Extending Beyond Our Own
SJAM
Waterloo iGEM team visited a local high school, Sir John A. MacDonald Secondary High School, to talk to their Science Club. We introduced them to the world of synthetic biology and the iGEM competition. We also talked about the more recent addition of the high school level iGEM competition and what kind of projects have come out of it, in hopes of inspiring them to pursue this vastly expanding field of science. We ended our visit with a fun activity where we showed students how to transform
Eschericia coli and an RFP gene. They then got a chance to create bacterial art using the original and transformed bacteria to see the difference in the gene's expression!
Shad Valley
Shad Valley is an initiative focused on enriching the education of exceptional high school students in Canada. To give students a more hands-on experience, our team hosted a small workshop for selected students to perform a bacteria transformation using and RFP gene. This was done over three workshops as the team went through lab safety, general experimental guidelines, guiding students through the experiment, check their results, and a Q&A period.
YouTube
Waterloo’s iGEM team has come out with a video series on lab techniques to compliment students' practical education in science. It is our hope that this becomes a tool which will give its audience the confidence and knowledge to perform their experiments with better safety and fewer errors