EDUCATION
Overview
Education for the public, to reach the world for the public
At the beginning of the project, we surveyed the public about their views and interests in biology. We used Tencent questionnaire to distribute questionnaires to the people of all over the country,including social people, the college students, high school students and middle school students, and a total of 152 questionnaires were collected, the survey suggests that the students of middle school and high school were significantly more interested in biology than college students and social people. We collect the opinions of people and workers on biology in Pingtan, Putian, Nanping, Jincheng, and found that socialists refused to choose biology-related majors because the social background at that time could not provide good jobs and have poor career prospects, and the popularity of biology in China was terrible in the last century. However, for all students, some are willing to pursue biology-related majors or positions. Therefore, our education should start with the popularization of biology, and then move on to molecular biology and synthetic biology.
Public
May Day Garden Tour
On May 1, the Fuzhou Municipal Youth League Committee organized a sports activity for cultural attractions in the city. As volunteers, FAFU and FAFU-China team members are here to measure whether each person's temperature is normal, and at the same time, They distributed paper questionnaires.
Most of the masses indicated that because of the impact of epidemic factor, their physical strength was not as good as before, and they often felt bored at home. So they want to participate in this activity to relax the mind while exercising.
Feedback: Exercise is a necessary factor in the healthy development of people, and the same is true for students in school. Our school has closed the playground which has been used it as a place for nucleic acid testing due to the epidemic, and the health of students has been greatly affected. Therefore, we organized a “sporting tick off” activity in the school and set up a question answering session.
Countryside
The purpose of education is to advance society in order to improve people's way of life. Therefore, it is even more important that we develop our educational activities with a view to having a positive impact on the region through the dissemination of science. The economy is the lifeblood of regional development and will directly affect the development of the local education sector. Therefore while we carry out science communication, we also consider how we can use what we have learnt to improve the quality of life of people in poor areas.
We do our best to make our science communication accessible to society as a whole. Education policies and employment policies have been tilted toward rural areas in China in the past two years. According to statistics, the number of junior high schools and primary schools in China's rural areas has decreased year by year, with a total of 740 high schools, 14,477 junior high schools and 89,000 primary schools in rural China in 2019. Among them, in the 7 years from 2013 to 2019, more than 50,000 rural primary schools were abolished or merged(Huaxia Times, 'Number of rural schools declining year by year', 2021.5.31). For the education level of rural people, we collected the education level of rural people in China (China Rural Yearbook) from 2013 to 2019 (2020-2022 data not published) and found that most rural people have education level of junior high school and below. This may be due to regional remoteness and economic reasons. It is therefore necessary for people living in rural areas to disseminate scientific knowledge, which may help their production and life.
We hope that some impact will be made by what we've learned, and we really want to do something that can help them. So we started a 2-day rural education campaign.
On the first day we came to Pingtan, which is a beautiful island. Most of it is rural, and mostly growing some tropical fruits and salt-tolerant crops. Our leading teachers and classmates explained to the villagers how to control the diseases and pests of some crops. After that, we also assist farmers with work in their fields.
The next day we headed to the aquaculture village. The villagers introduced us to the abalone habits and related diseases. We are not very familiar with aquatic products, we just help them to replace the water in the pool and clean up the dirt. And then we went to their office for an interview and made a detailed record. Maybe that could inspire our project next year.
In order to have a sustainable impact, we decided to go to the countryside every year to volunteer for education after that. At the same time, we donated the money from our online live education to the Red Cross Society of China, hoping to help the construction of education in remote areas. Although the amount is not much, we will improve the way we educate online in the future and bring more benefits.
Pingtan is a beautiful island, mainly focused on tourism, farming and aquaculture. We travelled to Pingtan to carry out two days of social research. Below are the problems we gathered from our research, which we will try to improve in the future.
The research and study industry is dismal
Pingtan has a large area of lawn for a large number of people to play and carry out activities. In recent years, due to the epidemic, people from all over the world have been travelling less. The situation has not only had an impact on tourism, but has also hindered the advancement of the research and learning industry. Previously, Pingtan Lvsheng Integrated Agriculture Company Limited received a large number of students to conduct research activities here every year, but in the last two years, the number of people participating in research has decreased and therefore the company's source of income has decreased significantly.
