Eduction & Public Engagement
Giving a biology class
In order to introduce synthetic biology to young students and show them the magic of Biology, we cooperated with HBUT-China and went to Tongji Affiliated Secondary School to teach the students there a biology class. During the class, we taught them a lot of knowledge of biology and took them to the gate of synthetic biology. In addition, we prepared them with a knowledge quiz to help them remember what they had learned. The students are exciting and cheerful all through the class. When we finally left, many students said that they felt the interest of Biology and hoped that one day they can do researches in Biology.
Hosting the summer camp
To promote our projects and iGEM’s influence, we hosted a summer camp for high school students who visited our college. We taught them to do microbiology experiments and explain our project to them. We told them the disadvantages of chemical degumming methods and what problem we can solve if our project is industrialized. Through several microbiology experiments, we want to show them the magic of microorganism—even though the size of them is small, they can function as a well-equipped and advanced factory. And it is also the magic of iGEMers. We are just small individuals, but we may change the world! We hope that we can inspire their interest in synthetic biology and contribute to the future development of iGEM.
Online research
Survey about the public's understanding of the use of banana stems and banana fiber
Target:
We engaged an online research on people’s knowledge of banana stalks and fibers and introduced our project and its necessity to the public, leading their expectation of the future of the banana fiber industry.
Results:
From all the questions and answers above, we can see that there is a large amount of people haven’t known that we can utilize banana stalks to make something useful. Actually, they even didn’t think about that before. But the good news is, after learning the advantages and disadvantages of biological and chemical degumming method, they support with the biological one in majority. A large part of the public also express their great interest and hope in the widely use of banana fibers. They also put forward a lot of different things which they hope that one day can be made from banana fibers. In addition, they also give us a lot of advice on what we may come across in the promotion of banana fiber products and their worries over them, which means our questionnaire aroused public concern about the utilization of banana stalk and had a positive impact. In the future, we will pay special attention to these suggestions in the process of industrialization of our project, making our project more realistic.
Feedback:
This questionnaire has been of great help to our project. It not only let us know that banana stalk is a perfect unused resource, but the public does not know enough about it, indicating that except for experiments, It is necessary for us to let more people know the available value of banana stalk with extensive public publicity, which provides guidance for us to follow up on human practice, but also tells us that our project is of great practical value, compared to chemical treatment with more pollution. The public is more willing to accept banana fiber extracted by biological treatment, which gives us a lot of confidence. Of course, this questionnaire have aroused public concern about banana straw treatment, which is necessary.
Here is our questionnaire and data:
Question 1 : What is your age? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 2 : How many people do you think bananas provide for staple foods around the world? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 3 : How many abandoned banana stems do you think the world will produce each year? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 4 : A large amount of untreated banana stalks causes problems such as waste of resources. Nowadays, we can extract the fibers in banana stalks by various degumming methods to enter the textile industry. Which of the following methods are you more willing to choose to process the banana fibers for your clothes and paper? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 5 : Have you heard about or used products made from banana fiber? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 6 : Do you accept crafts and clothing made from banana fiber? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 7 : The more natural environment-friendly banana fiber products and low-cost chemical products which will cause much pollution, which one will you support? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 8 : Are you optimistic about the banana fiber textile industry and expecting the future spread of banana fiber fabrics? [Multiple choice questions]
Question 9 : What kind of items do you think banana fiber can make in the future? (optional) [Fill-in-the-blanks]
Question 10 : What problems do you think may be encountered in the promotion of banana fiber products? (optional) [Fill-in-the-blanks]
