Team:SEFLS Shanghai/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Mid-term Report
Our team, along with Sincere Education, held a research project sharing salon on the afternoon of August 24th. Before the salon started, we sent several invitations to students who are interested in biology or starting a project. We, then, addressed our mid-term report and shared our experience on conducting the iGEM project to the present students, parents and teachers.
The aim of this educational salon is both to better prepare the iGEM Jamboree and to share our experiences to everyone who is interested in conducting a biological project.
In the speech, Ren introduced the current circumstances of sharks and squalene. She addressed that the brutal way of obtaining squalene from sharks is causing damage to the eco-balance as well as the marine environment. Next, our team leader Wang, gave a thorough introduction to the audience of the current results and the experiment design, demonstrating several charts and illustrations. Zhu, finally, explained how we conducted our experiment in the last months and what we would further focus on.
After the entire report was given, the judge group gave us several comments, inclusive of the advices on improving the slides and citing specific phrases.
Our team, then, shared our opinions and advices in the Q&A session. We answered questions on both the project itself and experiences of doing researches, such as the future industrializing application, the coming-up experiment plan, and patents protection.
In the last one hour, all the participants were allowed to communicate freely. We were inquired by lots of the audiences about the experiences and feelings on this project and we answered them genuinely. We shared our advices and expressed our expectation that more and more students would participate in competitions like iGEM, since it can help gain knowledge and expand horizons. We considered it a great opportunity to share our project and help others as far as we can.
Jiangwan Junior High School
Education at Jiangwan Junior High School
At 11:30 A.M., we took the school bus to Jiangwan Junior High School to give a project introduction for students of grade seven and eight.
Around twelve o 'clock, students arrived at the meeting hall one after another. They were all active. We asked them whether they had ever heard of squalene, and they all looked blank. Then we wrote the word ‘iGEM’ and its full name on the whiteboard. After listening to our brief introduction, they soon understood what the competition was about.
At half past twelve, our introduction officially began. The theme was as same as what was in our school, which still focused on how to carry out scientific and technological innovation projects.
Because the audience is too young this time, we cut down the complex experiment part and added more interesting content such as wiki, banner, poster, etc.
To begin with, Hao Zhu introduced how we started our team and chose the topic.
Dreaming of carrying out a project, we gathered together with various hobbies; Inspired by a lecture on how to carry out a project, we wrote an e-mail to the professor; suggested by the professor, we chose shark protection as the main topic from what social problems we were interested in. Also, Hao Zhu cited the cruel process of commercial acquisition of shark liver, emphasizing the current social problems brought by shark killing. Students were very aware of the great crisis sharks are facing and the importance of shark protection. One of them added the idea that sharks are top predators.
The second part of the experiment & wiki was introduced by Yijia Ren.
Because of the complexity of the experiments that we did, we have made a lot of deletions, and replaced them with a detailed introduction of the preparation before the experiment and what needed notice during the experiments. Before the experiments, we read essays, biological textbooks, did presentations, and designed the experiment on the basis of group discussion and interview with professors. During the experiments, we should pay attention to our safety and the protection of experimental samples (in order to reduce the error caused by other bacteria, etc.). At the same time, we should follow the experiment plan and write the experimental log in time for future review. After the experiment, we can get data, which can be used to improve and predict project. Yijia Ren briefly introduced why we chose mathematical modeling here.
The Wiki section was showed by several screenshots of web pages currently under production. It also introduces the concept of wiki, a web page that covers all project contents, and can help you better display your project.
The third part is human practice.
The first half is introduced by Yuchen Zhao.
Yuchen Zhao began from the questionnaire collection tool. She elaborated on the main information such as the content of the questions and the number of respondents and also shared the students the social background information we learned from the questionnaire. For example, only 40% of the people had heard of squalene.
Then there was the introduction of the official account. On the platform of Wechat, we have done a lot of science popularization about sharks, squalene and synthetic biology. At the same time, we introduce what we have done for human practice in the form of biweekly newspapers every two weeks.
Next came the communication with professors. On the one hand, we had discussion with experts in biology and chemistry to improve the experimental design and implement. On the other hand, we interviewed the head of WWF Shanghai. The interview inspired us to think about product industrialization.
In addition, Yuchen Zhao told the story of writing an email to cosmetics companies, and shared the screenshots of our email to a cosmetics company.
Xinyi Wang completed the second half of the introduction of human practice.
She elaborated on our collaboration with ShanghaiTech. The content include game design, GC-MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry), mathematical modeling and offline communication.
Most of the students thought that we had contacted ShanghaiTech through professors that were mentioned before. They were shocked to learn that we had established contact by an email. But at the same time, they also understood that sometimes after trying to do something, you will find that everything is full of possibilities.
Another cooperation with a university is a small presentation at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Xinyi Wang shared the interesting process of asking and answering questions with other teams in Wuhan.
