Collaboration with LZU-CHINA & world shaper-HZBIOX
We discussed each other's project. As we're all about protecting intestinal health by editing probiotics or E.Coli, we established an intestinal alliance, mainly collaborated in education and promotion of synthetic biology.
Offline education activities
On August 7, 2022, the Science and Technology Museum in Hangzhou held a synthetic biology education event with three IGEM teams: LZU-CHINA, SZ-SHD, and world shaper-HZBIOX. The three teams lead the youths to be interested in and understand the basic knowledge about synthetic biology by making DNA models, pipette gun head collages and making plasmid balloons. The main task of the SZ-SHD team in this event is to promote the event and make posters. By the way, there is over hundreds of youths and adults attended the event. The event also features a brief introduction to synthetic biology through animations on TV, which can help children who are without a basic understanding of what synthetic biology is. At the end of the event, each child who completes three tasks will receive a small gift, for example, a key chain. They are also provided with the children’s picture book and questionnaire as well. The result of it aims to improve the picture book used for education.
Children's picture book
We collaborated deeply on education. Since there are not many science picture books on the market for younger people, we created together a children's picture book with synthetic biology as the theme, based on the content of the three teams' projects and expanding their knowledge. Team members from the SZ-SHD and world shaper-HZBIOX teams provided the artists, and the LZU-CHINA team invited Professor Li Lifang（Professor Li is a doctor of literature, a tertiary professor, a doctoral supervisor, the dean of the School of Arts of Lanzhou University, and a member of the International Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL). She has been engaged in the study of children's literature theory and criticism for more than ten years.） to guide us in the creation of the picture book and offer valuable advice on text style. She suggested that we first confirm that the audience was primary and secondary school students and that the text needed to be easy to understand, simplifying the specialized vocabulary, which was certainly a big challenge. After we finished the drawing, we set up a questionnaire in the subsequent offline science activities in order to make sure the audience group could understand the content. Most people understood the picture book and found it interesting and gained new knowledge; only a small number of people found it uninteresting or incomprehensible, mainly because they did not understand the terminology. We will continue to make improvements to the picture book and hope to publish it in the future.
