Team:UNICAMP-EMSE Brazil/Human Practices/DNA workshop

Human Practices 1: The DNA Workshop

Proposal

• The DNA Workshop consisted in a new "self-propagating" didactical method that can be used to teach and disseminate Genetic Engineering knowledge to high school students, who have never heard about this scientific field. We aimed to stimulate students to think about being scientists, understanding how important are these themes and that they are not so far from the students! We call the DNA Workshop a "self-propagating" didactical method since a school teacher can easily present our Video-class to their students and after that, promote the "workshop", which consists on a very small version of iGEM, where the students are stimulated to solve a problem by terms of creating a genetic system. The DNA workshop kit is very easy to build, you can see the step-by-step assembly of the kit by clicking here.

• We applied this method in "UFMG e escolas" ('UFMG and Schools' in portuguese), a traditional course realized each semester at Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), in Belo Horizonte city, Brazil. In this course, sixty (60) high school students stay for one week working in Biology Institute laboratories, by creating questions and trying to answer through experiments. Then, we participated in one afternoon realizing the presentation of our videoclass and promoting the DNA Workshop! The results were AMAZING! We were able to STIMULATE the students and to ATTRACT their interest for Science and Genetic Engineering. Also, they could LEARN about this field and sure, they will never forget this experience, where they created many solutions for important problems and awarded great knowledge.

Methodology Proposal

The "DNA Workshop" method, which can be used in schools, is composed by:

1. A Video class, specially prepared with basic concepts and an easy-way language. This video class contains:

• information about Genetic Engineering and Synthetic Biology and their applications;
• some interviews with specialists (important geneticists from State University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo-Brazil);
• a practical example, using homemade materials;

2. By presenting the video class the students probably would learn great number of new informations. After the video class, we gave a short class about genetics, to review the new terms thei just learned.

3. Then, we distributed for each group of students an DNA Workshop kit, which contains:

1. A problem card (like diseases such as Haemophilia and Diabetes, or environmental problems), which they should solve (here solving means design a genetic dispositive that would help, for example, the patient to dealing better or to eliminate the problem).

1. A set of genes related to the problem:

• Example:

• for Diabetes, the students received gene cards of real and fictitious genes such as "Insulin Gene"
  and "Insulin production-inducing gene" or even "Blood sugar reducing gene";

1. A set of promoters (Weak, medium and strong promoters)
2. A set of possible hosts, organisms which would receive the genetic system

1. In the end, the students must think carefully about which gene, promoter and host they would choose and explain why the proposed combination of parts would be a good solution. The best solutions received awards (all groups were awarded).

You can find below the Video class and a video documentary showing the application of DNA Workshop method, realized by our team with sixty high-school students from Belo Horizonte city/Brazil. The DNA Workshop ocurred in a traditional high school vacations course which occurs at [http://www.ufmg.br/english/ UFMG] (Federal University of Minas Gerais), called UFMG and Schools ("UFMG e Escolas - Educando para a Ciência"). In this course, sixty high-school students stay in the laboratory developing their own ideas and trying to answer their own scientific questions. We had one afternoon (the "DNA day") to develop with the students our method and it was completely AWESOME! You can find out the enthusiasm and interest that we were able to create on the students in our second video, a Documentary about our results!

Genetic Engineering Video Class

• You can see below (or in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6gb77uHpo YOUTUBE]) the Video Class we prepared to disseminate Genetic Engineering and Synthetic Biology in an easy-way and simple language. This Video Class was prepared by Izabella Pena-Neshich and Danieli Gonçalves. The filming was realized at Biology Institute (IB) and Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering Center (CBMEG) at UNICAMP in July/2011.

Video Documentary about DNA Workshop application

Survey results

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Gallery

DNA Workshop gallery