Mexico's Educational Context
Education in Mexico has a long way to go. There are many barriers that make it difficult to progress as well as it should. Problems with corruption, political and logistical issues are among the main factors that affect students’ education all around the country. According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OCDE), Mexico is the lowest ranking country in terms of education. In cases when the access to education is available, many students face a wide range of issues surrounding this basic human right. Even when the government’s aim is to further implement innovative educational programs, pursuing technological and bilingual schooling, usually these disappear after a short period of time either because there is not enough money being directed at financing them, schools are not equipped with books and other materials, there are no available teachers that can implement them among students, or the students are simply preoccupied by poverty, lack of access to food or violence.[1]
Scientific Education in Mexico
In regards to scientific education in Mexico specifically, there are some other issues. According to the Survey on Public Perception of Science and Technology, ENPECYT by its acronym in Spanish
- 86.2% have not taken any subjects on Biotechnology or Agropecuary Sciences.
- 70% believe antibiotics are useful to treat illnesses caused by both bacteria and virus.
- 47% believe they know a moderate level of information regarding new inventions, scientific discoveries and technological advances and 29% believe they do not know anything about this.
- Encuesta sobre la Percepción Pública de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ENPECYT) 2017 [2]
Not only is there a need to boost education in Mexico, but science education is even more neglected. Mexico’s schooling is far from ideal, but this also means there are enormous areas of opportunity we can take advantage of to try and improve things at least a little bit. We wanted to implement different strategies in order to reach a variety of members within our communities.
We looked at different segments in our population and sought to identify areas of opportunity in which we could implement a way in which we shared our knowledge and received knowledge, establishing a two-way conversation and learning along everybody else involved. Taking this into consideration, we planned the following activities:
- Wrote a manual and built upon an inclusive educational tool called Touch and Listen, an innovative way to integrate people with visual disabilities into science education at traditional scholar programs.
- Designed a video game to encourage our community to learn about antibiotic resistance and what is being done to solve it using Synthetic Biology.
- Organized an International Science Congress called GENOMA in which we addressed topics on Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnology and Medicine for over 150 attendees.
- Conducted workshops about Synthetic Biology and Antibiotic Resistance to over 80 school children from the ages of 7 and up.
- Participated in two science fairs: Expociencias/FENACI and Conexión Tec, communicating our project and vision on the future of Synthetic Biology to over 400 people.
Touch and listen: Inclusive educational tool applied on SynBio education
Context of education and disabilities in Mexico
In Mexico, according to our National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) 44% percent of the total population of varying disabilities finish basic education (Elementary). This percentage decreases to 15.4% for middle school and 6.7 % to higher education. The main problem that causes this decrease in the level of education is the lack of educational resources and training for teachers to make an inclusive classroom. This creates a snowball effect that significantly reduces the chances of a student with a disability to reach a degree because of the lack of materials for teaching basic concepts properly makes harder for them to learn the more complex subjects seen in college and high school
From the total population of people with disabilities about 58.4% have a visual disability, making it the second most common disability, just under motor disabilities [3]. For this reason, we saw an area of opportunity to teach science to BVIS since we believe that science should be available for everyone no matter their condition nor context.
For that reason we based our design on Universal Design for Learning, which is about how to incorporate marginalized populations in the design of educational material so that it can promote learning with equal opportunities since both the regular and marginalized population would be equally able to participate. This is important so that it can facilitate the implementation in mainstream education so that classrooms without students with disabilities are interested in implementing these types of material because they are also attractive to the regular student populations. This way, this type of design takes into consideration the variety of context from which the students come, rather than the traditional model that only focus on the needs of the majority of the students.
With this in consideration, so that other iGEM teams could use our consideration as well as build upon them, we made some models using open source platforms such as Thingiverse. The idea is that people without CAD modeling skills are able to look for and adapt 3D materials easily so that it can be done anywhere with 3D printers. Also for people who know CAD modelling we included consideration to take into the design so that it is able to be adequate for BVIS as well as accurate for use in learning classroom. This is also so that Maker communities could be able to contribute and reproduce the materials.
How it began
We want the world to have a taste of what synthetic biology really is. This is why we developed an innovative and creative way to design materials for people with visual disabilities. This is so that these populations are able to engage in discussions about the Science behind Synthetic Biology.
We worked in collaboration with the research group of Dr. Cristina Reynaga that was currently on a project of connecting maker communities for the development of materials for inclusive education. One of Dr. Reynaga’s group developed a prototype of an open source device that helps make 3D models interactive for inclusive education of the blind and visually impaired.
