Team:NCKU Tainan/Inclusion
Overview
Acknowledging the importance of raising public awareness of glaucoma, we planned a series of activities to meet this purpose. However, we found that raising awareness was not easy. Whether it was organising a public health promotion campaign about glaucoma or introducing synthetic biology principles that we used in Eye kNOw, the public’s unshakeable perception combined with their limited background knowledge, had become our biggest obstacles.
In Taiwan, people from different walks of life or generations may receive different levels of education, which is then further exacerbated by the difference of language choice and proficiency between generations (Taiwanese dialect vs Chinese). These issues have various manifestations among people of different ages. For example, most elderly in Taiwan use the Taiwanese dialect in daily speech, and they don't have complete or even any knowledge in synthetic biology. In addition, some elderly are pretty stubborn due to their established impression against some new products or knowledge, and the first reactions are most often repulsive.
In contrast, young people are more likely to accept new knowledge. However, the awareness level of glaucoma is considerably low among them as they are under the mindset that glaucoma is not relevant for their age. Therefore, in our educational activities, we have devised different educational methods for different generations of ethnic groups to eliminate these problems. Apart from that, online learning has become more popular in recent years, therefore we employed the power of social media and created a video to spread our knowledge out and wide to the public through the vast internet.
Children
Inspire children's interests in science and biology through eye-catching teaching methods.
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Adolescents
Elderly
Public
For the children
Read for Love Summer Camp
Research indicates that many species have responsive learning cycles, windows of opportunity through which the right kind of environmental stimuli may have an effect outside of that window that will not occur at all or in the same way. Humans, too, seem to have sensitive periods - when they are still children. Hence, we decided to educate children, hoping to expose them to the importance of glaucoma from a young age. First, we participated in the Read for Love Summer Camp organized by the NCKU Library and the Saint Island Charity Foundation at the end of July. The audience is mainly elementary school students. Therefore, we used a lot of pictures and animation that can draw the children's attention. We introduced synthetic biology by applying simple and easy-to-understand learning tools. We even used Microsoft Powerpoint animation to simulate the visual field defect of glaucoma, allowing them a chance to experience and gain more understanding on glaucoma. This experience taught us the importance of coming up with more hands-on or eye-catching teaching methods in order to catch the children’s attention. We also had to learn how to convey information to children who have a less solid understanding of the sciences.
For the adolescents
Tainan First Senior High School
Next, we organised a workshop for the Tainan First Senior High School scientific research club. During our discussion with the members of the research club, we learned that the knowledge of high school students on synthetic biology may be limited. Taking that into account, we opted to expand their knowledge, while sparking their creativity and imagination, by introducing some interesting past iGEM projects. By selecting projects that are closely integrated to our daily lives, such as the solution to cockroaches and the self-repairing cement, we were able to pique their interest into the power of synthetic biology in solving everyday problems. To add a twist of flavour into our workshop, we couldn’t help but to use some memes from the internet here and then to keep their attention high throughout the workshop with the sound of laughter. After the presentation by us, we divided the participants into multiple groups which are each guided by one of our team members for a mock brainstorming session, where they can have a hands-on experience of combining the aforementioned knowledge, and try to solve a problem using synthetic biology with the assistance of our team members. Last but not least, we took advantage of this great opportunity to raise awareness on glaucoma. In addition to a short crash course on the eye structure and the causes of glaucoma, we organised a DIY eye perimeter course, where the participants made their own eye perimeter to determine their peripheral visual field. Through this workshop, we hope that they can deeply understand the powers of synthetic biology and the dangers of glaucoma, and eventually be able to use their creativity to solve the problems we are facing with synthetic biology such as glaucoma. The positive feedback we received from this event made our day, which they pointed out that the teaching content subverted their existing impressions while being astonished to learn that biology can do more than they thought!
