Team:HokkaidoU Japan/Education
From 2013.igem.org
Human Practice
Education
At University Festival
We participated in Hokkaido University festival as iGEM HokkaidoU team. We did workshop described below for about 300 people.
An experiment of DNA extraction.
Aim
Getting to know "What is DNA?" or "DNA is surprisingly familiar to us". We thought that these activities will help citizens to understand synthetic biology.
Contents
- DNA extraction from banana
Visitors' Comments
- I understood that the double strand is not visible to the naked eye.
- It was an interesting experiment, it's like cooking!
Poster session "What DNA is?"
Aim
While experiment waiting time, we educate "What is DNA?" and "How to recombine gene" by using poster.
Contents
- About DNA
- About gene recombination
- About iGEM
- About our project of last year with poster translated in Japanese
Visitors' comment
- I'm glad to know about DNA in detail by this lecture.
Teammates' comment
- It was difficult for us to lecture about DNA or gene recombination without using technical terms. We assumed that it is natural that all of us know about biology, but citizens no more know about synthetic biology than we know about literature. Therefore, we thought that introducing our field is as important as doing some experiments. Citizens still have a bias against gene recombination, which we are doing right now.
- Through this workshop experience, we learned that gaining exact knowledge and discussion will help citizens to become familiar to gene recombination. We would like to continue these activities, hoping that someday, citizen could discuss more about our field.
Visiting Highschool
Presentation of DNA and iGEM
We organized workshops at two high schools(Ritsumeikan high school & Kaisei high school); its aim was education about DNA and introduction about iGEM.
Aim
Through the presentation, we wanted to generalize iGEM and encourage high school students to participate in iGEM competition.
Contents
- Lecture about DNA and how we design genes.
- Presentation about iGEM.
Students' comment
- It was a very interesting presentation. It was very instructive because I didn't know synthetic biology.
Brain storming and discussion with high school students
Aim
We wanted to educate the broad usability of gene recombination; through imagining and discussion about new bio-devices.
Contents
We categorized the new bio-devices which high school students imagined and discussed those possibility.
Students' comment
- It was surprising that even students can make bio-devices which help people. I wished there should be devices that were applicable to study of biology.
Pictures at highschool
Lots of fun!