Education for children
To make children be more interested in biology and popularize some basic biological concepts among them, we invited near 20 pupils to visit our laboratory. In the morning of August 17th, these children and some of their parents came to Peking University and attended a lecture given by ZHANG Yihao, the team leader.
By using plain words, he made it easy for these children to understand the basic concepts of biological field and the core ideas of synthetic biology. What is the basic substance of life? What caused creatures on the earth so diversified and fascinating? And can scientists make life which can own fancy functions? These children have found the answers to all these questions above.
In the afternoon, they visited iGEM labs of Peking University. Having known how the biological researchers work in the labs, they all indicated they hope to learn more about life sciences.
Education for High School Students
Due to difficult schoolwork and huge pressure among most high school students, they know little about scientific researches, not to mention synthetic biology. Even when they are asked what they want to do in the future, they are puzzled about it with no ambitions of their future life.
On August 23th, Peking iGEM team members came to Zhenghe No.1 Middle School of Fujian Province, and YE yixuan gave some of the high school students an overview of synthetic biology and the project of Peking this year.
More than 60 students have attended the lecture, all of whom are the students being confronted with the choice of their major fields in the university. Ye gave a brief introduction of synthetic biology to them and she was ingenious to combine the basic concepts of synthetic biology with what they had learned in school. Heated discussion about biology and future life was provoked that day in a friendly atmosphere. After that, the project of Peking iGEM team this year was also presented, for the purpose of arousing their interest in this field.
Education for Adults
Handing out propagandistic handbooks is another approach of scientific education for public. We have done a comprehensive literature review about tuberculosis and synthetic biology and made a well-designed propagandist handbook.
After the questionnaire surveys, we gave them to our informants to spread the knowledge of TB control and synthetic biology.
In these handbooks, we introduce the basic information of tuberculosis, route of transmission, diagnosis methods and its treatment, along with the national policies of free diagnosis and treatment on tuberculosis. After that, we give a brief description of the history of synthetic biology. The basic ideas in this field are illustrated using a flow chart. In such a small handbook, many vivid but scientific pictures are shown for the readers. We’ve done our best to make the words easy to be understood but rigorous.
