Team:BYU Provo/Outreach/OremLibrary

Human Practices

Library Visit

The Adventure of Baxter Bacteria

Overview

Changing the world starts with little things. Even little people. That was our idea in teaching youngsters about Synthetic Biology. We wanted to dispel myths and stigmas along with fears about what people think Synthetic Biology is. Since the unknown is what is the most likely to scare, we wanted to educate the children in our neighborhood about what Synthetic Biology is, why it's not scary and why we think it's REALLY COOL.

At the Orem Public Library, we taught 5-10 year olds the basics of biology. What is a virus? What is a plasmid? What is bacteria? We showed them what they are and how we can use them to do amazing things.

Since we were at a Public Library, we of course had to read a book! Our fun story about Baxter Bacteria and his adventures reinforced the principles that we had taught them. They laughed when the plasmid gave Baxter "powers" and cheered when Baxter made it home safe.

By the end of the book reading, the kids were ready to make their very own projects. With the aid of one of our team members, ten groups of children made their way to the stage to show off the projects they thought of with the poster they drew themselves. All the presentations were very exciting, as no idea was a bad one.

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Introduction

The following is the brief introduction of synthetic biology we gave.

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Story Reading

This is the first edition of our children's book: The Adventure of Baxter Bacteria. It's also the story we shared with kids during our library reading. Please click on Next Page or Previous Page to flip through the book.

For our final/published edition of The Adventure of Baxter Bacteria, please click here.

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Pictures

Outreach Video

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