Team:NDC-HighRiverAB/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Outreach Presentations
We have been able to share our project with people within our town beyond the potential end users (the wastewater treatment staff) through some outreach presentations. We have made presentations to both the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic Women's League, that are based at church associated with our school. We told them about synthetic biology and about our design and plans for our project. They had some really interesting questions which sparked discussion about the implications of our project.
Educating other Students
We have also been able to teach some other students in our school about synthetic biology by presenting during weekly 'self-directed learning' sessions. These sessions take place for twenty minutes in the afternoon, and change each week. Students are able to choose which sessions to attend, and we have hosted multiple sessions surrounding synthetic biology for students at our school to learn and potentially join our team.
Additonally, our team hosts an annual Pi Day event, where students can pay to throw a pie (For safety reasons, we use a cardboard plate with whip cream on top) at teachers and other staff members. As a science club at our high school, this event helps us to promote STEM within our school community, whilst having lots of fun.
Social Media
Members of our team created an Instagram account to share our project with students at our school and other iGEM teams. Through this account, we were able to document our experience while working on our project and while we attended the 2018 Giant Jamboree in Boston.
