Human Practices

• Corporative
• Educative
• Social

Educative axis

In this part of our Human Practices we performed activities focused to outreach and to promote knowledge about Synthetic Biology and about its impact in the society.

We were looking for non-scientific people, like common people in public places and highschool and undergraduate students, with whom we talked about Synthetic Biology, iGEM competition and our projects. We answered their doubts and we listened their opinions.

Educative axis

The activities that we developed in the educative axis of our Human Practices include informative conferences in schools, an exciting survey with bacteria, visits to parks and malls to survey and give information to people among others. As a final result of our work, we wrote about what we have been doing as part of iGEM competition to "EL TIEMPO", a important Colombian newspaper. When people at EL TIEMPO read our message,they were surprised and they wanted to help us to make our team and the competition public, so they wrote a page about us in their edition of September 14th. After that, many people wrote us asking for our projects and motivating us to continue in the competition, and of course, now we had more followers on fcbk and twitter :)

The Activities

Visiting malls in Bogotá D.C.

As scientists, we are very interested in the difussion of science, in the creation of knwoledge and to educate. With this motivation we were walking down the streets of Bogotá D.C, surrounding important malls to talk with common people. We told them about synthetic biology, biotechnology in Colombia, iGEM and our projects. We answered their questions about this topic and we gave them informative flyers with the basic information that anyone interested must know about synthetic biology.

Some pictures of our Human Practices' experience. You can see more pictures like these in our Gallery

See our informative flyer about Nicko:

                                                          File:Nicoksflyer.pdf

Furthermore we did surveys aimed to know the perception or any previous concepts that people had about synthetic biology. We asked them:

Our survey's results

• Do you know what synthetic biology is?
• What do you think when you hear "synthetic biology"?
• Do you belive that colombian scientist carry out research in genetics and genetic modification of organisms?
• Have you ever heard about iGEM cometition?
• Do you drink water treated with genetic modified bacteria if the treatment is guaranteed as safe?

We asked these questions to 40 random people, obtaining very interesting results:

Only one person said "I have heard the term before" when we asked for synthetic biology, and nobody knew iGEM Competition. Everyone had a "good" idea about the science in Colombia, because they belived that research in genetics and genetic engineering is carried out in our contry, but they did not know what exactly is being done.

The things turned more intersting when we asked them "What do you think when you hear "synthetic biology"?" somebody said right words like "new funtions", "artificial life" or "modifications", other people said unrelated words like "disposable" and was surprising heard unexpected words (for us) that too many people repeated, words like "Robots".

We show you the most frequent words that people said. The Interesting ones, the strange ones, the right ones, etc.

Everyone would be agree with drinking water treated with genetic modified bacteria, but only if it is approved by the national institute responsible of the water surveillance.

Probably the most importat fact in this experience was the good attitude which people listened us and their curiosity to know more about synthetic biology and about the colombian participation in iGEM.

Talking with families in a national park

In addition to our visit to malls, we visited the biggest public park in Bogotá D.C., "Parque Nacional Simón Bolivar", where we talked with people again. We were looking for families who give us the same information described above (the survey, the flyer and the feedback about their oppinion).

In this opportunity we also interacted with children to show them our pets, Nicko and Chimi. Children were very happy when we asked them a photo with us and with Nicko's picture. If you don't trust us, see the pictures ;)

• • • • FOTOS****

• • • • VIDEO?****

Conferences in Schools

Many of us when were in the school, some years ago, didn't know what to study, even many of us loved science, but we thought that it was of other planet, or at least, of other countries. We want kids in Colombia can think about doing science, that's why motivating and teaching kids about synthetic biology is an import axis of our Human Practices.

At first, we were nervous and anxious because of the children's reaction, we feared to they didn't pay attention to us, but when we stood up in front of them and began to tell our fascinating projects, they were quiet and frequently raised their hand to ask questions about what we were saying. After we finished our speech, most of them came closer and congratulated us and did questions like: ¿Where can we study microbiology? or ¿How can I do what you do?. Many of them ask for our emails and facebook profiles because they wanted to follow our performance, so we think we reached our goals (:

We were in schools of three different departments of our country: Cundinamarca, Valle del Cauca and Santander. We didn't want to centralize our activities only in Bogotá D.C., where we study and live, so, we took advantage of the fact that many of us are from different cities around the country and when these members were to visit their families, they socialized in their schools our projects, iGEM competition and, of course, synthetic biology.

Nicko & Chimi around the country

In conclusion this experience was amazing, we achieved our goals about difussion of knowledge but we also learned from the students and ther points of view were an important contribution.

In a highschool in Santander

In a highschool in Valle del Cauca

Don't forget you can see more pictures of these activities in our gallery!

The toher two axes:

Corporative

Social

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