Team:Jilin China/HP/Engagement/Pupils

For pupils
Drawing Class


Engagement

  • Why we choose pupils?

    In our country, primary students receive only basic science knowledge courses and seldom have chances to participate in a hands-on experiment. Moreover, their understanding of the micro world remains superficial. Some of them even hold the opinion that all types of bacteria are harmful but never have a look of those tiny lives. Letting them get a close look at microorganism in a macroscopic way may help them learn more about cytobiology and a vivid mechanism of molecular biology, which would stimulate their interest in further study. And, pupils are a group of people who are full of curiosity. Hence, we decided to hold a drawing class for them, by using bacterial liquid as pigment. Therefore, masterpieces came into being.

  • Happy Memories

    We came to United Experimental School of AHSJU (Affiliated High School Jilin University) and Livon, where a series of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) classes were being held to pupils in whole Changchun city. All kids were at place when appointed time has come. Our iGEMers firstly guided them into the micro world. To our surprise, a question asked by our team members triggered a fierce rushing to answer!

    After a discussion about the definition of life, we'd like to give our Sketching Kits to them and guided them to the micro world!

    Therefore, we helped them well equipped, distributed them our Sketching Kits and taught them how to draw with one-to-one instructions. Finally, more than 50 dishes were collected, sealed, and brought back into incubator by our members. Waiting for the blossom of artist works.

  • Online Communication Contributes to Feedback

    After the class, we kept in touch with those kids and their parents, by creating a chatting group online. To our delight, the class successfully draw some kids’ attention, instead of purely having fun in drawing. On the way back to laboratory, they started asking us questions. Some screenshots and translations are listed below. (For privacy, we blurred their nickname and portrait)

    Screenshots 🧒🏻@Rrrrrebekah🍩 Hello teacher. My name is Xinhe Liu. I have 2 questions: 1) why those bacteria have colors? 2) why skin color doesn't change when people got sick and bacteria were produced in the body?

    👩🏻‍🏫@lar As what we have mentioned in class, the phenotype of living bodies (for example, the color of bacteria) is controlled by DNA. However, scientist can transform the DNA. The original version of this kind of bacteria doesn’t have color. But the bacteria we use today were added special kinds of DNAs that can produce color, which means we transform it to make it produce color~
    👩🏻‍🏫The bacteria that cause illness are not transformed by us, so it won't change skin color.

    🧒🏻Oh! I got it. Thank you teacher. I didn't catch it in class😜

    It seems that this kid is interested in the color of bacteria, and he misunderstood the relationship between the colored and the harmful kind. Meanwhile, we realized that we taught too fast. The teaching skills needs to be improved. After a while, another kid asked questions:

    Screenshots 👩🏻‍🏫Feel free to ask any questions at any time!😀

    👦🏻Hello teacher. I'm Haoran Ma. I have a question for you.🙏 Bacteria can fall into two kinds, beneficial bacteria and harmful bacteria. What good could they do to human body? or will it could turn into harmful bacteria suddenly?

    👩🏻‍🏫Beneficial bacteria varies a lot. Take lactobacillus as an example. The lactobacillus in our body can promote intestinal peristalsis, and they can activate immune cells to enhance immunity. It brings a large number of benefits.😀 And in recent study, scientists have found an amount of different kinds of bacteria have connections to cancer, hypertension and other illness, and their mechanisms are under discovering.

    👦🏻Thanks, teacher👏🏻.

    👩🏻‍🏫For the second question, I think the beneficial won't change into harm under stable conditions. However, if you take it in too much, the beneficial would be harmful, like diarrhea. 💩

    👦🏻😱.
    👦🏻Thank you for helping.

    👩🏻‍🏫Actually, there're also some neutral bacteria in gut. They help the beneficial when the beneficial become dominated in gut while help the other on the contrary. In a word, microorganisms vary a lot. And gut microbial problems remain to be explored.
    👩🏻‍🏫Thank you for your questions.😀

    This kid paid more attention on the effect of bacteria. And his worrying proved the necessity of our class. However, we somehow failed to deliver the right concept to them in class. Our next class needs to be reconsidered.

  • Fantastic Works

    One day passed, we checked dishes. Colonies could be observed. Some of them are corresponding to the given template, some are not, while others are too abstract to recognize, but looks pretty. We believe they want to draw their own story! Then, we took dishes pictures and post them to the group. Before destroying them, we put them all together, and removed caps, taking a group photo!

    Time to Conclude

    This is our first time to be teachers. We know that more efforts are required, including teaching skills, patience, communication skills with children, difficulty and pace of the courses… We hope that we can have more opportunities in the future EPE activities, especially when talking with children and students. Then more people would be willing to know more about synthetic biology.

    Of course, during the activity with the children, we were really surprised by their enthusiasm, curiosity and earnest. Although it would be a little hard for them to use inoculating loop or this is their first time to know what is E.coli, they truly have pure interest in science and nature. As an iGEMer, we definitely support them and guide them to the scientific world. It must be an unforgettable experience in their childhood.