Team:AFCM-Egypt/Education
Science Education
Synfair
One of our prime objectives has always been imparting scientific attitudes in the younger generations and ensuring that Egypt has a truly dedicated population of inquisitive and motivated young people, and one of our main Education activities that helped us achieve this objective was our outstanding "SynFair". The SynFair is a program where we take in students and teach them the basics of SynBio in a series of workshops and then host them again by the end of the summer for a science-fair style competition. This year we took it to a whole new level, increasing the number of students and their age groups.
Following last year's lead, we welcomed the students to our campus in January 2020 and introduced them to the world of SynBio. With the help of the Egyptian Ministry of Education, we were able to multiply the numbers of students who attended the competition last year_ the total number of students exceeded 120 and the smallest group we taught this year was 40 students. To ensure diversity of education, we invited students from different Egyptian governorates all across the country; and to ensure diversity of age, we chose students from all age groups, from primary to preparatory and high schools. Fortunately, all our lectures were held before the Covid-19 pandemic so were able to bring about the students into lecture halls safely.
Younger students (primary school) were given a taste of basics of molecular biology and biobrick. They created plastic models of bacteria and learned about plasmids and restriction enzymes using a paper-based activity. They also got the chance to swab different surfaces and grow bacterial cultures in an effort to teach them that bacteria are all around us.
Older students (preparatory school), however, were taught about synbio as well as the scientific method, they learned how to conduct a sound scientific experiment, define variables, formulate hypotheses and test them.
As for high school students, they learned about bioinformatics, biosafety and biosecurity. We held an interactive DNA extraction from strawberries class. They also learned about DNA circuits and logic gates.
Things were a bit harder as ages of the students increased. In a highly interactive atmosphere, every group was educated in simple ways that fit the students' abilities to understand the topics. To guarantee that students understood the topics, quizzes were held all over the course in addition to the problem and team-based learning cases we presented.
The real assessment to our work was the SynFair event itself; the science fair where students showcased their projects. However, this year the whole thing was virtual. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic circumstances which did not come to our favor, we prepared the competition online through a one month duration, giving the participating students chance to show their best work. The submitted projects were evaluated by an elite group of judges from different scientific levels and backgrounds. Feedbacks from both the judges and the participating students were outstanding; everyone was fascinated by the how the students understood the proposed topics even with their varying ages and educational levels.
The winning students were rewarded and given prizes according to their presentations. The first place winner was also given a chance to join the iGEM African Meetup that we prepared to present their work in front of the whole African IGEM community.
Synbio Sessions
As an iGEM team we believe that we share a common passion and enthusiasm towards science and knowledge like all the iGEM community. That is why we are constantly grinding to attain new knowledge. This eagerness towards learning gave us a sense of responsibility to teach others what we have acquired of understanding in modern and elegant methods. For that exact reason we had an optimistic plan to make synthetic biology lectures for a wide range of recipients from all age groups. We made sure our lectures were easy, understandable and customized to fit all the levels where we try to build the wall of knowledge in their minds from the ground up.
Unfortunately the world’s status was unstable due to the devastating COVID-19 pandemic this year, so we couldn’t present our material in the conventional teaching methods. We rapidly tried to fit in and turned to online teaching through numerous platforms including social media and YouTube.
The sessions were staged starting with the people who have no or little information about the DNA, genes, nucleotides, proteins and all the basics that would help them reach furthers levels in the synthetic biology field, ending up with sessions for the advanced stage, delivering the highest percentage of the acquaintance we already have.