May 2018, NCKU x Tainan team went to HWSH to promote synthetic biology and our iGEM project. 20 students joined this program. They really enjoyed the experiment they had never tried before.

Why We Choose HWSH?

Taichung municipal Hui-Wen High school is a senior high school located in central Taiwan. The student of HWSH, various to other high school, embrace astronomy, biology, and science learning. Their school educational program involves international exchange programs, clubs, science fair, which are rare in normal Taiwanese education system.

How We Proceed ?

Before 5/21, we have contacted teachers in HWSH. Their teacher scheduled our program into their biology classes (08:00-10:00). Three of our members participated in this program. We shared our college life in NCKU and demonstrated how our training from out major contributed to our project in the team at first. We then introduced iGEM and the job of four compartments. We also went through our the idea and the concept of our project. For the last session of our program, we introduce some basic concept of the biological experiment, several important model organisms in synthetic biology, and the concept of Gram stain. We also teach them how to handle pipette precisely. In the final 40 minutes, it’s time for them to apply what they have learned to the experiment! We prepared the sealed slides of Escherichia coli, Clostridium difficile in our lab. After connecting the optical microscope with CCD camara , the live image was projected to the screen and the whole class could observed the morphology of the bacteria. Students are totally exciting when they sucked liquid from pipette successfully. They also asked us questions about our project and gave us lots of useful feedback! After this program, we received a message from a lovely student, who was burned the passion for synthetic biology and want to join iGEM when she enters the college.

Feedback

This high school education program aims to share our project and the basic knowledge of synthetic biology with high school students. We want to spark light in their minds that there are lots of knowledge beyond textbooks, and maybe they can join iGEM next year.(Our goal is to provoke their interest in extracurricular learning and encourage them to participate such activities as iGEM.) From their feedback form, we find all of them enjoying this course, and have more realized what is synthetic Biology, OD meter, etc. Making more students understand and like igem let us happy, which also make us produce more motivation to go forward in igem competition.

May 2018, NCKU x Tainan team went to HWSH to promote synthetic biology and our iGEM project. 20 students joined this program. They really enjoyed the experiment they had never tried before.

Why We Choose the Affiliated Elementary School of NNKIEH?

The Affiliated Elementary School of National Nanke International Experimental High School is a elementary school located in southern Taiwan and near the Southern Taiwan Science Park. The student here embrace multi-language environment and science education, which vary from the other schools in Taiwan.

How We Proceed ?

Before 6/12, we have contacted teachers in the Affiliated Elementary School of NNKIEH. Their teacher scheduled our program into their science classes (09:00-11:00) and we had one our to launch our slide and the materials of the experiment. Three of our members participated in this program. First, we had twenty minutes for our lecture, which we introduced the basic concept of the cell included the structure of the cell and the level of the organism. Than, the students observed the different kinds of cells specimen under the microscope. After the observation, we prepared an experiment for them. We instructed them the step to extract their own DNA by some materials in the common life. After the program, we had ten minutes for review the lecture and let them write it down.

Experimental Procedure:

Step 1: Add several drops of liquid dish soap and 2 tbsp of salt into 20ml of water. Set aside, you will need it later.
Step 2: Squeeze juice from pineapple! (Tips: You may squeeze it with a towel)
Step 3: Gargle with 20ml of drinking water for 1 minute. (Make sure you do this step well to get sufficient oral cells) After that, split it back into a tube/ clear plastic cup.
Step 4: Mix the solution you have prepared in step 1 with the oral cell containing solution. Stir it gently, avoid causing bubbles from the soap.

Feedback

This high school education program aims to share our project and the basic knowledge of synthetic biology with high school students. We want to spark light in their minds that there are lots of knowledge beyond textbooks, and maybe they can join iGEM next year.(Our goal is to provoke their interest in extracurricular learning and encourage them to participate such activities as iGEM.) From their feedback form, we find all of them enjoying this course, and have more realized what is synthetic Biology, OD meter, etc. Making more students understand and like igem let us happy, which also make us produce more motivation to go forward in igem competition.

iGEM NCKU has applied for becoming a synthetic biology cub in NCKU. In this day, we went around to promote iGEM NCKU and explain our research space presently such that more students get interest in what iGEM is.

