Line 41: | Line 41: | ||
<div id="eduscienceinforum" class="verticalLineright textbreather interlabspace verticalrightscience"> | <div id="eduscienceinforum" class="verticalLineright textbreather interlabspace verticalrightscience"> | ||
− | < | + | <h2 class="media-heading" style="text-align: right;margin-bottom: 35px; color:#0C233F;">Science in Forum |
</h2> | </h2> | ||
Revision as of 20:47, 14 October 2018
As a team of highly motivated university students, all of us value, not only the importance of proper education, but also the opportunity to be influenced in an early age at where your dreams develop; the world is our oyster and one should feel so. Through an unanimous vote, our team decided the education branch was one we wanted to pursuit with high ambitions. Biotechnology is still a new field in education and who would be better to develop its role in our country than a team working through their summer vacation in the name of science.
Science in Forum
Back in April, we were present at Science in Forum - an annual science festival targeted at children of all ages. Our main purpose was to peak the visitor’s interest in biotechnology and the possibilities that come with it both on a bigger scale and related to iGem. It quickly became clear, that text-packed scientific papers was a wrong angle and by changing our methods to reaching the children’s level with Jurassic World-references and DNA-strings made out of candy, we managed to communicate the purpose of our project in broad terms to a lot of interested children as well as load them up with sugar.
It was great to see the vast expression of interest in all ages and it was an immense opportunity to practice creating material to the proper audience. It was clear to us, that we didn’t have a strong enough case as our project at this point and being questioned basic questions by kids and more detailed questions by adults, we got a head start with flaws and gaps we would have to seal to have a strong project.
The Copenhagen High School Symbiotes Project
It was our PhD. supervisor Kyle who got the idea to expand the iGEM participation in Denmark and include a high school team of students in the age of 16-19. There have been a growing interest in the High school track around the world (see Fig 1) and Philip, from the last DTU team, Tenna and Jacob therefore set out to establish a high school team in the greater Copenhagen area to compete in iGEM; and so, the project ‘Copenhagen High School Symbiotes’, CHSS for short, was born.
Fig. 1: - High school teams competing in iGEM(1)
As it would be the very first high school team from Denmark to enter iGEM, a lot of regulations and rules had to be checked with the proper authorities to make sure it was feasible. With the green-light given, CHSS started to take shape.
Firstly, by the suggestion of Philip, they got in contact with the non-profit organization Biotech Academy, located at DTU, to plan a collaboration with them as they would with more expertise facilitate the project. The project could be modeled after the Biosensor project, which is another collaboration between Biotech Academy and DTU Biobuilders.
As past and present participants of the DTU iGEM team, they could contribute with structure of the process, planning, gathering information necessary and having the needed information regarding the competition to sell it to the teachers of the different high schools. Biotech Academy, on the other hand, offered experience with teaching biotech, engaging the students and what was necessary to be allowed to work in the lab with high schoolers.
With the forward movement of the project, they realised many more benefits of the CHSS team becoming a reality. Not only would it spark an interest in synthetic biology in high schools, which had been close to zero before, but it would also make a great chance for a collaboration with future teams from DTU and hopefully inspire more teams from Denmark.
The next step was getting the faculty to confirm the project as well as the necessary budget. They all spent weeks researching, corresponding through emails and having meetings with Biotech Academy and the DTU faculty to make the plans reasonable and feasible.
However, to make sure the project stood solid when going to the faculty to get approved, and also for when sending out funding applications, they knew they needed to have the high schools behind them supporting the CHSS project.
The participants would come from different high schools and conduct their research at DTU. The high schools were chosen based on location compared to DTU, the general level of education and competitiveness, as well as the level of science taught.
It didn’t take very long until a total of 7 high schools had shown interest and so funding began. To get a strong head-start, they decided to apply for a three-year period. Many hours were spent in perfecting their applications since they knew it was a lot of money they asked for.
As they neared the Giant Jamboree they had gotten several recommendations written for their fond application and it was sent out. The entire team is waiting anxiously for the answer in January as everyone sees the great potential in a high school team.
Priming the Next Generation
In the early months of our iGEM project, Tenna from our team was recognized by her old science teacher from her elementary school from seven years ago who felt delight that one of his students had been touched and chosen a career in science. They agreed that back then, the chances for being inspired and learn about different branches, such as biology, had been too low.
It was between the two of them that our project, ‘Priming the Next Generation’, grew.
As a part of our community engagement, we embarked on this journey of presenting the many possibilities in biotechnology and its intriguing possibilities to make the world a better place to ninth graders in elementary school.
Lina, Tenna and Jacob began the venture with three classes, a total of 60 students, who were all very eager to learn the advancements and capabilities that biotechnology holds in transforming our every day. After a short introduction to iGEM and our project, we spent some time embarking in subjects such as medical microbiology, bioinformatics, astrobiology and, of course, synthetic biology. We wanted to illuminate the variation of branches one could take and remove the stigma that biotechnology is “only bacteria and yeast”.
They proceeded to teach the students about existing projects, here among some old iGEM projects from DTU, and what their possibilities with education and careers in Denmark are. After the enlightenment of what you could do with synthetic biology a discussion began between the students with what a possible project could be. No ideas were too out there and Tenna, Lina and Jacob tried to develop on their ideas and illuminate the feasible aspects of them.
Of course, we didn’t want it to be too heavy for the fleeting minds of ninth graders and, we not only made sure to keep it interactive with questions, but we also held a fun Kahoot quiz where their listening skills was put to a test and their Fortnite knowledge was questioned.
The students were thrilled and the teachers all agreed that they would like this to be an annual event with the future DTU iGEM teams.
After having gotten success with the first school, interest grew among other schools. A short period went by and they’d gotten into contact with Lina’s old school, Sankt Annæ elementary school as well as the private school Skt. Knud Lavard, near DTU.
At the end of the iGEM-period, they had visited 3 schools and had plans of visiting 1 more school.
It was an overall great learning experience for the team members as well and they were all extremely pleased having had the possibility of establishing this project. Being at university-level, it can be hard to remember what was interesting in elementary school, but many of the pupils surprised in their great ideas and pre-knowledge of biotechnology and it was great practice in building a presentation for the proper audience.
(1) iGEM. Team List For iGEM 2018 Championship. 2018. https://igem.org/Team_List?year=2018&name=Championship&division=igem. (Accessed October 7, 2018).