Poor crop growth
In order to overcome the difficulties caused by the epidemic and to increase the source of income, the company chose to plant two crops, passion fruit and sweet potato, for profit based on the large area of land it originally owned. Among them, there was no obvious poor growth of sweet potatoes, probably because the local soil and other environmental factors in Pingtan are suitable for the growth of sweet potatoes. However, the growth of passion fruit was poor, the fields were overgrown with weeds, most of the grafted passion fruit seedlings were wilted, and the only remaining seedlings had fewer green leaves, fearing low fruit production, lower quality and poorer harvests. Through conversation with the farmer, we learnt that the orchard had not been weeded, sprayed and fertilised in a timely manner, and that the grafting of the seedlings had lacked regulation and management, and that passion fruit is a crop that requires more stringent environmental conditions.
Lower sales in aquaculture
The epidemic had an impact on abalone sales. Although the abalone website was still able to operate normally, the epidemic resulted in lower selling prices for abalone. The revenue of enterprises was only half of the level before the epidemic. In addition, abalone farming is also affected by the marine climate, as certain stages of abalone growth require seawater, and natural disasters such as typhoons can affect lower production, which is far more damaging than the epidemic.
Lower income levels of residents
However, the epidemic has to a certain extent reduced the public's desire and purchasing power, and the selling price of marine products has dropped significantly, resulting in a situation where villagers have enough products to sell to the outside world, but the profit they make is much less than before, and ultimately the income level of the residents is reduced.
Insufficient infrastructure to build a tourism industry
Both are relatively pristine villages with beautiful scenery, but there are deficiencies if tourism is developed. In this hot area of Pingtan, tourists tend to feel tired during their walks, but there are few restaurants in the village that can provide food and water for tourists, and there are no seats for resting along the road. There is also a need for a tourist map to help visitors find their way around the area and for proper promotion to raise awareness of the area, all of which need to be considered if tourism is to be developed in both villages.
Finally, we took a group photo with the locals at the beautiful seaside. Such an unforgettable educational event!
Popular science comics
In April, FAFU contacted OUC-China, who initially proposed to use the form of picture books, but we finally decided to use the widely circulated comic book form in consideration of the small audience of picture books and the lack of influence in society. After the communication between team members , they found that the masses often behaved as a manifestation of rejection when faced with obscure biological terms. This is often the biggest obstacle to popular science education. In order to overcome this difficulty, FAFU organized teams from BIT, XMU-China, JIANGNAN-CHINA, OUC-China and NEFU-China, transform the difficult experimental principles and processes into vivid comic form, so that the public can better and more thoroughly understand synthetic biology and our iGEM topics. Finally, we bind the book, printed it into books, and distribute them on campus and in the community. We are also showcasing on public platforms such as bilibili and WeChat, and as of October 5, 2022, the number of views is 1001 (the PDF of comic books). Video is a very popular medium today, and in the future, we intend to make the manga into an audio animation and release it on more platforms!
Feedback: Some audiences react that most people do not know or even are not interested in biology, which greatly hinders the development of modern biology in society, and thus leads to the birth of some rumors on the Internet. A reader left a message at the bottom of the comic: There is some fraudulent information related to the epidemic in Fuzhou, and the interests of some people have been damaged, so our team members began to look for rumors on the Internet and debunk rumors on our WeChat platform
English:
The Rumor Debunking Platform
Based on popular feedback, we have gathered a lot of rumors related to biology and the COVID-19 pandemic. We explain what we have learned on the platform in simple language, with the aim of making our information understandable to more people. As soon as this article was published, it received a lot of views and backstage comments, so we also have great confidence to continue this section and do better
The Science Popularization Platform
While debunking rumors, we also popularize biology knowledge and biological news around more people. Most importantly, the FAFU team allows those around them to learn the most about synthetic biology and fully understand synthetic biology in life. We have published dozens of popular science articles on multiple platforms, all of which have received good views.
Synthetic Biology Handbook
JLU-China is our Partnership. In August they invited us to co-author this book. It is mainly for future students who want to participate in iGEM but have no experience. In the book, FAFU shared how to do teamwork in iGEM, design ideas of human practice and hardware design ideas. Many thanks to the JLU-China team for the integration and layout of the relevant information. The following are the iGEM teams that participated in the Handbook.
Kindergarten
Picture Books
In these years since the COVID-19 pandemic, public awareness of virus preparedness has increased dramatically. However, the process and mechanism of virus infection on the human body are not familiar. As for younger students, we have created a series of picture books related to viruses and cells to make children more aware of the several spread ways of the virus and how to stop it from spreading from person to person. They will have a better sense of preparedness in the face of future epidemics.