We have our stand where we displaying our poster to show what iGEM is to students. We left the contact information to students who have interest in iGEM competition. We also go around at random greeting people and introducing iGEM to others passionately. Some student inquired question about iGEM and exclaimed in admiration to our explain. We made every effort to explain iGEM-related answer to them.

We attracted students and aroused their curiosity successfully. All of our team enjoyed this Club Fair well and had more motivation to study our brainstorming.

NCKU Spring medical speech is an annual One-Day-camp for the high school students who is interested in medical school in Taiwan. Through this camp, high school students have opportunities to closely contact with all kinds of departments related to medical. Since the first year of NCKU igem team establish, NCKU college of medicine have given a lot of support and many students in college of medicine joined iGEN competition. Therefore, NCKU igem team were invited by department of medicine and Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology to share our experience in iGEM competition. Through this speech, we could spread our passion in iGEM to all the high school students.

2016 iGEM_NCKU “UNO” designed a non-invasive blood glucosemeter in synthetic biological way. The next year, 2017 iGEM_NCKU "NO problem" made an nitrate sensor boat to deal with the aquaculture problem. This year, 2018 iGEM_NCKU aim to change the sequence of E. coli gene to run a more efficiency method in biological carbon capture. We gave some basic knowledge about synthetic biology to high school students, and what we learn during paper review in iGEM competition, synthetic biology, and whole CO2 problem. In addition, interdeparmental collaboration is a key feature of NCKU. Through iGEM, medical student can have more communication with other students came from different departments. Besides, we all gain a great sense of achievement after we finish the whole project which is not only a result of research, but a complete final product that we can show all the audiences.

After the speech, many students showed their interest on iGEM. We also received recognition for giving a briefly introduction from chairmen of department of medicine and Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology who invited us.

March 12, 2018

Today, we were so glad to have lunch with our president Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su from NCKU. Our meeting time was the day before our semester presentation, so we were excited to tell the president what we going to do. Since the president has been our important support from the first year of igem-NCKU three years ago, we had a great time about introducing all the 2018 team members to president. We mentioned about why we want to join the igem competition and what we expect to do in the following 6 months. After listening our background and some challenges we may face, she showed a lot of concerned and gave us a lot of advises which really encourage us.

“Not to always think about what medal you will get in the end, the only thing you need to do is to make all-out effort to fulfill the project. The most important thing is what you learn during the journey. ” president said.It was a great lunch talk. All of us will keep in mind what the president told us.

September 6, 2018

Through the 8 months passed, we have output some wet results , constructed dry models and went through some HP activities. In this meeting with NCKU president, we reported our current schedule for the president. Since our president Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su from NCKU have research experience which is related to our project content, she reminded us of what we have more care about and where we can do more well.

Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su from NCKU gave us many support about the iGEM competition, which let us do the project more smoothly. We appreciate everyone who helps and gives us recommendations to improve our project. With president's help and advice, we know more about what we can do and work hard in less than two months.

NCKU Bike Festival is a famous activity for NCKU to exhibit and introduce every college department to south Taiwan senior high students. We seized this chance to make an effort to expose iGEM to people.

What we done are as follows:

Designing a synthetic biology – related game for them to play.

Explaining what iGEM is for everyone.

Using Facebook and intasgram for the lucky draw on-the-spot to enhance event delight.

Inquiring people’s comments about our idea.

designing biological-related game for students.

We hope that we can use interesting games and community interaction to let students know what synthetic biology is. Also, it is a great opportunity to let more NCKU students and high school student know there is such an awesome competition in Boston. As for our team, we enjoyed all process during iGEM competition period!

On March 13, we had our first presentation about our brainstorming. We presented our brainstorming in order to let people and professors to realize our idea and vote one of our idea to become our final project.

We had three topics, including cleaning up oil spill, detection of pathogens and carbon capture. Each group had twenty minutes to present their idea, then we entered the Q&A stage, which made each group more realize their problem and blind spot so that they had do more work and brainstorming to solve these problem.

After our presentation, we obtained lots of feedback. In addition, we met NCTU iGEM team after our semester presentation. We had our dinner together and talked about our project. Since NCTU team and we hadn’t set our mind on solving specific problem, we made some wide discussion about agricultural and environmental issues in Taiwan. We also talked about our team composition the way how we recruit our team members.

We had a pleasant time exchanging our ideas and chatting with each other. We believed that we could build up cooperation relationship in the iGEM competition.