From 2011.igem.org

Human Practice

Abstract

Introduction

Following three activities were performed in high schools near our university and in ELCAS, a special course of science for high school students, held by the department of science in Kyoto University.

・giving a specific lecture about synthetic biology and iGEM to high school students, including high-motivated junior high school students

・having some questionnaires among students on synthetic biology. They were asked about anxiety and capacity of it, interest in iGEM and so on

・introducing iGEM HS division

Lecture

We went to some high schools around Kyoto University and give a short introduction of synthetic biology and iGEM, including the attractive points of synthetic biology, the ways of changing living things by constructing genes and some undergraduate iGEM teams’ activity. In a number of high school, it's delightful, there were some aggressive junior high school students. In that case, we added a brief explanation about biochemistry, especially genes, nucleotide, codon and the basic system of gene expression.(read more...)

Slides of the Lecture

Questionnaire

We also carried out some questionnaires about synthetic biology. The questions students were asked are written in result page. These surveys were performed not only to research the extent of students’ knowledge of biotechnology and their opinions of it in ethic viewpoint but also provoke discussions about synthetic biology among them.(read more)

iGEM HS division

No matter how hard we make effort to tell students the capability of synthetic biology and the pleasure of participating in iGEM,young students would get bored unless we show them how to join such an excellent world. Due to the curriculum in our country, it is generally difficult for high school students to take part in iGEM undergraduate team, so we decided to tell them HS division and support students who are interested in it. There will be many teams from Japan in next iGEM HS division.