The PDF
Go to the Kindergarten
Children like to play and want to experience some new and strange things, so the holding of offline activities is effective and necessary for lower school students. We visited kindergartens in two provinces: Fujian Province and Shandong Province.
Fujian Province
In Fujian Province, FAFU went to the kindergarten affiliated to Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University to get in touch with the principal. Under the condition of permission, we launched an offline science popularization game activity on June 30. We made a PPT mini-game to let children understand the complementary pairing of bases and the structure of DNA through puzzles and answers.
Shandong Province
On July 30th, FAFU got in touch at OUC-China and they warmly invited us to Shandong Province to host an event with them, after which we went to Sanliqiao Community Kindergarten in Shandong Province on August 10th. Before the activity, we learned from the teachers in the class that the children very love to play with plasticine, so we prepared many colors of plasticine. In the classroom, children use their rich imagination to make works about infecting cells with viruses and how we defeat viruses.
High School
In mid-July, the iGEM team in China held an online exchange meeting, and we made our arrangements and project content into a PPT to speak at the conference, and marked some of the problems we faced at that time, hoping to get help in this online exchange
Online Joint Courses
After the conference, the Tsinghua team contacted us and anted to hold a joint teaching event online together.The FAFU team is the main organizer of this event, working with Tsinghua to produce promotional articles before class, and a total of 1564 people read the article. Prior to the course, the FAFU team produced and distributed a questionnaire. We count information such as the geographical location and age of the audience, and the statistical results are shown in the figure. At the same time, we collected what students want to know,,we have a clearer understanding of their interests through the way of word cloud.
During the course, the FAFU team is responsible for the work of the moderator, answering some of the questions raised by the students, and responsible for the statistics and making charts after the course.
In addition to the staff who organized the event, 225 students eventually participated in our course, and even attracted three students from Singapore and Australia. We recorded each lesson as a video and uploaded it to the Bilibili video platform after the lesson, and as of October 10, it had been viewed 615
At the end of the course, we collected the contact information of the students participating in the course, and we randomly selected several students to give gifts. For all the students who participated in the course, we made an electronic version of the postcard, and on the right side were the avatars of all the participating students on the Internet, which were eserved as a souvenir..
the postcard, and on the right side were the avatars of all the participating students on the Internet, which were eserved as a souvenir..
Below is our lesson content, PDF:
Jincheng No.1 Middle School
Jincheng No.1 Middle School is a school that loves research and discipline competitions, and has won many awards in competitions such as the China High School Biology Olympaid (CHSBO) and the National Olympiad in Information in Provinces (NOIP), and has achieved excellent results in the college entrance examination every year, so it enjoys a good reputation in colleges and universities across the country. On August 10th, we got in touch with the current class teacher of Jincheng No.1 Middle School in Jincheng City, Shanxi Province. Due to the recurrence of hundreds of positive cases of COVID-19 in China on August 7, our team members were denied access to campus. Therefore, we used the Tencent conference live broadcast to invite students from Jincheng No.1 Middle School to enter the classroom.
In class, we first explained the development process of synthetic biology and the typical cases of synthetic biology around us, and then we explained the topics of the FAFU team in 2022. The students loved the iGEM competition very much and asked us which universities in China had iGEM teams and how to participate in iGEM. The entire course lasted 1 hour and 32 minutes
After class, the FAFU team recommended iGEM to Ms. Zhang Caiqin, the head of the Department of Biology of Jincheng No.1 Middle School, hoping to drive more high school students to join the team of iGEM.
Feedback：Because of the resurgence of COVID-19, we have no way to get into more high school classrooms. Therefore, we intend to record all our course content into a video course and publish it on the video platform later, hoping that more students will learn about synthetic biology, learn synthetic biology and contribute more to synthetic biology.
Micro-lessons
It is not very smooth in offline education in secondary, so we changed into the form of recording lessons. The course content includes synthetic biology, molecular biology and other courses. We invited the iGEM team of Jilin University and Tsinghua University to record our course together. As of October 10, the course has been broadcast 10 times.
Feedback：Since the number of plays is only 10 times and the click rate is not very high, we contacted some of the viewers who left the message and asked them to help find our deficiencies. "Our course format is too old," they said,"and it can be paired with dynamic music and a lively lecture style, which can be accepted by more people."
