quite exciting. And if you're listening and you wanna let us know about your open education work, or tell us someone else we should have on the show, please let us know by our website. Or you can send an email to voices@oeglobal.org and we'll see you in the next episode.