Finally, she presented our logo, banner and poster and introduced the meaning behind them.
When the students were asked what the white block on the logo meant, they immediately guessed that it was the shark's liver. Then we introduced that the block also represented "mouth".
Xinyi Wang introduced the banner and poster by describing the image of the picture and interpreting the deep meaning. The artistic creation close to life has aroused a lot of sympathy among students.
Feedback from students at Jiangwan Junior High School
After the presentation, many students raised questions with high quality which showed that they were also keen on a better relationship between human and nature just like us. Although their knowledge is still limited, they really have their own thoughts and provide us a reference of the public’s attitude.
Just name some examples.
A: Why the shark liver can’t be cloned?
B: How heavy is the shark liver? I mean, how much squalene can be produced per shark?
We answered their questions and successfully convinced them that our project is the best way to replace the liver and save the animals.
Moreover, we interviewed a girl with glasses on the stairs for feedback.
Erica: Have you learned something or have some new thoughts after joining in our presentation?
Girl: Yes of course! For example, I didn’t know anything about engineering, or math modeling, before. Now I have some ideas about these fields. I also hadn’t heard of squalene and today is the first time for me to hear of this stuff. And I am surprised that the liver of the shark will be taken out during the original production process, which brings so much pain and harm to our nature. I all learn more about chemistry and biology, cells for example.
Erica: So does it raise your passion for working on a scientific project in the future?
Girl: No doubt! I think it’s very interesting.
SEFLS
Education at SEFLS
In September and October, we gave presentations in 11 classes at our school during this 2-month time. Our presentation mainly focused on the squalene, our project and scientific research, and covered all the students of our secondary school. In total, our presentation lasts 260 minutes.
Date
Place
Content
Duration
Sep. 9
Class 1 Grade 10
How to run an iGEM project?
30 minutes
Sep. 13
Class 1 Grade 6
What is squalene?
20 minutes
Sep. 16
Class 1 Grade 9
How to run an iGEM project?
30 minutes
Sep. 18
Class 2 Grade 6
What is squalene?
20 minutes
Sep. 23
Class 1 Grade 8
What is squalene?
20 minutes
Sep. 25
Class 2 Grade 8
What is squalene?
20 minutes
Sep. 30
Class 2 Grade 9
How to run an iGEM project?
30 minutes
Oct. 12
Class 1 Grade 7 and Class 2 Grade 7
What is squalene?
40 minutes
Oct. 15
Class 1 Grade 12
Detailed description of our project (especially the experiment and human practice)
20 minutes
Oct. 16
Class 1 Grade 11
How to run an iGEM project?
30 minutes
Feedback from students at SEFLS
After the five members of our team finished addressing in Shanghai East Foreign Language School, some of the audiences were interviewed, and they gave us several feedbacks.
Several students were intrigued by what we had done. “Listening to your speech, I have realized a lot what I didn’t pay attention to before. Now, I have understood the endangered position of sharks and the utilization of squalene,” said one student in grade ten, “I really admire you and your team for all the efforts you’ve made.”
Most of the students thought our speech helpful. “The speech was great, and it answered my question on how to conduct a biological project,” said one student in grade nine, “If I will join in a competition like iGEM in the near future, 71Percent will set a great example for me.”
Another student in grade nine told us that he was genuinely interested in chemistry and biology. “I learned a lot from your speech. It provided me with a thorough view on how to conduct an experiment and human practices,” he said.
A student in grade twelve gave us some suggestions on our speech. “I think that the speech was really riveting, and I was impressed by your entire experiment process as well as human practices,” he told one of our team members, “from my perspective, if there had been a flow diagram of the entire experiment about what you had done, it would have been easier for we audience to understand.”
To our delight, students were all impressed by our project, and they all benefited from the speech. We were glad to see that we had helped them a lot.
Collaboration in Education: with OUC-China
One evening in September, we saw the collaboration requests posted by OUC-China and IIT Madras on iGEM's website. OUC-China designed a comic book and invited other teams to translate it into other languages or to use their comics to teach students. As our team members are all proficient in foreign languages, we initiated the collaboration and translated their comic book into Japanese. In addition, with OUC's permission, we introduced their well-made comic book to our biology teacher at school, who is the class teacher of Class 1 Grade 6. She does need something to ignite six-grader's passion for biology. Therefore, she permitted us to teach her kids using this comic book every Monday noon. She thinks that this comic book is a perfect supplementary textbook for her course.
Collaboration in Education: with IIT-Madras
The collaboration request from IIT Madras is to translate their education video clip into foreign languages. This time, we makes it from English into Chinese, French, German and Japanese. We posted this video via our own social accounts: WeChat Official Account and bilibili.com, which is a famous Chinese video website. In addition, we sent our works to help them spread their video in different languages.
Left to right: Japanese, Chinese, German, French