Difference between revisions of "Team:NYU Abu Dhabi/Home Outreach"

Presenter:

Kai-Wen Yang

City, Country:

Kowloon, Hong Kong

Date:

July 3rd to August

School/Organisation:

King George V School, Summerbridge Hong Kong

Age group targeted:

Grade 7-9 (age 13-15)

Brief Description:

In relation to our project about food pathogen detection, one of our members taught a class about food sciences when she worked as a student teacher at Summerbridge Hong Kong (a non-profit organization, which aims to improve the educational trajectories of underprivileged students by providing them with tuition-free quality English language education and life skills development opportunities), in which she designed and taught daily for 5 weeks. With the aim of fostering the students’ passion in science and highlighting how science can be applied in our everyday lives, students learned about various science concepts through interesting hands-on experiments with materials that can be found in the kitchen. For instance, they learned about melting point depression through “Making Ice Cream” experiment, the characteristic of fat through “Color-changing Milk”, neutralization through “Building a Volcano”, vibration through “Singing Glasses”, and more. They also learned about the scientific method and applied it to their final project: the students came up with questions they were curious about from their everyday lives and the demonstrations they have done in class. The students then followed the scientific method to discover the answers to the questions, and created a little booklet to share their findings with the general public.

Presenter:

Adnan Ali-Hassan

City, Country:

Chebanieh and Beirut, Lebanon

Date:

Thursday August 23rd, Saturday August 25th

School/Organisation:

Lebanese Scouts Association

Age group targeted:

15-20 years old

Brief Description:

On Thursday August 23rd, during the weekly meeting that the Beirut 1 scouts group in the Lebanese Scouts Association holds on the International College campus in Ain El Mraysseh (Beirut, Lebanon), an NYUAD iGEM representative presented the topic of going into the STEM field to students aged from 5 to 20 years old. A discussion was then held with the leaders and it was agreed that the group to focus on was Rovers due to their age range, 15-20 years old, at a time when they’re choosing what study and work fields to go into.

The following Saturday, August 25th, a meeting was held with the Rovers, about 15 students, in an eco-cafe in the town of Chebanieh. There, many of the students spoke about what their understanding of the STEM field is, including future job opportunities. A presentation was then given from the iGEM member about the array of possible STEM majors and universities to pursue, putting attention on NYUAD as a good example that not many of the students knew about. The topic followed with what opportunities are available in the STEM field both after graduation and during university.The focus then shifted to iGEM where the presenter spoke about their team’s project and experience, as well as what iGEM is as a whole and what projects other universities have worked on in the past. The idea of starting an iGEM project the following year in new universities, such as the American University of Beirut, was also discussed. The event consisted of short presentations followed by longer conversations and took about 3 hours.

Presenter:

Sion Hau

City, Country:

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Date:

Wednesday, August 15th

School/Organisation:

Camberwell Primary School, Robogals

Age group targeted:

Grade 5s (age 10-11)

Brief Description:

In collaboration with Robogals Melbourne, NYUAD IGEM was able to integrate synthetic biology and bioengineering related topics into a hands-on engineering and robotics workshop at a local public primary school in Melbourne. Approximately 50 Grade 5 students at Camberwell Primary School had the opportunity to participate in the unique Robogals LEGO EV3 robotics workshop run by Robogals Melbourne. Robogals is a not for profit organisation founded in Melbourne that aims to encourage girls to pursue a career in engineering and other STEM related fields, seeing as their goals aligned congruently with many of NYUAD IGEM’s own outreach objectives, we integrated an informative presentation about iGEM and other opportunities in bioengineering and synthetic biology for the students to consider once they enter high school and beyond. It was a 90 minute workshop that introduced a wide range of engineering disciplines, highlighting the iGEM competition and what biosynthetic engineering is and the roles it plays in society, followed by a robotics workshop whereby students learnt to program their own Lego EV3 robot with a light and ultrasonic sensor. The students not only learnt about the wide scope of engineering and its applicability in everyday life but also had the opportunity to learn a new skill in an interactive and fun way! Special thanks to Robogals Melbourne for this wonderful collaboration.