Team:Austin UTexas/Education
Contents
Education
Our mission
While the research that’s being done in the field of synthetic biology is changing our understanding of science every day, that knowledge is often unreachable to the general public. It is essential that research groups, like our UT iGEM team, take the time to create and publish materials that share the work we’re doing, in order to expand our findings and accomplishments beyond the scientific community. The easiest way to push this movement of science communication is by beginning with the students. As a team of student researchers, we hope to actively share our research with our fellow peers whether they’re in science or not, whether they’re at UT or not and whether they’re in college or not. Learning is only possible when resources are created by those who possess the knowledge and we hope to make these resources accessible to all who wish to learn.
The social media platform we’ve chosen to publish updates on our project is Instagram! Lately instagram is being transformed to create informational “powerpoint” style posts. With our graphics and simple posts, our Instagram page will function in a way where learning about science can be casual and easy. This platform also allows us to build community with followers of any age and background. When someone sees our post on their feed, even just a quick read through about what our team is accomplishing can slowly increase their exposure and familiarity with synthetic biology! Follow us @UT_austin_igem
As much as disseminating the information is important, the next key component of building a scientific community is starting conversation. First, in order to properly learn, questions and answers must actively be exchanged to properly create a foundational understanding. And second, science isn’t just a one way stream of teaching, it’s about what we can learn and share with each other. Getting feedback and new ideas from others allows us to see our research in new perspectives, which is crucial to development. The platform we’ve chosen to accomplish this is Twitter. While twitter may commonly be viewed as an online social hub, it is also commonly used to increase awareness around certain topics or issues and create conversation. Threads and polls are useful tools to facilitate interaction with our audience that we have used. Follow our Twitter @UT_iGEM
Powtoons
In order to help with educating the public about what our iGEM team is doing, we are created a Powtoons video to explain our overall goal and development process. Powtoons communicates information in an easy and accessible format, so this will allow us to share our project in a simple and fun format with a viewer from any background.
Instagram and Twitter updates
Follow us on Twitter @UT_iGEM and Instagram @UT_austin_igem <p>Below is the logo we'll be using for our social media pages!
