Education
Overview
“The purpose of education is to enable young people to educate themselves throughout their lives.”—— Hutchings
Education is the beacon of civilization and illuminates the way forward of human beings. It not only imparts knowledge, but also shapes the hall of the soul and inspires the wisdom. Under the influence of education, we learn to think, explore and innovate, which gives us the strength to understand the world, to pursue the truth, to realize the dream. Education is the seed of the future. It sows hope in the hearts of children and cultivates them to become the leaders, innovators and builders of tomorrow. Without education and without constantly transferring our knowledge to the next generation, how can the society make progress? Therefore, this year, our HBUT-China team focus on synthetic biology science education of all ages, and takes children aged between 5-12 as our focus, doing a series of activities to spread synthetic biology and iGEM.
Timeline
Campus booth promotion (5.9)
On May 9th, in order to introduce our this year’s project to the teachers and students at our school and publicize the iGEM event and synthetic biology. We prepared interesting activities such as exchanging plastic products and writing eco-friendly stickers for gifts.
In the process of this activity, not only the students of our major actively participated, but also the international exchange students actively participated, to understand the iGEM event and our team and project.
We also collected more than 100 questionnaires and different kinds of plastic products and made environmentally friendly sticky stickers written by students.
Kindergarten presentation (5.15)
In China, we find that students in most areas only know something about biology in junior high school, and only have systematic learning of biology in high school. Therefore, our team plans to conduct a series of universal synthetic biology education for kindergarten children and cultivate their environmental awareness.
On May 15th, our team members contacted the kindergarten affiliated to Hubei University of Technology. We used the plastic bottles recycled during the campus booth to participate in the process activities, stimulate their imagination, and teach them the idea of recycling.
Team members aroused the strong interest of studying plastic knowledge of the children though knowledge quiz. The children actively raised their hands to answer questions. Team members also led the children to take part in the fun manual activities —— plastic bottles, plastic bottle model into a small plane.
The kindergarten teacher who led the children also gave a positive evaluation of the activity. She said that the activity not only popularized the knowledge of environmental protection in plastic bottles, but also exercised the children’s imagination and hands-on ability. After learning about the relevant knowledge of plastic, the children said that they were looking forward to learning more knowledge. According to the feedback of this survey, we decided to make a series of activities for the children to enter the laboratory.
Nursing home presentation (5.23)
To serve the society and contribute to the society, the iGEM team of Hubei University of Technology (HBUT-China) went into the nursing home on the afternoon of May 23 to carry out volunteer service, bringing love and warmth to the elderly. While bringing joy to the elderly, we also popularized the environmental knowledge related to plastic.
The team members led the elderly to turn the plastic rope into treasure and jointly make a million knot with traditional Chinese charm. While feeling the charm of traditional Chinese culture and sending happiness and health to the elderly, they also reflected the environmental awareness of recycling.
Enter the home for hearing-impaired children (6.17)
On the afternoon of June 17th, members of the publicity team of HBUT-China came to the Bo Yue Hearing and Language Rehabilitation Center of Hongshan District along with the staff of the Youth Association, and carried out the activity of “caring for hearing-impaired children”
In order to let the children truly understand the use of plastic and understand the idea of “turning waste into treasure”, the team members also led the children to participate in the fun handicraft activity —— plastic bag painting,using the plastic bag and paper to draw flowers.
High school lecture (6.18)
To let high school students learn about synthetic biology.On June 18, our team members went to the college entrance examination application site of a middle school in Wuhan and introduced the development of synthetic biology and iGEM competition to the students.
Children enter the laboratory (7.19)
On July 19th, we contacted the teachers of the kindergarten affiliated to HBUT again and hoped to take the children into the laboratory to visit and study.
The team members popularized the plastic pollution and the common microorganisms in their lives.We led the children into two groups. The older children drew on the ultra-clean workbench after a simple laboratory training, while the younger children painted their microorganisms on white paper.
Through the development of this activity, we led the children into the laboratory to experience the fun of doing experiments by hand and taught them the knowledge of plastic pollution and microorganisms in life, so as to further improve their understanding of biological knowledge.
The perfect end of the activity also makes us realize that there are still many children of their age who do not know anything about plastics and microbes, so we hope to improve our activity in the future.
Cloud volunteer teaching (8.3)
On August 3rd, we contacted the HBUT Love Student Association, hoping to let more children learn relevant knowledge in the form of online courses. We divide the science class into two themes, one is “plastic knowledge science class” and the other is “interesting lecture on microbiology”.
In the plastic knowledge science class, we taught the children the classification of plastic materials and the harm of micro-plastics, explained all kinds of plastic recycling methods, and showed them plastic handicrafts.
In the microbial fun lecture hall, we led the children to realize that there are microbes in the world, which affect our lives in all aspects, and popularized the classification, harm and use of microbes to the children.
The volunteers also gave a high evaluation of this class. In the process of accompanying the children to the class, they felt our teaching enthusiasm and full preparation, and also learned the knowledge of environmental protection and biology outside our major.
After a series of children’s activities, we launched a return visit. One of the children Kai Kai’s mother said that Kai Kai learned a lot in the plastic science activities. In everyday life, he can tell which items are made of plastic. And Kaikai also collects waste plastic bottles to make some simple handmade works.
After entering the laboratory, the children said that they felt very novel to the opening of the laboratory, realizing that in addition to seeing animals and plants, there were some ubiquitous magical microbes that could not be seen by the naked eye. These amazing microbes have created and changed the world.
These favorable feedbacks prove to some extent that our activities achieve the purpose of biological enlightenment for children. We are very happy about this.