We approached PhD Cristina Reynaga because of her vast experience working in the field about how to design our proposal for teaching students with visual disabilities about science. Dr Reynaga was working on this project about connecting maker communities for the design of inclusive materials for education in collaboration with UC Berkeley. We came into contact with one of the teams of the research project because we were interested in being able to share this work internationally on the iGEM platform. For this reason we built on the idea further by combining both the maker ideals with synthetic biology to develop 3D models to teach about biology concepts related to Synbio. An important aspect of the project is that all the manufacturing information is of open access so that it can be replicated and built upon by other communities all around the world. Because of this reason, we wanted to collaborate so that other teams are aware of the possibilities of implementing these types of technology into their human practices.
In order to achieve this, we designed a user-friendly manual on how to design and make inclusive 3D models for STEM education of Blind and Visually Impaired Students (BVIS) based on Universal Design for Learning, UDL, with a special focus on teaching Biology concepts to BVIS. This was based on the experience Dr. Reynaga’s research group acquired from the development of their prototype, as well as feedback they received from institutions such as LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco and UC Berkeley,
Part of the collaboration was that we developed actual models for use with this prototype that will be presented in an International Congress for Inclusive Technologies and Education (CONTIE 2019) as part of the presentation of Dr. Reynaga’s research team. The idea is that the device that Dr. Reynaga’s group developed can be used with our models to add audio cues that describe what the object is, it’s function in the scientific world and what each texture symbolizes or represents so that it can have applications for teachers to implement in their classrooms. That way our work can be shown to people that have an interest in, and can contribute to further explore the potential of this way of making inclusive didactic materials..
Our main goal with this manual is to share considerations and design strategies for teams that are unfamiliar with the subject so that they can make and share these designs. Being true to the maker spirit of Dr. Reynaga’s project, we also made our original designs of open access.
In order to document this process, we designed the Manual that teaches people about open source repositories from which to find models to print and adapt to be inclusive, since by nature 3D printed material lack the texture richness required to be engaging for blind and visually impaired students. Both these methods’ main focus is to be appealing for both students with and without visual disabilities to promote equal learning opportunities in the already existent learning environments.
Bacteri-on: Educational video game
How it began
After having a clear idea of what we wanted to investigate for our project this year, people around us, including friends, family and classmates, began to ask us what our work was all about. Many times the way in which we tried to communicate our ideas was confusing to the general population and nobody understood us when we tried to explain it with the relevant scientific terminology. We brainstormed ways in which we could creatively attract more people and create a simplified version of the theory behind our project and the one we considered the best way was to create a video game.
We teamed up with Computer Science students to develop a video game that would transmit what we were looking for. This is how Bacteri-On was born, an educational video game that seeks to transmit how bacterial resistance is caused and how Synthetic Biology is proposing different solutions and looking for alternatives to solve this big global problem. We kept the core concepts and focused on making it more attractive to learn about our project.
Design
The first step towards constructing this idea and making it happen was to establish what we wanted to include in the videogame. We had a meeting with the developers to see how we could represent what we wanted in a simple way that even those who do nott study anything related to Synthetic Biology could understand. After this approach, we made some drawings and this is what was created:
The game is quite simple. In the main menu it makes you to choose 3 options: To play, to choose your bacteria or to see the game’s instructions. It has 3 levels, easy, intermediate and difficult but all consist of the same elements. When it starts, a bacteria is located in the center of the screen. In the upper left corner there is an antibiotic counter and at the bottom of the screen there is a stress meter for the bacteria. There are 2 types of dots on the screen. Some very small and others a little larger and more resplendent. The first represent stressors with which the bacteria can come into contact, while the second represent biosensors that capture the presence of new antibiotics that the bacteria can produce due to the stress caused. The user, when stressing the bacteria will have opportunity to launch new antibiotic into de biosensors but there must be a balance between the amount of stress the bacteria experiences, as the meter increases with every stressor it comes into contact. This stress, though, can also cause the bacteria to produce a new antibiotic to defend itself. The amount of antibiotics it produces is what is reflected in the antibiotic counter. The game ends when the stress meter fills up completely, the bacteria dies because of the stress it was under, and the score is the amount of new antibiotics your bacteria produced.
At the end of the game, it displays an informational page in which we talk more about antibiotic resistance, its causes and what can we all do to lessen the problem, such as taking the complete treatment when a Doctor prescribes antibiotics, or avoid taking them when they are not prescribed. Alongside with that we also mentioned some of the solutions that are arising in the Synthetic Biology and area, such as finding ways to discover new antibiotics, developing tools to make bacteria weaker or antibiotics stronger, developing CRISPR tools to eliminate antibiotic resistance, among others.
We presented it at one of the science fairs we attended, Conexión Tec and the overall feedback was really positive. Several parents approached us with kids and while they listened to the verbal explanation, the kids played the videogame. It proved to be a way of attracting the attention of the youngest, even when it is designed for people of any age. The parents' comments were also very positive. Some just watched as their children played an educational game and enjoyed it, while at the same time being somewhat impressed because they were learning something new. We did notice however that it could have some improvements related to the way in which we represent each concept. Sometimes players forgot what the dots meant, or did not comprehend completely how was the bacteria stressed or what it was producing. We believe that while it is a good idea, and proved to be a good way to attract the attention of people wanting to learn something new, the way in which we present the information still needs some more work to be done.