For the elderly
The Tainan Young Men’s Christian Association
In an effort to reach out to the elderly population, we contacted the YMCA nursing home in early August, for which we planned to give a short yet interesting lecture about glaucoma for the elderly. As most elderly people in Taiwan use the Taiwanese dialect in their daily conversation, thus we tried to convey all our messages in the Taiwanese dialect, like the concept of synthetic biology and the dangers of glaucoma. In our previous questionnaire survey on the considerations against synthetic biology, we found that safety is the number one factor that everyone considers disturbing, especially the elderly population, who represents an important target audience for our product. Therefore, we brought about the mode of operations of synthetic biology through animations while clearing up some misconceptions, hoping to eliminate their rejections of GMO and synthetic biology. With the aid of our PI, Dr. Hung, we tailored our lecture content with what the elderly are more interested in hearing and able to comprehend. Therefore, we revised the lecture content to focus more on explaining the symptoms of glaucoma, prevention methods and risk factors. Finally, through some small games, we allow the elderly to experience the world of blind people, so as to raise their vigilance against glaucoma.
For the public and the world
However, this is not enough. As we mentioned earlier, using the Internet to spread knowledge is a more effective method. So we did the following two online teaching events:
Glaucoma for dummies
During Glaucoma Awareness Week (June 29 – July 5), we made seven posts about general information on glaucoma and posted them on Facebook. We designed some infographics for our posts and captioned it using simple sentences for easier understanding. Considering that we are living in a fast-paced society where time is money, the information in these posts needs to be easily digested by audiences in order to make an impact.
For further information, please refer to the Education page.
Synthetic Biology in Five Levels
“if you can't explain it to a six year old you don't understand it yourself” -Albert Einstein
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a paradigm shift in the educational system, since most of the lectures are going online, it is vital to deliver the knowledge in a compacted and organized way. Five levels is a series of popular science videos produced by the media company WIRED, each episode they invite experts to explain one concept in their fields of expertise and deliver it to the audience in five different levels of complexity. The audience is usually composed of people of five different ages and education levels, from children, middle school students, college students, grad students, and professors. This posed an excellent example of inclusive education, as the content complexity increases, any viewer can understand this topic at some level. We were inspired by this series of videos and decided to make one of our own.
Since iGEM is a global synthetic biology competition, we thought it would be most suitable for us to explain the idea of synthetic biology to the public. During video content preparation, we’ve surveyed through all the five levels video series and iBiology seminar regarding synthetic biology in order to define synthetic biology precisely. Finally, we tailored five perspectives of synthetic biology that we will discuss with different levels of attendees.
1. Children: The infinite possibilities of synthetic biology.
2. Middle school students: The difference between synthetic biology and gene editing.
3. College students: The engineering point of view of synthetic biology.
4. Grad students: The advance of synthetic biology in basic research.
5. Experts: Common misconceptions of synthetic biology and how to establish a responsible research community of synthetic biology.
For our video please click here
We invited five people of different education levels, junior high, senior high, college students, postgraduate and professor. In the video, we first introduced synthetic biology and asked their thoughts about it. For junior high school students, we started by introducing DNA and used the characters from cartoons to show her the possibilities of synthetic biology. For senior high students, we discussed creating new DNA with synthetic biology, and explained the difference between gene editing and synthetic biology using article writing as a metaphor.
Next, we introduce specific definitions of synthetic biology to the college student, where we view the biology system as an engineering system, by rearranging the basic DNA part, we were able to generate predictable results. Graduate part, we had more discussion about how synthetic biology can advance basic research and even applied to her own project. Also, we discussed how in silico simulation helps us predict experiment results, which traditional biology seldom appreciates.
Finally, we were honored to invite our PI Dr. I-Son Ng to join this video. During our discussion, we clarified common misconceptions about synthetic biology from the general public, such as regarding synthetic biology or biotechnology only as GMO. We also discussed how to regulate the synthetic biology community, since great power comes with great responsibility.
We filmed this video in Mandarin, and added English subtitles to allow more people to understand our video and also synthetic biology. From children to adults all over the globe, this five levels video could provide a basic understanding of synthetic biology with this online video easily. With this video, we’ve brought the general public one step closer to synthetic biology, showing that synthetic biology has great potential to benefit humanity, yet there are still regulations to be made.
