Team:BIT-China/Public Engagement
In July 13th, we got an invitation to introduce iGEM to preparatory members of high school team in ITCCC (INTERNATIONAL TEENAGER COMPETITION AND COMMUNICATION CENTER). Our team leader gave a speech about iGEM and some of team members answered the questions. After the speech, the high school students had a further understanding and got more interests about iGEM. In which, we brought our years of experiences on iGEM to them.
Between July 17th and 21st, our team and team BCU conducted an communication of iGEM, mainly about the InterLab experiments. BCU is a young iGEM team. So, as an experienced team, we BIT-China helped them. We provided them with some conveniences on instruments and reagents. In five days, we completed the InterLab experiments, analyzing and discussing them based on the experimental data obtained. This exchange established the foundation for the communication of the two teams in future projects, and we all benefited from this exchange.
Back in high school, if someone would show us the beauty of biology, we think there would be more students choose to study biology in college. Therefore, to expand the influence of synthetic biology, we delivered a lecture to high school students of Capital Normal University High School in Beijing, during which we introduced iGEM giant jamboree and our project, WHO CAN GET AN A to them. Through the lecture, not only did high school students gained a better insight into such a meaningful competition, but also we knew more about our own project and started to think a new way to let public understand our project.
We always want the public to learn more about synthetic biology and iGEM. We believe that if you want to promote something, you should publicize it in a way which is closer and appealing to the public. At the age of big data, using the popularity of new-media industry to spread ideas is more convenient, more extensive, and more effective. Therefore, we decided to film some videos to promote synthetic biology and iGEM.
In order to spread the knowledge of synthetic biology to the public and to publicize our projects, we have taken several beauty blogger-style videos about synthetic biology and published them on several video platforms (Which are most used by young people in China). We believed this kind of way to popularize science is effective. In the video, our team members introduced the knowledge including the pipette and the plate coating in vivid form and humorous tone. The videos are very popular and get many positive influence.
We always want to promote the influence of iGEM, and let more people know how important iGEM is for iGEMers. So we filmed a video to show how an iGEMer find herself by attending an iGEM team(BIT-China) and published it on several video platforms. The video is based on the mv of Taylor Swift`s Delicate. This video not only shows a growing road of an iGEMer, but also let more people learn about iGEM.
