Team:BIT-China/Education/children-edu

iGEM2021_BIT-China conducted Science Popularization Activities at Beijing Dongcheng District Youth Science and Technology Museum

        In September 2021, members of the BIT-China team came to the Beijing Dongcheng Youth Science and Technology Museum to give a lecture on "Magicians – ‘Little Cells’" to elementary school students.

        By describing the origin of life development, students learn about the step-by-step development of life from the cell to today.

        Then we explained the history of the microscope by guiding the students to observe the cell with the tool "microscope" and let them see the "cell" through the microscope.

        After observing the cells by using the microscope, the students became more interested in the internal structure of the cells, so we continued to explain about the structure of plant cells and animal cells using 4D models to give them a deeper understanding of the organelles and their corresponding functions.

        The students learned a lot about synthetic biology, such as how to operate in the laboratory and engineering strains through the biodoodle illustrations of the iBowu-China team. Students developed a deeper understanding of -Tasting Officer- yeast through the illustrations of BIT-China in the biodoodle and showed their creativity by coloring.

        The cell is the basic unit that makes up an organism, and we used the cell as an entry point to introduce the students to the structural levels of the human body and living systems. We also proposed several approaches for the conservation of biodiversity.

        The little magician cells can also do many things. We introduced the students to cloning technology, as well as transgenic technology, and the students constructed their own gene expression vectors by means of stickers.

        Lastly, we introduced the students to synthetic biology, a science that studies cells, and introduced them to the applications of synthetic biology in their lives. We also introduced a competition related to synthetic biology - "iGEM", which made the students more interested in biology.

        During this science course, the participating students listened carefully and answered the questions we asked actively. Through interviews with the students after the class, we found that the students not only learned a lot through this activity, but also became more interested in biology.

        We are delighted to give the children such a popular science lesson, which gave them a preliminary understanding of biology and synthetic biology, and also stimulated their interests in biology. We are also grateful to iBowu-China for providing the biodoodle picture books, which let the children understand synthetic biology more intuitively.