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Team:UEA-JIC Norwich/Human practices
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Revision as of 14:24, 11 August 2011
OUTREACH...TAKING SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY TO THE YOUNGER GENERATION!!!
In order to achieve a silver or gold medal, the judging criteria states that we must, amongst other things, “approach the issue of human practice”. Safety, security and ethics OR ownership, sharing and innovation are the areas specified.
As a team we decided that public engagement would be a great way to share aspects of our project and we aim to do this through outreach activities working specifically with primary school children. Our aim is to improve knowledge and understanding of not only biological sciences but synthetic biology in particular. Our activities will be held during term time to engage with school children and encourage them to think about synthetic biology. They will then have the chance to apply their knowledge and design and create an organism of their own.
Our first event took place at Avenue Junior School on Thursday 21st July. This was a two hour session held in the afternoon with a year 5 class. The activities are now being developed in order to target older age groups, such as secondary school and sixth form students, for which we have arranged for other local teachers and lecturers to continue our work. We are also currently planning a synthetic biology based science, art and writing project for Wednesday 14th September at Carbrooke primary school.
EVALUATION OF THE FIRST OUTREACH EVENT
The UEA/JIC iGEM team’s first outreach event took place on Thursday 21st July 2011 at Avenue Junior School. Two of the team members worked with children from a year five class for the duration of the afternoon in the last week of their academic year.
A series of activities were designed where the children built up their own unique synthetic creature. They first started by selecting features and phenotypes that their synthetic creature could have e.g. eye colour, body shape, wing size etc. They then looked on their key sheet and identified the DNA sequence for each of the characteristics they had selected. The DNA sequence for their synthetic creature could then be written out in full. The children then had the chance to draw what their synthetic creature would look like and stick it onto the tree of life. We finished the workshop by carrying out a precipitation of DNA wet lab activity in which the children chewed their cheeks and spat into a plastic tube. They then added sodium acetate and inverted the tube slowly. Children then wore safety goggles to add ethanol to their samples. Each child identified the white cloudy DNA and extracted this transferring it to a small glass tube which was then made into a necklace.
For full details of our first synthetic biology based workshop please see the lesson plan which can be found, along with the worksheets used for the activities, on our team wiki.
Kimberley Hirst-Jones
“It was great to see the children so enthusiastic about our activities. I have worked with children before but I have never stood up in front of a class and directed children through a workshop so it was a really good experience. It was great to see the children really engage with the activities and I hope that this workshop has now improved their understanding of synthetic biology”.
Jarama Clucas
“When I arrived at the school I was suddenly hit with the feeling that the children might not be as receptive to the subject of synthetic biology as we hoped, but it was quite the opposite. The children were very intrigued and excited when we explained about synthetic biology and the workshop we had planned for them. I was asked very imaginative questions by many of children regarding our project and what scientists are capable of by using synthetic biology. It was definitely a worth while experience and I hope we have introduced something new and exciting to the children in a way that they can easily understand”.
THANK YOU
We would like to thank Avenue Junior School for allowing us the opportunity for our outreach event and Dr. Kay Yeoman for all of her help with organising this and for providing us with resources. We would also like to thank Alicia Cordell for all of her help within the classroom and Melissa Hirst-Jones for her help with guiding the children through their activities and taking photos throughout the workshop. Many thanks also to Angela Carpenter with whom we signed up to be STEM ambassadors and who provided a CRB check along with an induction into working with children.
File:Https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2011/5/52/Outreach at Avenue Junior 285.jpg
File:Https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2011/3/3c/Outreach event Avenue Junior 252.jpg
