Team:XMU-China/Education
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Be a novel subject, the idea of synthetic biology has not been so widely acknowledged by the public. As one goal of our project, we’ve made effort to spread the idea of synthetic biology to more and more people inside and outside the field of scientific researches.
Inspiration:
Our project this year concerns about the developing energy source, nuclear power, and its biosafety issues. This concept is quite arcane to the public, especially to children. We decided to illustrate our project with a more understandable way for children, conveying the idea of using genetically modified organisms to solve problems. Illuminated by many previous teams’ work of children’s books, we decided to create one of our own.
Design:
To connect all elements of our project, we decide to use “little water drop” as the main character, telling a story about a trip to his friend, “nuclear power plant”. We set “cooling down the fever of nuclear power plant” as his mission, and successfully connect the idea of cooling down the fever with cooling down the nuclear island and parallel the heat generated by nuclear fission with the fever symptom of human. As the theme of our project is to solve the clogging issues in the cooling water system, we introduced “P. globosa” and “M. edulis” as the troublemakers in the story. The trouble in the story is then solved by “genetically modified organisms”, which is the core of our project. Along with the structure of “encounter a problem, solve a problem, achieve the goal”, we design a comic book which can easily be memorized and understood for children.
Implementation:
Targeting at the children of primary school, the booklet can be adapted under many circumstances. For example, it can be used in class or as a bedtime reading materials at home.
On our Science and Technology Museum day, we distributed the children’s books to the visitors, and the positive feedback was received immediately. Furthermore, we joined in the exhibition held by NUDT, delivering our children’s book and other education materials to more people.
Inspiration:
For teenagers, we believe that instead of telling them the theory directly, guiding them to come up with their own conclusions can motivate them better. It’s the most effective way to get young people involved and interested in science.
Design:
We scheduled a discussion section for the students of QunXian A-level High School. Three open-ended questions were prepared, and the high school students finally accomplished their task with the hints of our team members.
For participants, the themes related to the project, the scientific concepts introduced before discussion, or theories behind daily affairs are all welcomed. To conceive a good topic for discussion, the host need to carefully balance the choices and avoid personal preferences. The themes and descriptions we choose are showing below as an example.
Results:
The outcome of discussion were presented by students of each group, and they wrote down “what you want synthetic biology to do” on the blank poster we prepared.
Then we chose some answers interesting and invited the representatives to share the inspiration. We’re so delighted that they got meaningful conclusions and formed their own ideas. In their eager feedbacks, we convince that their understanding and interest toward synthetic biology have been greatly risen. Here’re few examples of responses we got from students.
In addition to those face-to-face activities, we also make efforts in educating online. Aimed at college students at our age, we made monthly posts, sharing briefs of recently published articles in synthetic biology via our official account like Weibo, Facebook, WeChat and Ins. We also use these online channels to notify the time and place of our public events and post the summary of these activities to arouse the interest of synthetic biology among our peer students.
Overview:
There are several considerations for us to link the academy to the masses, for example, enlarging the social influence of our team, enhancing the public recognition of synthetic biology, especially the students, and introducing our project to amateurs. we plotted a lifesome education plan aiming at all types of students, including lectures and supporting slideshows, providing the students to learn knowledge about synthetic biology with equal opportunity.
Inspiration:
It is believed that the young generation are going to shape the future world, and synthetic biology is regarded as the new-style inrerdiscipline which would affect the world a lot. Hence, it’s necessary and beneficial to let the young know more about synthetic biology. Giving initial guidance about synthetic biology helps to enlighten more young people to take the path of this novel field.
Students can be divided into two groups by the knowledge background: one with basic biology knowledge, while the other know poor about it. Therefore, we designed different lectures separately for these two kinds of student, educating them from different angles to promote the awareness of synthetic biology.
Design:
For students with little biology knowledge, we taught them with basic biology knowledge such as base-pairs, genetic codons, DNA and so on, then introduced them about the core concept of synthetic biology: achieving the engineering purpose by using BioBricks.
For students with basic biology knowledge, we stated more profound knowledge of synthetic biology, comparing the assembly line of the “bio-factory” to a real-world factory. By the metaphor way, we further discussed the selection of chassis, choice of gene, modification of the protein expression, design of proper platform and promotion to the public with the students.
Implementation:
Both kinds of the supplementary slides have been applied in actual educational scenarios.
We used the beginner edition when holding event on the Science and Technology Museum Day, which is greatly accepted by students and their parents.
The advanced edition was utilized in the lecture targeting at high school and college students, which inspired them a lot. Their enthusiastic engagement in discussion and positive feedbacks impressed us extremely.
Feedbacks:
After the lecture, we collected questionnaires from participating students, to further polish the form and content of our lectures.
Overview:
Using games to learn synthetic biology may be a more appealing option for the preschool children. We designed several interactive games based on elements derived from the basic concepts of synthetic biology, and modified to be more acceptable to children.
Design:
The four games we designed is as follows:
I. Matching bases:
We demonstrated the complementarity of bases in DNA molecules by matching cards with structural formula of different bases. Players can win by finding the right two sets of "A + T" or "C + G".
II. Deciphering the code:
Players are given a set of codons, and are asked to find the corresponding amino acids by looking up the codon list.
III. Assembling this:
Players are asked to construct the ball-and-stick models of histidine and urocanic acid, respectively, according to the structural formula. By comparing the difference between the two substances, we can explain the function of Histidine ammonia-lyase to those kids, which plays an important part in our project.
IV. Finding his family:
Amino acids can be divided into hydrophilic amino acids, hydrophobic amino acids, or neutral amino acids basic, amino acids, acidic amino acids, or essential amino acids, nonessential amino acids, semiessential amino acids, according to different criteria. Players should sort the amino acids given in one division of the above.
Implementation:
These games suit children under age of ten perfectly. On the Science and Technology Museum Day, many adults with their children are attracted by our games, and they learned some basic knowledge of synthetic biology by experiencing our games, which we are also glad to see that the edutainment has worked beyond our expectation.
Feedbacks:
During the Science and Technology Museum Day, we also got some feedbacks from both the parents participated in our activities and the staff of the Science and Technology Museum, suggesting that some of the games might be too difficult for very young children, including the discussion of chemical reactions. However, some of our games can still sow the seed of synthetic biology in subconscious.