Team:TJUSLS China/Communication
Overview
In 2021, the epidemic situation in China has improved and everything is slowly returning to order, which is both an opportunity and a challenge for us. On the one hand, we needed to think more carefully about the organization of events for security reasons, and on the other hand, after a year of isolation, we started to have face-to-face conversations with more people, and we were very excited about that.
We put a lot of effort into trying to reach as many ages as possible, and we try to reach as many marginalized people as possible. We choose poverty alleviation education, and we plan school cultural festivals with activities for all ages in mind -- we don't leave anyone out. We also make full use of the Internet for publicity, record the progress of our project through wechat public platform, let everyone know our story with IGEM and synthetic biology through podcasts, and spread knowledge to more people through video platform.
Our influence will not end with the project, we will share our experience with the next generation of iGEMers, inherit our resources, and continue the spread of synthetic biology.
Education for poverty alleviation
The members of our team are very concerned about the issue of educational equity. Participating in iGEM enables us to learn more about synthetic biology, and as IGEMers we want to share our knowledge and experiences with children in poor areas. Due to economic constraints, these children do not have access to quality education, nor can they imagine what a colorful life of research is like. We want to open a window to these kids, to a bigger world for them through synthetic biology and iGEM competition. We chose two primary schools and one junior high school to teach in two poor areas in China.
Unfortunately, due to the restrictions of the epidemic, we could not go to every child, so we chose to combine online classes with offline lectures.
Online lessons
We chose two schools in TANchang County -- Dazhai Nine-year School and Tanchang No. 1 Middle School for our online classes. When teaching dazhai nine-year school, we chose simple and vivid content for the audience of primary school students. We start with a classmate's rabbit, gradually introduce the children to some vague understanding of synthetic biology, and then move on to some basic knowledge of synthetic biology.
The junior high school students in Dangchang No. 1 Middle School have already learned some biology knowledge. When we asked "what is protein?", the children gave a variety of answers, which surprised and delighted us. So we gave the students a more in-depth introduction to synthetic biology. We introduced what enzymes are, why we want to modify enzymes, and the basics of our project. The children showed great enthusiasm and actively interacted with us.
Offline lecture
During the summer vacation, our team members were very lucky to go to Changqing Primary School, Liuhe County, Tonghua City, Jilin Province with the school's volunteer teaching team. Liuhe County in Jilin Province is a county with abundant natural resources, but the ecological environment of Liuhe County is getting worse and worse due to continuous environmental damage and pollution in recent years. Children always have a sensitive perception of nature, and their concern for environmental protection is far beyond our expectations. We started with the topic of plastic pollution, and we led the kids to understand what an enzyme is, and there is an enzyme that can degrade PET plastic and why we need to modify it. We were also greatly encouraged by the enthusiasm of the children.
After the lecture, a student thought about other phenomena he observed in his life and wondered whether synthetic biology could be used to solve them. We communicated with the team members, and we still keep in touch with the student today.
Freshman seminar
We conducted an offline lecture for freshmen. This lecture attracted students from all majors in the school. However, after studying in junior high school and senior high school, we already had some basic understanding of biology, so we had a deeper communication. We explained some basic knowledge of synthetic biology and the general situation of our project to the students. The students showed great interest in it and attracted many students from different majors to participate in next year's iGEM competition.
Campus Culture Festival
Every year when crabapple flowers bloom, our school will hold a campus culture festival. This year, with our efforts, our team has a tent that can be used to publicize our project and carry out education and science popularization, and share our secret of keeping spring with everyone.
The Nazca paintings
Taking the campus culture festival as an opportunity, we want to get in touch with more people. We identified preschool and primary school children as one of our target groups for this activity. We believe that it is very beneficial for children's intellectual development and expression to introduce them to some simple scientific knowledge in an interesting way at a critical stage of their development. Because of the limited cognitive ability of children at this stage, we chose simple drawings for children to daub on for educational purposes.
We designed a giant painting, one meter wide and six meters long, on which simple shapes of enzymes and genes as well as caricaturized images were drawn, customized on non-woven fabric and transported to the event site. The huge painting on the ground aroused the curiosity and onlookers of many children and parents. Through this activity, we aim to stimulate the curiosity of preschool and primary school children in life science and establish their initial understanding of science.
Quiz
The main participants of campus culture festival are college students from surrounding universities, so college students with a certain knowledge reserve are also our important target. We designed a series of interesting questions, and if students answered five questions correctly in a row, they would get the beautiful peripheral that we made in the lab. This activity aroused students' enthusiasm to challenge, and they also increased their understanding of synthetic biology during the game.
The classroom
We think the campus culture festival is a good opportunity for us to communicate with more people face to face, so we directly moved the popular science class to the event site. We choose crabapple as the theme of the campus culture festival. Zhang Ailing, a famous Chinese female writer, has three regrets in her life, one of which is that crabapple has no fragrance. We explained to the curious visitors how we could solve Eileen Chang's life regret through synthetic biology, and we could also solve many other problems. We shared our ideas with more people and got a lot of encouragement.
Bilibili platform live streaming classes
Bilibili, as one of the largest video platforms in China, has a huge number of users of all ages, so we choose Bilibili as our platform.
Together with SZPt-China, NWu-China-A and TJU-China, our team conducted a series of live classes entitled "Synthetic Biology in Life". Our team mainly explained the theme of garbage disposal and plastic recycling live classes. In recent years, China is vigorously promoting waste classification nationwide. Starting from the theme that permeates into everyone's daily life, we introduced to the public the enzyme that can decompose PET and why we want to modify PET enzyme. A single live broadcast was watched by 1,170 people, and the series of live classes affected more than 5,000 people in total.
Plastic Alliance Roundtable
Our team formed an alliance with BJEA_CHINA\ CPU_CHINA\DUT_CHINA\ IVyamaker-China \KETSTONE\SMS_ShenZhen –the six teams that work on plastic issues for a roundtable discussion. Roundtable invited professor of PI to other teams, and other comments for each project, the judges were satisfied with our project and we design part of the theoretical predictions of those who need an experiment result good mutation, which makes us later project for the further supplement and optimization.
Web advertising
● Podcast
We were inspired by the famous American history writer Van Loon, who said, "The history of man is the history of hungry animals looking for food." We believe that the public is not uninterested in learning new things, but it is difficult to squeeze time and energy to accept new knowledge in the high-intensity and fast-paced social life. Podcasting, as a way to meet our information intake needs without using the Internet or hands, became our choice.
We named the podcast program PS. On the one hand, it has the meaning of Post Scrips. We took the podcast as the footnote of our project, recording all kinds of stories happened in the process of project promotion and scientific research. On the other hand, it represents Project and Science Stories. We would like to invite more IGEM to share their projects and the stories behind them.
The end of this year's project does not mean the end of our podcast, and we will pass this project on to the next generation of iGEMer, committed to encouraging more people to learn about and participate in the world of synthetic biology.
● Wechat official account
We accepted last year's iGEMer property to continue the operation of the team's public account. Our official account is mainly for students of all majors in the university and other IGEM teams. On the one hand, we publicize various activities on our public platform, and on the other hand, we release popular science push for hot events. Relying on the public platform, we can communicate with students directly. Students will actively leave messages to us in the background of the public account, and we have also responded positively.