GENOMA International Science Congress
How it began
As the curious students that we are, we wanted to find a way in which we could join together some scientists for them to teach us and our community something new. Last year the Tec-Monterrey team organized a National Science congress that people really enjoyed, where they learnt about the research areas in our region. But for this year we wanted to make it bigger and bring people from all over Mexico, with new and relevant research lines that fitted in the areas of Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnology, and Health Sciences. After a month of planning, we found out that we could bring two speakers from other countries, that’s when the GENOMA International Science Congress was born.
Since our goal was to reach our whole community, we kindly asked the speakers to approach the topics in a comprehensible language for the undergraduate scientific community to understand. During the workshops the participants were able to dive deeper into these topics and learn about top research that is being made in different institutions. it consisted of 8 conferences and 10 workshops.
The event had a duration of two days andhe event attendees were able to attend the following talks and workshops:
| Speaker | Conference Name | Univeristy |
|---|---|---|
| Ph.D Alfredo Martínez Jimenez | “Production of biodegradable biopolimers with modified bacterias from agroindustrial residues using metabolic engineering” | UNAM |
| Ph.D. Maximiliano Medina-Ramírez | “Development of the experimental vaccine for HIV.” | Amsterdam Medical Centre |
| Ph.D Karla Oyuky Juárez Moreno | “Nanomedicine and bionanotechnology: applications of nanosciences to health” | UNAM |
| Ph.D Marco Antonio Rito Palomares | “Bioengineering and regenerative medicine” | TESM |
| Ph.D Elsa Nancy Garza Treviño | “Antibiotic resistance: epidemiology and new treatment strategies” | UANL |
| MSc. Ricardo Camilo Chávez Martínez | “About iGEM and synthetic biology” | SCINTIA |
| Ph.D Rocío Ortíz López | “Biomarkers for cancer and genetic variability” | ITESM |
| Ph.D Shabir Hassan | “Enhancing Survival in Living Implants Through Hydrophobic Oxygen Generating Materials” | Harvard Medical School |
Conferences
| Speaker | Conference Name | Univeristy |
|---|---|---|
| Ph.D Edgar Acuña González | “Benchling: Bioinformatic tool” | ITESM |
| Ph.D. Maximiliano Medina-Ramírez | “Development of the experimental vaccine for HIV.” | Amsterdam Medical Centre |
| Ph.D Karla Oyuky Juárez Moreno | “Nanomedicine and bionanotechnology: applications of nanosciences to health” | UNAM |
| Ph.D Marco Antonio Rito Palomares | “Bioengineering and regenerative medicine” | TESM |
| Ph.D Elsa Nancy Garza Treviño | “Antibiotic resistance: epidemiology and new treatment strategies” | UANL |
| MSc. Ricardo Camilo Chávez Martínez | “About iGEM and synthetic biology” | SCINTIA |
| Ph.D Rocío Ortíz López | “Biomarkers for cancer and genetic variability” | ITESM |
| Ph.D Shabir Hassan | “Enhancing Survival in Living Implants Through Hydrophobic Oxygen Generating Materials” | Harvard Medical School |
SynBio workshops for school children
How it began
We wanted to reach as many sectors of the population as we could, that is why we chose to dedicate a specific section towards children, our country’s future. We believe the education of the youngest is extremely important as it opens up the opportunity for them to learn about topics they may become interested in the future.
From the total population of people with disabilities about 58.4% have a visual disability, making it the second most common disability, just under motor disabilities [3]. For this reason, we saw an area of opportunity to teach science to BVIS since we believe that science should be available for everyone no matter their condition nor context.
Especially because of the context in which we find ourselves, educating children allows them to grow up knowing things they may not be taught in school, as is the case with Synthetic Biology. I remember that in my Secondary School, we briefly talked about GMOs, but they were presented to us in a completely wrong way, like a watermelon with a banana peel. Once you start to know a little more about the subject you realize that things do not work that way and that's why we took on the task of spreading not only what a GMO is, but the way in which Synthetic Biology is developing.
After talking with Dr. Anahí Dreser from the Institute of Public Health, she mentioned a phrase that had a great impact on us. She said: "It would be good that just as the new generations are growing with a recycling culture, they could grow with a culture of the correct use of antibiotics". Along with this phrase, she also introduced us to an educational program developed in the UK, called E-Bug. We took this opportunity to link our project and implement it to open a conversation about hygiene, the difference between bacteria, viruses and fungi, when to take an antibiotic and when not to.
