Team:SUSTech Shenzhen/HP/Module 4
Up till now, we have investigated the problem against the public, sorted out the data accordingly and sought through the potential problems. We wanted to start several activities that can have impacts on people of different ages and education backgrounds and even our peers who are also studying (synthetic) biology.
After what we did in module 2 and 3. We find and prove the huge distance and try to prove that it’s practical and necessary to have this distance minimized.
1. Education at primary school
Firstly, we contacted a primary school to give a general and interesting introduction about biology to students. We choose primary school because young children are good at studying than adults. In this activity, we introduce what is life, why human get disease. This class included many interactions. For example, we let students to draw a picture to show their impression of cells. We finish the first step to popularize biological common sense and we believe as children grow up, more and more people will support biological development even make some contribution.
2. Altruism study
However, we want to include more by showing that despite the immense distance, we can shorten it through every possible effort we put in. One might get frustrated about the current situation of cognition of (synthetic) biology concepts.
Children with altruism are extremely to teach—they don’t even know what you are talking about or that you are talking to them, and basically they are poor at receiving messages from the outside world regardless of the form. During this altruism study, we worked together with Dr. Yuan, a school for altruism children and a charity organization in the university and the results will be shown after the Giant Jamboree.
3. Open Day & Comic Brochure
Moving forward, we tried to apply our existing ideas to a more general crowd. Using the opportunity of the university’s open day, our team demonstrated not only what synthetic biology does, what iGEM is, but also made a 2nd trial for our self-made comic brochure (the 1st trial was at the primary school). It was astonishing that the crowd found our project and the three concerns involved in our CCC project more accessible.
4. Genecast
We were not satisfied at constraining our work within the campus, and we found a way to spread the concepts of synthetic biology as well as the three major aspects of it that’s related to our daily life using a podcast app. The app can be heard by users using whatever the operation systems and it can be found using a desktop itunes. We have picked three of our very meaningful HP events and made them into episodes of our “Genecast”. The feedbacks from our friends were “informative” and “knowledge-expanding”.
Although, we do have shortcomings on this project, and we are trying to make the series more interesting, multifarious and accessible so that the concepts of our CCC project and the spirits of Human Practice can have greater impacts on more people—perhaps in not only China, but other regions as well.
In fact, after a series of conversations, even people like them have to admit the fact that spread these concepts is extremely difficult. Concerning the huge amount of investment we put into the foundational researches in labs and the quick development of the modern media, how’s it possible that our public still knows so little about the true nature of things involved in their food, drinks and living?
So far, we have made investigations, analyzed the data and carried out multiple actions to prove that projects resembling our CCC project are of the same level of significance compared with the foundational researches. In the final module, we will make further extensions on this project.
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