Team:ETH Zurich/human/outreach

From 2014.igem.org

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==School visits==
==School visits==
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One side of our human practice is to share knowledge with the public. For this reason one day mid-October Stefanie and Nadine had the chance to teach students at the age of 16-17years at a high school in Bern, Switzerland. Through these lectures, we attempted to impart the basic principles of synthetic biology and encouraged the students to participate in a discussion of the concepts presented. In these discussions we tried to focus on risks to humans, health, the environment and the public. Furthermore former iGEM projects were quickly outlined and their possibilities and potential discussed.  
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One side of our human practice is to share knowledge with the public. For this reason one day mid-October Stefanie and Nadine had the chance to teach students at the age of 16-17 years at a high school in Bern, Switzerland. Through these lectures, we attempted to impart the basic principles of synthetic biology and encouraged the students to participate in a discussion of the concepts presented. In these discussions we tried to focus on risks to humans, health, the environment and the public. Furthermore former iGEM projects were quickly outlined and their possibilities and potential discussed.  
Thus, we increase the level of awareness of synthetic biology and simultaneously teach them how to approach complex problems.
Thus, we increase the level of awareness of synthetic biology and simultaneously teach them how to approach complex problems.
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On the open house day held by D-BSSE, ETHZ ([http://www.bsse.ethz.ch Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering]) and the [http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch Biozentrum] the University of Basel the public could get an idea of the scientific laboratories and the work done there. Many labs opened their doors to the public and the scientists briefed them about their daily work. We as the ETHZ iGEM team 2014 also used this platform to talk about iGEM. The team was present with a poster showing the history of iGEM, explaining the projects of previous ETHZ iGEM teams and general information about synthetic biology. Additionally, we presented a collection of photos from previous years jamboree. The goal of this day was to inform the public about synthetic biology in general and specifically about the spirit and the projects of iGEM. Many people showed great interest and have been following the project developments during the course of the project through our wiki.
On the open house day held by D-BSSE, ETHZ ([http://www.bsse.ethz.ch Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering]) and the [http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch Biozentrum] the University of Basel the public could get an idea of the scientific laboratories and the work done there. Many labs opened their doors to the public and the scientists briefed them about their daily work. We as the ETHZ iGEM team 2014 also used this platform to talk about iGEM. The team was present with a poster showing the history of iGEM, explaining the projects of previous ETHZ iGEM teams and general information about synthetic biology. Additionally, we presented a collection of photos from previous years jamboree. The goal of this day was to inform the public about synthetic biology in general and specifically about the spirit and the projects of iGEM. Many people showed great interest and have been following the project developments during the course of the project through our wiki.
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[[File:20140510-openhouse-8265 960px.jpg|500px|center]]
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[[File:20140510-openhouse-8265 960px.jpg|500px|center|thumb|'''Figure 1''' Max and Nadine at the open house day at D-BSSE]]
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Elise from our team has participated in two science slams. She has given her best to explain about iGEM and our project. Her task is to simplify our complex project to make it comprehensible and catchy. The first one was in Brugg AG for the Open Door day of the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz. The audience mainly consisted of families. The next science slam was in Basel on October 10th which mainly consisted of Bachelor and Master students and families.
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Elise from our team has participated in two science slams. She has given her best to explain about iGEM and our project. Her task is to simplify our complex project to make it comprehensible and catchy. The first one was in Brugg AG for the Open Door day of the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz. The audience mainly consisted of families. The second science slam was at the theater in Basel on October 10th: you can watch the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSS2JVcBWiI here]. The audience mainly consisted of Bachelor and Master students, interested scientists and families. This last event was covered by the media : [http://www.telebasel.ch/de/tv-archiv/&id=366875892&search=&datefrom=&dateto=&group= TeleBasel] and BAZ.
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[[File:ETH Zurich_scienceslam.jpg|center|450px|thumb|'''Figure 2''' Elise at the science slam in Basel]]
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[[File:Afterworkpint.jpg|200px|center|thumb|'''Figure 3''' Advertisement for the after work pint]]
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==Simplify: Explore synthetic biology at your own pace ==
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All the past teams did an incredibly good job to bring Synthetic Biology to the public, involving more and more curious people to have their first contact with the subject. While reaching for the general public and talking to people outside the academia, we became aware of a fundamental disconnect. Several of the people we met were captivated by the idea of synthetic biology, and after talking with us about our project, they decided to independently explore past iGEM works and ideas.
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The main issue we registered was, that they could understand the introduction pages and grasp the general idea of projects, but often found challenging to move from the descriptive level to an understanding of the underlying mechanism without some external help. We think that at this stage as a community we are missing instruments that help interested people to easily and independently explore and extend their knowledge with the help of iGEM wikis.
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The Simplify button is our idea to create a constant and direct link between the popular science and the technical version of our work. Visitors from the general public can understand each piece of information in its descriptive version and then check how that specific element works more in detail. This should mitigate the division between an inspiring introduction and a sudden high wall of complex biology or mathematical modeling.
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We are deeply interested in starting a discussion with people with deeper expertise in scientific writing and popularization in order to improve this approach and diffuse it among other teams making it easier for curious minds to explore the wide and inspiring collection of iGEM projects
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==Simplifying our wiki for the public==
 
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Simplify buttons...
 

Latest revision as of 03:28, 18 October 2014

iGEM ETH Zurich 2014