From the whole curriculum it offers, we chose to talk about 2 specific topics, Respiratory Hygiene and Antibiotic use and medicine. During the workshops we carried out various activities obtained from the E-Bug page. First we organized a respiratory hygiene activity [4] and after that we applied another activity about when to take an antibiotic and when not to. [5] We liked both activities because they used very simple material everyone can find at home, therefore, they are easy to replicate. Finally we talked about Synthetic Biology.
We applied the workshops to two different groups. First to children from the Cystic Fibrosis Regiomonata Association (ARFQ) and also to children attending a Science summer camp from a local planetary.
After talking with Dr. Albino Rivas of the ARFQ, one of the questions we asked him was whether we should talk to children with CF about their own disease, to which he answered “yes”. He told us that many times they only talk to the parents and the children are not told anything. So for us, it seemed like a good idea to give them this workshop. We imparted it in a camp we organized at our campus, directed specifically at children from the ARFQ. The camp, which is also part of our Human Practices consisted of various entertaining activities for the children and their parents, as well as this workshop. Once the workshop was over, we were surprised by some of their answers. Children with CF are very prone to infections so they constantly take antibiotics. However, one of the comments of the mother of one of the children was that they had never been told that they should only be used for that, not to treat viral infections.
On the other hand, our experience at the summer camp was very different. We imparted the workshop to groups of children aged 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12. We first did the two hygiene experiments and then started talking about Synthetic Biology. For the first experiments, we apply them as the E-Bug page recommended, however, we did have to adapt the content on Synthetic Biology. Language was very important because children can lose interest if the do not comprehend the information or if it is presented in a very simple, not challenging enough way.
Many of the children, especially the older ones, around 11 and 12 years old were very keen to ask questions about our particular project and what is Synthetic Biology able to accomplish. Several children surprised us because we started talking about how it can be used to cure several genetic illnesses and some even knew some information about CRISPR! An actual conversation was established and without even noticing it, we were both sharing ideas and brainstorming about the future of SynBio. At the end of every session we asked the children to make a drawing about what they had understood Synthetic Biology was and to our surprise many of them drew things that accurately represented an aspect of genetic manipulation. This, to us was very rewarding because it meant that they had grasped the concept at least to some extent.
During the workshops we showed the following presentation:
Educational document.
Participation in Science fairs
Expociencias/FENACI
We participated in the State science fair for the National Fair for Science and Engineering (FENACI) and ExpoCiencias (another state scientific fair) to present our project to attendees and raise awareness about Cystic Fibrosis. In this instance, over 400 students attended to present their project, as well as the general public and several buses filled with students invited from varying public schools in Nuevo León. This was a good opportunity to see if people knew about the disease and answer the questions they had as well as presenting our research. Most of the people we spoke with did not know about Cystic Fibrosis and were curious about Synthetic Biology.
Conexion TEC
Conexión Tec is another Science Fair organized by our university for students to engage with businesses and the general population. We used this opportunity to talk about our project and engage with students, businesspeople, teachers and parents. We found that again, not very many people knew about Cystic Fibrosis and it was also a good opportunity to showcase our videogame, Bacteri-on from which we received some feedback from potential users.
We found that these experiences are of value because these types of events’ goals are to get the students as well as their families involved in making Science and share their discoveries with others. This way, by using the already established mediums for divulging science it is easier for us to get mainstream attention and share our project. This is an example for other teams to engage in the already existing platforms or mediums in order to reach the general population though the most relevant channels.
The importance of being able to present your project with people that are non specialized in the area since it taught us on how to explain technical concepts in a way that it can be easy to understand for people who are not familiarized. Also being able to answer questions and doubts that the students had helped us take into consideration aspects of how we presented the project that were not clear, so that we could improve how we exposed the information and what order was the most logical and easier to understand. This was our first time presenting our definitive project as a whole so it was really valuable because it allowed us to internalize all the work done in order to be able to explain it to someone else, preparing us for the eventual presentation that we would have at the Giant Jamboree.
References
- Lakhani, N. (2017). “The help never lasts”: why has Mexico’s education revolution failed? Retrieved January 10, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/aug/15/the-help-never-lasts-why-has-mexicos-education-revolution-failed https://doi.org/10.1159/000087686
- ENPECYT. (2017). Encuesta sobre la Percepción Pública de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ENPECYT) 2017. Retrieved from https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/enpecyt/2017/
- INEGI. Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica 2014. Base de datos. from http://coespo.qroo.gob.mx/Descargas/doc/DISCAPACITADOS/ENADID%202014.pdf
- E-Bug. (2006). Propagación de infecciones: Higiene respiratoria. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from https://e-bug.eu/lang_sp/primary_pack/downloads/rh/Complete Respiratory Lesson ES.pdf
- E-Bug. (n.d.). Los antibióticos. Retrieved from https://e-bug.eu/language packs/spain/homeSciencePDFs/Antibiotic Awareness.pdf