From 2014.igem.org

Outreach

Another aspect of our policy and practice project entailed outreach within schools to educate the next generation of scientists about synthetic biology. As this is an emerging science, these are the individuals who will be pioneering the technology and so we believed they would be the perfect target audience for our session. We carried out the outreach sessions in Porto, Portugal and Manchester, England.

Manchester

On October 7th, 2014 we conducted an outreach workshop for the Science Club at St. Thomas More College in Denton, Tameside. We spent an hour educating pupils in Year 10 and 11 (age 14-16) about synthetic biology, the iGEM competition and pursuing careers in science and engineering post-secondary education. The workshop was divided into 3 sections: an introductory presentation about synthetic biology and the iGEM competition, a brainstorming session in which the students considered which problems they would choose to solve using synthetic biology, and a concluding presentation about our own project.

Our introductory presentation aimed to inform the students about what synthetic biology actually is. We provided a basic overview of how bacteria could be transformed to provide useful products, how the BioBrick registry worked, and how synthetic biology can be used to create novel solutions that could be used by communities all over the world. The students were then given an outline of what the iGEM competition is, why it exists and why they should participate in future.

After our presentation the students divided themselves into small groups of 3 or 4 and were asked to imagine they were part of an iGEM team. We asked them to think the sort of difficulties they would choose to tackle, how they would solve this problem biologically and how they would take into account the ethical or social impact their project may face.

After 10 minutes of discussion one member of the group was asked to report back to the class. A wide variety of responses were received, and the students were particularly enthusiastic about using synthetic biology for medical purposes and to solve their own practical problems.

In the final section of the workshop we presented our project to the students. We explained how fats, oils and greases can lead to blockages in drainage and sewerage systems, and how we intended to solve this using lipase and keratinase. We explained our product to the students and gave an overview of all the different social and ethical ideas we explored during our iGEM project.

At the end of the session students asked many questions and were offered a cake.

Porto

Introduction to iGEM and DNA

10 mins

Short presentation about who we are, what we have been doing over summer (iGEM) and DNA
• This will introduce the concept of DNA and it’s importance

'Case studies'

20 mins

• Give students examples of previous iGEM teams, the science and QAs on these.

Introduction to Synthetic Biology

10 mins

Introduce the concepts of synthetic biology and how it can be used in real life to solve a problem – provide our project as an example

Group discussion

10 mins

Split the class into smaller groups to come up with ideas about what problems synthetic biology could/should solve
• This will give the students a chance to explore how this technology can be beneficial
• Group work encourages interaction with other students to develop ideas further

Plenary

10 mins

Feedback to the class; use whiteboard to ask students to come up and write their ideas. Summarise what DNA is, how synthetic biology works and its potential applications

‘Life in University and Q&A’

5 mins

• Tell students what degrees they can pursue that may give them an opportunity to work in the area of SynBio.
• Give example of what kind of jobs they can go on to have after University
• Give students an idea of what life as a University student is like.
• Opportunity for questions about presentation

Team:Sheffield/outreach

From 2014.igem.org

Outreach

Manchester

Porto