Science and Technology Museum
After nearly a month of planning, we held an offline science popularization activity in Putian Science and Technology Museum on the afternoon of August 4. According to the QR code check-in table at the entrance of the venue, a total of 293 people participated in this science popularization activity. The whole activity process is strictly in accordance with the document requirements of the Implementation Opinions on the Normalization of the Prevention and Control of the New Crown Pneumonia Epidemic in Cultural Tourism Places issued by Fujian Province in May 2020, and after the event, there were no safety problems, which was a successful offline science popularization activity!
PS：Unfortunately, due to the possibility of obtaining the consent of the guardians of all participating minors in the future, we only show photos with the Deputy Curator on the wiki.
University
Lecture
For biology students, designing primers to build vectors and other operations require the use of corresponding software. According to the survey, 73% of students in our school do not use software such as Snapgene. That's why we conduct training sessions on related software.We started with the competition program, to how to design primers, plasmids, to the corresponding computer software.
Orienteering
September is the day of school for all freshmen. Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University is a very large and beautiful school, but the freshmen are not familiar with the campus and the future university life when they have just entered the university. In previous events and surveys, we found that the physical fitness of high school students and college students was significantly low, so YiNing Wang contacted the department of the College of Plant Protection and jointly organized a running garden tour on campus. Everyone needs to follow the map route and tick off a fixed place. We have prepared a number of topics related to molecular biology and synthetic biology to be placed in several specific locations. After answering the right questions, you can get rewards. Teams that reach the finish line in the shortest time will also receive rewards.
Good physical fitness can provide good conditions for learning. The sports event was held very successful and we hope to continue it in the following annual iGEM competitions
Here are our rules of the game
Welcome to the 2023 FAFU-iGEMer
In September 2022, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University welcomed the new students of the class of 2022. We prepared a complete program as well as a PPT to help them understand synthetic biology and iGEM rules. We established the 2023 FAFU-iGEMer QQ group and attracted more than 200 students to join. We held an iGEM lecture on October 3 in Room 203, Chuang Xin Building, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. Qinyu Chen shares the history of synthetic biology and its excellent synthetic biology applications. Yining Wang shared the composition of the iGEM team and the duties that each member should play. Sibo Jiao showcases the crucial role in Human Practice, Education, Art plays in iGEM, and design ideas. In addition, this lecture has invited our Partnership, BIT and JLU-China. They shared their iGEM projects for the past two years. We hope to share all the experience and harvest of the year with them to help them better understand synthetic biology and iGEM. Below is a group photo of us and a souvenir card given to each student.
Art
The arrival of the epidemic has made people's otherwise rich and happy lives tense and tedious. But the existence of art makes people's lives still full of fun and hope. The FAFU team aims to elicit emotional resonance with more people, add fun to boring life, and improve people's happiness in life. The most important thing is to make them feel that science is not boring, but really gives them energy. Therefore, the FAFU team carries out activities from the three directions of music and art.
Music
We had the pleasure of connecting with Yuan Zhao, who was in Accademia Teatro alla Scala. He told us that more people are willing to learn music during the pandemic, which can put people at ease. In addition, he stressed that a good musical work needs to be deeply emotional. This was a great help to our subsequent music creation.
We learned a lot about music theory and finally tried to make a simple piece of music to express how we felt in the two years of COVID-19.
Fine Arts
We consulted Shan Si from the riverside studio in May. When she heard that we were going to make a comic about popular science, she was very interested,and shared her experience of painting in oil painting, watercolor and other styles for us. We spoke for her about our topic for this year. She said that because of the arrival of the epidemic, people's emotional fluctuations have indeed been greatly affected. She communicated our thoughts to her students and hoped that her students would be able to express their emotions during the pandemic through painting.
Thanks to her for the two excellent works she painted for us.
The meaning on the left is that the arrival of the epidemic has made people strangers to each other.
The meaning on the right is: workers on the front line of the fight against infectious diseases, creating a safe living environment for more people.
3D Lab
In the years of the epidemic, biological testing is gradually coming into view. When we teach online, we find that many students want to learn, want to join the lab in the future, and want to become scientists in the future. However, they may not be able to enter the laboratory to visit and study. So we used the iPad Pro's LiDAR to scan parts of our lab in Blender. We upload 3D models to public platforms such as QQ and WeChat.
