"

From 2013.igem.org

What we did

Strange Nature is a writing competition for Australian high-school students. It is hosted on the website http://strangenature.org/ and provides a platform for students to explore Synthetic Biology. It is an attempt to move past science communication that forces knowledge or opinion down people’s throats, perhaps lubricated by captivating images or videos. We have created a competition that rewards those who explore the science themselves and write scientifically credible pieces.

Why we did it

Synthetic Biology in Australia

Synthetic Biology isn’t really a thing in Australia. It’s not a term familiar to the general public or to many scientists and engineers in the field. We wanted to address this shortcoming by focusing on the generation who will change, and have their lives changed by, the field of Synthetic Biology.

Targeted science communication

Competitions like Strange Nature have been used in the past to quantify misconceptions about science. For instance, the table below is taken from a paper published in the journal Genetics in 2008. Results like these can provide important feedback to teachers and science communicators, for instance, allowing iGEM teams to create human practice initiatives that are targeted to specific misconceptions rather than general introductions to the field.

How we did it

Website

We scoured the internet for resources, videos, animations, images, articles and more. We kept hold of the most interesting stuff and presented it in an accessible manner, along with a quiz (http://strangenature.org/quiz.html), a poll (http://strangenature.org/ethics.html) and a cool logo for the competition by designer Aleisa Jelbart (https://www.facebook.com/aleisajelbartdesigns). We received helpful feedback on our website from Australian science communicators (http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/) and from the creator of the NewScientist writing competition (http://newscientistprize.org/).

Sponsorship

We approached many prominent Biotech firms seeking sponsorship and were fortunate enough to receive an offer of $500 from IDT, which became our grand prize. Yagiz Alp Aksoy is a SynBio enthusiast and iGEMer from Macquarie University, Australia. He was also excited by the competition and offered $350 for the coolest application of SynBio.

Judges

Cormick, Yagiz, Nicola. MQ tried to help find judges.

Publicity

To publicise the competition we sought the assistance of the Australian Science Teacher’s Association, the Gifted and Talented Students Organisations in each state, the Association of Independent Schools, CSIRO Education, as well as numerous home-schooling organisations and online education portals. We will also sent emails and made phone calls to schools. The Macquarie University iGEM team (https://2013.igem.org/Team:Macquarie_Australia) also helped us publicise the competition by contacting their old schools.