Team:UESTC-China/Engagement
Engagement
We have built an iGEM ecosphere, which includes universities, experts, iGEMers and teenagers. To achieve our iGEM ecosphere, we went to several schools first. We exchanged little handmade plant printing bags with pupils, made micro landscapes of domestic waste with middle school students, and held a brainstorming about synthetic biology in middle school. We guided young people to understand synthetic biology, so that they would become the industry's reserve talent. Meanwhile, we organized an exhibition with Southwest Union and mobilized college students to help us dig up soil samples. Even more, we helped SiCAU build their team. Under our influence, more and more students have joined iGEM. We communicated with many professionals who are in our ecosphere. They referred to a common problem, laboratory safety, which lacks a uniform safety standard in basic biology labs in China. So we made China's first iGEM laboratory safety video and comics. We hope the ecosphere can develop with a medium. Even if the competition is over, it will continue to output influence, and continue to promote synthetic biology. So we designed an easy-to-understand turn-based board game based on synthetic biology, Gene Card. It becomes popular in China during a short time and turn it into a lot of people's biological enlightenment game teaching aid.
Gene Card
☁ Brief introduction
Gene Card is a card game based on synthetic biology and genetic engineering. The game is a turn-based game. Through the game between players, the first to get six different base cards will win the game. The cards are divided into two categories: the base cards and the function cards. The base cards contain several elements which are necessary for the genetic engineering experiment. The function cards are designed as the interaction mechanism according to simple biological knowledge. Rules of the game are easy to understand. Gene Card aims at promoting synthetic biology among primary and secondary school students and non-biology-major students. We have launched our campaign of Gene Card promotion in China and the card has been warmly welcomed. Meanwhile, Gene Card has both English and Chinese versions.
Why we design Gene Card
We want to renovate the inflexible educational approach to synthetic biology, and build a new model for public education. So we have designed a board game, which is entertaining and contains basic biological knowledge. We think that the best way to teach is edutainment, so we want students to have fun while learning knowledge.
How can we achieve our goal?
In order to ensure the reliability of the card game, Gene Card needs to be deliberately and sophisticatedly designed. So we built the mathematical model first. Then we used the calculator to simulate the game process, in order to obtain the best number of different cards.
Promotion
We entered several major middle schools in Chengdu and introduced our cards to them. Meanwhile, we organized some Gene Card games. Students gave us feedbacks and showed strong interest in playing our cards.
In the CCIC, we introduced Gene Card to all China iGEM team, and gave them Chinese version Gene Card as a souvenir. They played with us many times and liked it very much. And a detail which is worth mentioning is that Zhang Haoqian, the CTO of Bluepha Company, praised our card game on his twitter.
In the Innovative Entrepreneurship Week in Chengdu, we made a debut of our card. We introduced Gene Card to students. Many students had great interest in playing it, and wanted a set of it.
☁ Triangular cycle
Gene Card is the medium of human practice. We are modeling to achieve its design inspiration. It can attract the public, and the public will provide us with advice. At the same time, the project will provide content for modeling. This is the idea of our triangular cycle.
☁ Future
We want to promote Gene Card, so that students can learn more knowledge through entertainment. We want to make traditional biology class more lively and interesting, and make synthetic biology enjoy greater popularity. To achieve that, we will cooperate with schools and companies and endeavor to turn Gene Card into a campus biological learning tool.
Interact with students
In China, students only learn biology after middle school, so we hope to bring biology to younger students. We give middle school students or even primary school students an opportunity to participate in the activities of biology learning. And the theme of environmental protection is blended among these activities.
☁ Primary school:
UESTC-China hosted a lab open day called "A Close Encounter with Science" which attracted more than 20 students and 10 parents. We spread botanical knowledge to them, and let them experience and operate some simple instruments. At last, we played interesting plant printing and dyeing games, and the students enjoyed the fun of Science in these games.
☁ Middle school
Can you come up with a similar iGEM project?
Plant + vacuum cleaner = haze purifier?
Bovine Mammary +coffee beans = coffee without the coffee mate?
Sugar cane related gene + low sugar fruit = high sugar fruit?
We held an activity whose theme is synthetic biology and environmental protection. More than 300 students participated in it. We received numerous bright ideas from them. Not only did we get a lot of inspiration, the children also harvested a new way of thinking.
☁ high school：
We have invited more than 10senior high school students affiliated to the campus in UESTC to participate in an interesting environmental activity. Students build micrographs through plastic waste and plants. This time, we gave them some tips on the recycle and reuse of pollutants and explained the principle of degrading pollutants by transgenic plants.
Library exhibition
In China, when people think of synthetic biology, the potential risk of genetically modified food rather than the benefits of synthetic biology comes to their minds. . It’s hard to change this kind of stereotype or prejudice. So there are four teams which held the activity named "Synthetic Biology and Human" at the Chengdu city library. They answered the questions concerning transgenosis from citizens, and intended to change people’s views. However, a small number of people still believe that we are preaching a dangerous, unproved technology. Changing their one-sided ideas is what we strive to accomplish.
Comics and videos about lab safety
We are concerned about the daily safety of laboratories which are consistently ignored by many. China iGEMers from 11 universities posted a series of lab safety education videos and received millions of view on major video sites. UESTC - China abides by the laboratory safety codes in a strict manner.
Our goal is to present safety codes in a more vivid and attractive form. iGEMers from UESTC-China drew a wide spectrum of comics series about safety, serving as a safety guide for new iGEMers. We also published comic books for various exhibitions. We also uploaded the pdf version for new iGEMers.(Click here to see and load our comicbook)
Collaboration
☁ Southwest Union
As the "Southwest Union" (iGEM team in Southwest China exchange seminar, UESTC-China) founder, we actively participate in mutual exchanges and academic discussions on a yearly basis and meet with other research teams in the region so as to seeking for new cooperation and breakthroughs.
☁ CCiC
This year we have also participated in the CCIC (Conference of China iGEMer Committee), and communicated with other iGEM teams from all over China.
☁ Peshawar University
We received mails from the Peshawar University team in Pakistan, and learned that their project also dealt with pollutants. We communicate through internet in order to keep track of each other's progress and difficulties during the project, and offer inspiration to each other.
Demonstrate our project
More often than not, UESTC-China iGEMers are asked a question: what do you do? After explained to some of our friends several times, we found that one single sentence can’t clearly show the significance of our project. So we recorded a music video called Believer, to better elaborate on our projects and teams. Our MV has gotten more than 1000 hits on video websites.
What’s more
Click here to see our supporting research which also attract people to engage us.
