Team:Edinburgh/Education


Team Edinburgh Finding NEMO

CHILDREN BOOK

this year the University of Edinburgh developed a cheap and fast biosensor that could detect multiple molecules in the water. Based on the children story “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” the team made a children book that will be used during their outreach programs by NGOs and the University of Edinburgh. Speaking with various representatives from NGOs that are engaged in fighting environmental pollution that affects drinking water and wastewater the team found out that children are very receptive towards such issues and are the best catalyst in initiating active community participation by encouraging their parents to take action by engaging/contacting their water provider, local government and environmental agencies.

"Schools were finding it very useful ... to inform the children because the school children when they are informed they go home and inform family members and information is disseminated... children are very sensitive and interested"
Ina Coseru National Environmental Center
This children book is part of “ENVIROSPEAKS” a wider collaboration project by iGEM RUM. we want to dedicate this children book to our colleagues in Puerto Rico and the other iGEM team trying to solve environmental pollution.

EDUCATIONAL KIT

The biosesensor that we produced could be easily be used as an educational kit to teach environmental issues as well as principles of synthetic biology/biology to middle-schoolers. In that regard we followed the pioneering work layed down by the "BioBits TM Bright: A fluorescent synthetic biology education kit" to design a potential educational kit


Educational biology kit can be designed base on our project. Innovative experiments using freeze-dried cell-free extracts in classrooms and other occasions with poor resource provided can be conducted. It requires no culture of bacteria, no sophisticated laboratory equipment, and involves no health problems. By creating an online database, teachers and students can design experiments together and share their results.


This year was not possible for us to engage in direct activities with children.
Even if a physical version of the biosensor was not available during the year (the CODIV19 pandemic forced the team to physically produce the biosensor between September and October in 3 weeks of lab work ) since the start of the pandemic the team decided to not engage in direct face-to-face activities with children due to safety and moral concerns


MOBILE GAME

We worked on a concept of mobile and location-based videogame where children equipped with our biosensor and a cellphone with Near-Infrared camera could gather environmental data while gathering points and special prizes. We tried to apply the principle of gamification to environmental monitoring and we ended with a concept that resembles location base games such as Pokemon GO and Ingress. For now, the videogame is in the development stage and only the basic mockup, storyline and artwork are completed. During pre-production, we received feedback and positive responses from people that had experiences in public mobilisation.


MINECRAFT WORLD

Knowing that the production of the mobile game was exceeding the length of the competition we decided to create a Minecraft world to present our results to a wider public and engage children between aged 10-15 years.
In our world, it is possible to go to a big treasure hunt or guided tour between molecules, pathogens, laboratories and flying structures.
The main structures are the E.Coli, the Coronavirus, the DNA double helix, the Arsenic molecule and our giant logo, we have also secondary structures such as labs, an aquarium, fountains, a giant stage whit functional logic gates.
Since the University of Nottingham also used Minecraft to make an interactive game we merged our world! Now it is possible to play both maps in a single Minecraft world
Lastly while designing the Minecraft world we tried to use principles of gamification and storytelling. (Roleplay, Puzzles, Points, Leaderboards)