Our education diary!
We wanted to make science education seminars that were applicable to all different ages. Throughout the summer we tested these
in different settings to receive feedback on our materials and see how we could better them. Below follows a comprehensive
list of the workshops we did.
Open Bert_the_good_bacterium.pdf (English version)
Open Bert_de_goede_bacterie.pdf (Dutch version)
Open Bernard_la_bonne_bactérie.pdf (French version)
Open Bert_de_goede_bacterie.pdf (Dutch version)
Open Bernard_la_bonne_bactérie.pdf (French version)
Day 1
It’s start of the summer! Time to go full steam ahead on our iGEM project, that also means
our education activities😀. Let’s start with a very big project: we want to write a childrens book. The concept
is that this book tells the tale of a bacterium named Bert who is upset that bacteria don’t have a good
reputation among humans. He then decides to introduce the children to the bacterial world to show them that not all
bacteria are bad.
Day 15
Some of our texts are being finished and the first pages were already sent to Stijn (our designer), look at these early designs!
Day 30
The text is finished! Thank god we have some parents working in our lab that could proofread this text,
otherwise we would have words like aeration tank in there, yikes. Thanks Mike!
Day 35
We have finished a first pdf! Time to test it on some kids 😀. We did a reading of the book to the children!
(aaaah look at the pictures!) Afterwards the kids got to draw their favorite bacteria and explain why this
one was so inspiring to them.
Day 54
Thanks to the imput from the event with the kids we were able to make our last changes to the book and finally
sent it to the printer! We’re so happy with the final version that arrived. We decided to print it in Dutch so
that we could gift some copies to the people who helped us with our project as a thank you 😀. We also read it to
a bunch of really excited kids at the library of Koekelberg.
Open lesson plan water filtration for kids
We wanted to educate children about science in a playful way and therefore we thought of a series of fun
experiments that could make any child excited about science . Since our project is focused on water we wanted
to do a workshop on how to build your own water filter. Kids got to go around a park and collect everything
that they could find, from sticks to sand to some materials we provided like cotton et cetera and compete to
clean mud filled water as soon as possible. We also provided a fun game to show how water can bring drawings
to life!
We performed this activity at “Jes Brussel” and JCW antwerp to receive feedback. Here you can find the pictures.
We performed this activity at “Jes Brussel” and JCW antwerp to receive feedback. Here you can find the pictures.
Lesson plan Pictobingo
Zomerklap Antwerp is an organization that helps kids from all different backgrounds learn the tricky Dutch
language. To teach some basic vocabulary on climate and water we devised a game called “Pictobingo”. In
pictobingo everyone needs to draw out a word, the other kids have a ‘bingo card’ and need to mark out
the correct word that was drawn. It was really fun to test this activity with the kids of Zomerklap
to get some insights in their experience performing this activity, they loved it!
Introduction to molecular biology
Wael and Ines from our team got to go back to their high school from 4 years ago and give a workshop to the
students there. The students did not have any background in molecular biology so we thought this would be
the perfect opportunity to introduce them to the wonderful world of synthetic biology. After a short introduction
in molecular biology we explained our project in a comprehensive way and gave some more insights in the wonders
of synthetic biology! (Future iGEM members in the making?)
Open slideshow Who did it? A true crime story (whithout notes).pdf
Open slideshow Who did it? A true crime story (note version)
Open time schedule and used protocols
Open Lesson plan Who did it? A true crime story
Open slideshow Who did it? A true crime story (note version)
Open time schedule and used protocols
Open Lesson plan Who did it? A true crime story
Thanks to Eveline Peeters we got the opportunity to teach a course to bachelors from all over the world in
biological fields. Since they all had some lab experience we decided to do an exercise on critical thinking
in the lab, where experiments failed. By offering protocols and a logbook of everything we did the students
could figure out what went wrong.
Presentation workshop Leuven
In collaboration with iGEM KU Leuven we got to perform a workshop at their event in Leuven in collaboration with
the charity “Stop Darmkanker”. At this workshop, devised for anyone passing by with an interest in science (or
cake ;) ) we got to give 2 interactive lectures on what iGEM is and we challenged them to come up with their
own iGEM projects!