Team:ETH Zurich/human/outreach

From 2014.igem.org

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During our project we seek contact to people at different occasions to spread the word about synthetic biology and our project. Output is what we impart to the society.
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Here we describe how we visit high school classes, how we were represented at an open house day and how we go to a science slam.
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'''During our project we seek the dialog with people through different platforms to spread the awareness of synthetic biology and our project.'''
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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 16-17 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.
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Thus, we increase the level of awareness of synthetic biology and simultaneously teach them how to approach complex problems.
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The lessons are prepared in agreement with the teachers to meet the level of knowledge already present. We impart the principles of synthetic biology and encourage the students to participate in solving an exercise problem using their acquired knowledge. Thus, we increase the level of awareness of synthetic biology and show how complex problems can be approached at the same time.
 
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The slides our team uses will be available for downloading on this page soon.
 
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==Open house day at the department==
==Open house day at the department==
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On the open house day of D-BSSE of ETH ([http://www.bsse.ethz.ch [[Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering]]]) and the [http://www.biozentrum.unibas.ch [[Biozentrum]]] of the University of Basel the public could get an impression of the scientific laboratories and the work done there. The many different labs opened their doors to the public and scientists gave interested people an insight in their daily work. So did the ETH iGEM team 2014. The team was present with a poster showing the history of iGEM, explaining the projects of previous ETH iGEM teams and giving general information about synthetic biology. Additionally, a slideshow presented a best-of photo collection of last 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 strong interest and eagerly anticipated to follow our project’s development during the next months on our wiki.
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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.
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[[File:20140510-openhouse-8265 960px.jpg|500px]]
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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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==Science Slam Basel==
 
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A science slam is all about presenting scientific work to a broad public in a short time and in understandable, entertaining terms. This is what Elise of our team is doing in Basel on October 10th. Then the [http://scienceslam.unibas.ch Science Slam Basel] takes place and Elise will give her best to explain iGEM and our project. We are curious to see how she simplifies our complex project to make it comprehensible and catchy.
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==Science Slams==
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A science slam is all about presenting scientific work to a diverse group of people in a short time, in an understandable and entertaining way.  
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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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==iGEM ETH Zurich 2014 and social media==
==iGEM ETH Zurich 2014 and social media==
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Today’s society relies more and more on the internet. For many people of the younger generations Facebook and twitter are important media for communication. This is why our team has an account on [http://www.facebook.com/iGEM.ETH.Zurich?fref=ts Facebook] and on [http://twitter.com/ETH_iGEM twitter] where all the breaking news are spread at the moment of their occurrence. So many people can be reached almost instantaneously. Both accounts refer to our wiki where more background information can be found.
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Today’s society relies more and more on the internet. Since, a vast group of people today widely use Social media for communication, we decided to use [http://www.facebook.com/iGEM.ETH.Zurich?fref=ts Facebook] and Twitter [http://twitter.com/ETH_iGEM twitter] to share our results, news and updates. This enabled us to reach a large group of people almost instantaneously. Both accounts refer to our wiki where more background information can be found.
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We think sharing the news of our project on social media platforms increases the attention people give to synthetic biology. In many people curiosity arises after seeing a post or a picture on Facebook with a short description of what we have done in our project. Thus people who would never get into with iGEM and the many different projects are caught and directed to visit the wiki to learn more.
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We think sharing the news of our project on social media increases the attention given by people to synthetic biology. We observed that for many people, the curiosity increased after seeing a post or a picture with a short description of what we had done on Facebook. We also shared fascinating videos presented by other teams and links to their wikis. Thus, we were able to increase the overall awareness of synthetic biology and iGEM.
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==Discourse at the after work pint==
==Discourse at the after work pint==
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In the context of the weekly after work pint we presented the iGEM competition and our research project. We took advantage of the informal meeting to discuss our ideas with scientists of the department. The discourse was highly inspiring, encouraging and supportive.  
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D-BSSE hosts a weekly after work pint where scientists from different groups meet up to discuss work in a relaxed environment. In one of these weekly after work pint we spoke about our project and iGEM. We took advantage of the informal environment to discuss our ideas with scientists of the department. We received encouraging and supportive feedbacks and some very useful advice and suggestions.  
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[[File:Afterworkpint.jpg|200px]]
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[[File:Afterworkpint.jpg|200px|center|thumb|'''Figure 3''' Advertisement for the after work pint]]
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==Interview with NZZ campus==
==Interview with NZZ campus==
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By the end of October an article about dealing with criticism related to the subject of study will appear in the [http://campus.nzz.ch NZZ campus]. In an interview Stefanie discussed diffuse fears, ignorance or prejudices that are often connected with criticism in connection with synthetic biology and microbiology. It is important to seek a constructive dialogue to increase awareness of biotechnology.  
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By the end of October an article about dealing with criticism related to the subject of study will appear in the [http://campus.nzz.ch NZZ campus]. The article will be based on an interview with one of our team members, Stefanie. In the interview Stefanie attempted to address the fears, ignorance or prejudices that are often associated with synthetic biology and microbiology and tried to emphasise on the importance of these fields. We believe that it is important to seek a constructive dialogue to increase awareness of biotechnology.  
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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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Latest revision as of 03:28, 18 October 2014

iGEM ETH Zurich 2014