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Team:Peking/HumanPractice/Sowing/Forming
From 2012.igem.org
Summary
In order to get in touch with the high schools in Beijing and to ensure our propagation of synthetic biology to be a long-term project, we went to the Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club for help and gave a presentation to the chief secretary and other teachers. Our efforts impressed them and finally we agreed to work together. The club also paved the way for our lectures to high school students from different schools.
Visiting the Beijing Teenager Science
& Technology Club
In order to enhance high school students' awareness, we decided to give a series of lectures, which we titled "Life as Machines --- Rational Design for Artificial Biological Systems". These lectures presented the basic concept and research methods of synthetic biology and introduced the affairs of the iGEM high school division. How do we get in touch with all of the high schools in Beijing? How do we ensure our propagation of synthetic biology to students as a long-term project, rather than a one-off activity? The Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club came to our mind.
One of our teammates, Xiong Hongyu, has been an avid member in the club and still enjoys its atmosphere for studying science and technology, listening to lectures given by university professors, and taking part in field trips all around the world. The ultimate purpose of the Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club is to inspire and fuel students' interest in science and providing a platform for them to fulfill their own proposals. With similar intentions, we have decided to seek for an alliance with the Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club.
Figure 1. On June 20th, we went to the office of the Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club, and gave a presentation to teachers in all high schools in Beijing.
On June 20th, a few members of our team went to the office of the Beijing Teenager Science & Technology Club and gave a presentation to Ms. Zhou Lin, the Chief Secretary of the club and all the other teachers responsible for the science departments of their respective schools. The presentation was very successful! The teachers not only realized the basic ideas of synthetic biology and the concept of iGEM, but also they figured out the long-term potentials of this field, and iGEM's benefits to students --- motivating them to study synthetic biology in a interdisciplinary and collaborative atmosphere. What was more, we also noted that the propagation should not only contain the scientific knowledge, but also include related ethic issues regarding today's bio-science, in order to evoke the responsibilities of future synthetic biologists.
Ms. Zhou Lin eagerly told us that she was impressed by our efforts to spread modern day science frontiers to young generation of students, and decided to become allies with our team from then on, in order to help us accomplish the goal of "Sowing Tomorrow’s Synthetic Biologists".
Propagation for Lecture
In order to ensure that our lecture was held without impediment, Ms. Zhou agreed to offer a lecture hall to us. Furthermore, the teachers from many high schools around the city gladly helped us inform their students of our lecture. Many of the teachers even took all the propagation materials we had prepared for the lecture, including the fliers and guidance brochures we made for students showing interest.
PDF Brochure for iGEM HS-Division.
PDF Flier for the Lecture.
Figure 3. Poster of our lecture "Life as machines --- Rational Design for Artificial Biological Systems".
Figure 2. In order to guide high school students to take part in the iGEM HS-Division competition, we organized all the related material and made a brochure for the competition. We gave the brochures to the students for propagation before and after our lectures.
Coming back from the club, we made a poster for our lecture. Then we sent each high school with several pieces of the poster and even put the electronic version on our website Peking iGEM on Renren to publicize our coming lectures.
