Team:FDR-HB Peru/Partnership
[ Partnership ]
Partnership
Partnership with UPCH_Peru
We started our partnership with the UPCH-Peru team towards the beginning of June. We contacted the iGEM team to meet and shared our project with them, discussing our possible collaboration.
After a brainstorming session, the most feasible and efficient ideas we came up with were educational videos to be shared with schools around Lima. We considered this especially important as high school students following the national curriculum were lacking science education. The Peruvian Ministry of Education created a platform for virtual learning for all public school students but this did not include any lessons in science. As we were creating educational content for Peruvian students, it only made sense that our teams created this content together as the only two iGEM teams in Peru.
Jointly, we agreed to create videos explaining science topics and our projects so we could publish a video series together. As part of this project, we met virtually once a week to discuss the topics of the videos, peer edit our scripts and storyboards. Additionally, the editing groups of each team would meet separately to agree on the format of our videos. Our goal was to create a cohesive series that had common features so they could be joined as a whole. This included agreeing on the same fonts, the type of illustrations we would be including, defining the video’s structure, among other aspects of video editing.
By August, both of our teams began working on the most challenging part of the project: filming the footage of the speakers and creating the animations for the videos. We also collaborated on creating the content to promote these videos on social media. Ultimately, an educational and engaging video series resulted from our joint work.
The series was made up of 4 parts in total:
- Introduction to the scientific method
- Introduction to synthetic biology
- FDR-HB_Peru team project (3 segments)
- UPCH_Peru team project
The videos produced by our team are the following:
- Introduction to the scientific method
- FDR-HB_Peru team project
- Segment 1
- Segment 2
- Segment 3
1. Introduction to the scientific method.
2. FDR-HB_Peru Team Project: Part - 1.
3. FDR-HB_Peru Team Project: Part - 2.
4. FDR-HB_Peru Team Project: Part - 3.
Please note: These are only teasers of the videos due to file size upload restrictions. If you would like to see the full videos please visit our YouTube Channel.
Throughout our partnership, our teams also gave a presentation each in Journal Club Peru as part of a joint Facebook live transmission about iGEM to their over 9k followers. We also gave them guidance about the competition as it was their first year as an iGEM team.
The second large project that we collaborated on sought to continue our joint goal of informing fellow Peruvian students about synthetic biology and develop their curiosity for science in general. This project consisted of a workshop held for students from all over Peru. The workshop was held on Saturday, October 24th with over 70 students ages 14-16. The organizing team for this event was made up of students from both of our teams who met weekly (at least) to brainstorm ideas and plan all the activities for the workshop. It was very important to us for the organizing team to be made up of members from both of our teams. Students from the UPCH team provided special support with their greater experience teaching science to others and we made sure that the content was appropriate for our target audience (as it was students of the same ages as our iGEM team members).
Overall, the partnership between our team and the UPCH-Peru team was highly valuable. As a high school and collegiate team, we had different views and perspectives which increased the diversity of ideas, enriching our joint work.