Team:NYMU-Taipei/HP/Silver
Wego
In September, NYMU iGEM took a step further in terms of educating kids and spreading awareness of iGEM. We went to Wego Bilingual High School encouraging them to establish an iGEM team for 2018. One of our members of NYMU iGEM came from Wego Bilingual High School and we decided to target the freshmen in high school in hopes of sparking an interest in establishing a team next year. We presented the introduction of synthetic biology with the entire science department faculty
To do so, we invited the iGEM team from Chang Gung University to present their project as well to increase the examples for potential project ideas for these freshmen. Since our project track was Energy and CGU iGEM team focused on the Environmental track, students were able to see different takes on a project ideas.
We interacted with these high schoolers by not only presenting how our project and explaining the power of synthetic biology but also walking down the aisle, asking questions and talking with them on their view of synthetic biology. Before and after our presentation, we also conducted surveys to over 100 freshmen in Wego Bilingual high school to fill out. These students all took time during class to complete this survey assignment. Survey questions included their opinions on the importance of algae and synthetic biology. We then used their survey responses to target our presentation.After our presentation we noticed evident in both the children’s faces and the surveys result that they were much more interested in synthetic biology. We sincerely hope through this reachout and education outing we touched on these high schooler’s future and inspired many to join the world of synthetic biology.
Taipei First Girls’ High School
On September 28, 2017, NYMU-iGEM team headed to Taipei First Girls’ High School in order to promote the iGEM competition in high schools. The Biology club in Taipei First High School (TFGBC) is composed of students who are interested in the biology field. After contacting with TFGBC several times, we decided to hold a seminar in Taipei First Girls’ High School. We not only introduced synthetic biology, the iGEM Giant Jamboree, other iGEM teams’ works, and iGEM high school tract, but also briefly talked about our project -Smart AlgaEnergy. To advocate the IGEM competition was the main purpose of this seminar. We hoped it could stimulate their passion on synthetic biology, maybe even resulting in them becoming iGEMers in the future! After our presentation, both NYMU-iGEM team and TFGBC wanted to have further academic exchanges in the future, such as lab visits, student practices…etc.
