Team:TecCEM/Engagement

–Do you like science?
–No. EW!

That is a common answer when that question is asked among mexican children. We think it’s a problem. We think we should be worried (and you too!). But we cannot take no for an answer, and a kid’s mind can be quite stubborn. We needed to change their mind, and although the children’s answer could change over time through different, positive stimulus on the children’s lives, we knew we have the power to be one of said stimuli, and thus, decided to take responsibility and bring science to the kids in a friendly, and most importantly, fun way.

Since it is important for us to introduce science topics related to biology to children, we made several visits to elementary and middle schools in our area. For each of our visits, we planned a “science day” where we explained the concepts in simple, visual ways. After each explanation, we assigned manual activities for kids to reinforce what they had just learned through playing: making their own edible culture medium, creating amino acid chains, and proposing transformations for bacteria were some of the activities they enjoyed.

We taught children how to invent their own bacterium, first they “built” their own “BioBrick”, then they filled a “patent form” with the bacteria name and its function, later they created their “bacteria” with flour-filled balloons, markers and decorations. Finally they made their own “culture medium” with jelly-filled petri dishes, syrup, colored sugar and cake decoration. We taught them that are good and bad bacteria and how biotechnologists use them to create useful devices. For children from 3rd and 4th grade to understand what living beings are, that they are formed from cells, and DNA inside them, we made them build their own “BioBrick”, then create their “patent form” with the bacteria name and its function, then a “bacteria-bookmark” with foamy, clips, decorative eyes and yarn. Finally they created a “culture medium” with jelly-filled petri dishes, syrup, colored sugar and cake-decoration.

Our conference and activities for 1st and 2nd grade elementary school children at Mundo Montessori, Colegio Montessori Helen Keller and Escuela Infantil Xipal on June 6, June 9 and June 14.

Our conference and activities for 3th and 4th grade elementary school children at Mundo Montessori, Colegio Montessori Helen Keller and Escuela Infantil Xipal on June 6, June 8 and June 13.

Our conference and activities for 5th and 6th grade elementary school children at Colegio Montessori Helen Keller, Mundo Montessori and Centro Academico Xipal.

Let’s learn science! Creating a STEM manual

We believe the best way for kids to learn is through hands-on practice. Unfortunately, basic education in Mexico is focused on traditional lectures, where kids are expected to memorize information. In the case of science, elementary school kids rarely get to experiment. We want to change this! This year, alongside iGEM teams from Guadalajara and Chihuahua, we created an experiment manual that mexican schools can incorporate to their class schedules. The experiments cover topics from biology, chemistry and physics, and were created in a way that allows the kid to easily do it at school or home, without laboratory equipment and minimal risks. Each experiment includes critical thinking questions, which should be made by the instructor or parent.

Each team of the collaboration visited three schools to try the experiments and ask questions to students and teachers. These were the results we gathered from the experience. Overall, they indicate that our proposal was well-received by the students and professors and has a high chance of being implemented. We also asked local Secretary of Education M. Juan Jaffet Millán Márquez to review our proposal, in the hopes that he’ll add it to the current school curriculum.

POLLS Results

Figure 1. Results obtained from surveys, with a sample of 250 students from three different schools, grades 1 through 6 in the States of México, Chihuahua, and Guadalajara.

From the feedback given to us by the professors, we saw that, if they were to implement the experiment manual, they would do an experimental activity once a week, with a duration of 30 minutes, and they would like the activities to be linked directly to the topics they’ve discussed in class.

Mexican meet-up

During July, our team organized a meet-up for this year’s mexican iGEM teams (Tec-Chihuahua and TecMonterrey_GDA) to share and discuss their project. In the morning, each team was introduced and we took time to know each other and briefly discuss what we were working on. In the afternoon, we invited several research professors from Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Estado de México and Campus Chihuahua, as well as from CINVESTAV, the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute. Each team was able to present the advances on their projects to the professors, who provided valuable feedback.

Scientist for a day

Family day is an annual friendly meeting where all the employes of our university can bring their family and enjoy a lot of recreative activities. This year Tec CEM team organized some activities and used them to explain our school community the project that we were doing.

Our stand was “Scientist for a day” and the activities were created for people of all ages. The main objective was to let our community know what we were doing. And why we were developing Citric Off.

The first activity was designed to explain the disease: in this game we divided the participants in two teams, one of them were “Diaphorina team” and the other “Citrus team”, each member of the two groups had a balloon tied to their foot, the first team to burst all the balloons of the other team was the winner, so the victory could be the infection of the citrus or the victory of the citrus over their threat.

The second game consisted on making a big circle and our hands were held, simulating a plasmid, each group of people represented a single gene. Inside each plasmid, the genes waited for a free space, but they had to compete for them. The winning gene chose an activity to be developed for all the participants. This activity helped us explain the mechanisms of gene expression through a plasmid.

iGEMer for a week

In summer, iGEM TEC CEM mentored a middle school student: Claudia Jireheli Cedillo Figueroa during two weeks. In this time, Claudia learned some protocols,she had her first lessons of molecular biology and learned about D. citri and its importance.

Conference

The team visited the middle school “Ovalle Monday”. We gave four talks to four different age groups about our project and the basis of synthetic biology. The aim of our conferences was to spread awareness of HLB and our solution, plus opening the young minds to the huge possibilities that arise with synthetic biology. Thus, we showed them the basics of transformation, biobricks and how we are applying this information to the real world, with a real issue. The children were surprisingly responsive, understanding the biobricks analogies with Lego, and all of the subjects we talked about.