Why Do We Come Up With This

While many other teams go to high schools to introduce synthetic biology by presentation, we choose to have some great time with kids because it brings us sense of achievement when we provide them new ideas and see their eyes full of yearning even it is comparatively challenging. It’s difficult to explain synthetic biology or iGEM to young children by telling them the concepts. But we think the exact comprehension is not important for those kids. What matter most are their curiosity to the new objects and their “unrealistic” thoughts.

How We Did This

We gathered the students who were interested to draw together during their drawing classes. They are all very excited about designing their own creatures. Some students devoted three classes to completing their work. Take home drawings are also admitted, as there is a seven-day holiday from Oct. 1st. These children got some help from their parents (writing introduction for the drawings). We also asked communities to help us contact the kids living in the neighborhood. They posted the posters and collect drawing for us.

What We’ve Got

When we asked them to design their own creatures, we found surprisingly that there are flowers that have the function of clock, hippo that can test the temperature and colorful fishes that can be seen in the deep sea. These creatures are so much like the engineering bacteria in previous iGEM projects and one of the students used geometric figures to form his imaginary creatures which is very similar to the concept of biobricks. Besides these, there are still many other creatures they invented are waiting for us to explore. One of the most wonderful design is a plant named ‘Eye-ear Flower’. It got two kinds of fruits, one named ‘eye’ and another named ‘ear’. The juice of ‘eye’ can help blind people see things by dropping into their eyes. And the ‘ear’ can help the deaf people hear things in the same way. ‘Eye’ and ‘ear’ have five and four colors respectively and people use them according to the color of their eyes and ears.

Judgement

Judges

We invited the drawing teachers from Xili primary school to be the judges.

	Yuanjun Zheng, graduated from south china normal university art education major. Painter of Calligraphy and Painting institute in Nanshan district.
	Meijia Guo, graduated from Art College of Sichuan University. Once worked as in the Museum of contemporary art.
	Yong Zhang, graduated from Communication University of China majoring in advertising major, video editor of Adobe. She encourages students to draw freely and draw their own feeling and nature inside.

Judging Criteria

The pieces are sent to the judges and their judging criteria are listed below.

1. Interpretation of the theme (10 points);
2. Creativity and Originality (10 points);
3. Technical skill (5 points);

Awards and Prizes

After judging procedures, we got First Price, Second Price, Third Price and Special Prices which includes the Best Creativity Award and the Best Design Award. We gave them honor certificates and awarded them customized post cards with their own drawing printed on it. It’s very precious memory and we want to hold on to it.

Significance of the Contest

We use another way to inspire students’ imagination and guide them to focus on the originality of their work while their teachers usually emphasize skills. We also arise their interests in creating and exploring. The competition shows their unique perspective of seeing things. And their masterpieces provide more possibilities when we are thinking of new projects.