Difference between revisions of "Team:UESTC-software/HP/Gold"

Gold: Meeting of minds

Human Practice is necessary for a birth of project. We tried to connect our project with more people, more targeted groups, to integrate their ideas, inspirations and advice to draw a clearer and realistic blueprint.

The interaction about Bio101

During the period that we learned and thought about our project, we considered to take some actions to seek inspiration. We hold a lecture with UESTC-China in Puyang Junior High School. We introduced synthetic biology with some well-known examples at first. Then, it was time for the students to build their own plasmids. They added the functional genes like Bioluminescence gene into the plasmids. So the plasmids carried the information of the light emitting gene. “The plasmid carried the information of biological characteristics.” That represented that DNA stored the information. Along this start, we explored the DNA information storage.

Fig.1.We built the plasmids together.

When we were designing our software, we hoped the idea would come from the public. After all, the final software achievement will return to life. We did street interviews, from campus to market. We wanted to hear the voice of the public’s imagination to the DNA information storage system. To our surprise, we received many useful information from the communication. A young man’s opinion left the deepest impression on us: he nearly had higher expectation for the storage capacity, equipment volume and storage speed. He had special interest in our project and gave us great help to decide the property and function of software.

Fig.2.The interview about Bio101.

Sometimes, we would be restricted in the knowledge we already have. In terms of creativity, we are far from children. To have a future blueprint of our project, we talked with pupils about the DNA information storage in the activity, “To Be Scientists Tomorrow”. They were very active and said they wanted the files would not be lost. Children said what they like, absolutely, their innocence inspired us.

Fig.3.A girl imagination about Bio101.

We collected the professors’ suggestions besides the ordinary people. We met and discussed in iGEM Southwest China Union. The participants not only focused on software functions, but also were curious about the algorithms. During the communication, they gave suggestions about the development of software performance from a professional view.

The story about Bio2048

To build a bridge between the public and biology, we created a new mobile phone game called Bio2048. Not only did we put it onto the Tencent Application of Treasure for ordinary people to download and play, but also pushed its information in our sina microblog and Qzone to collect feedback. Combining it with the education of biology, we aroused students’ interests of study.

Fig.4.A foreign friend played Bio2048.

We practiced to test its feasibility. We opened a sina microblog to push our project progress and it has already attracted 1034 fans. Many people made comments after trying, and most said that the game was attractive for the combination of knowledge and enjoyment. Some thought that our game was lack of description words, therefore, we added introductions to build a learning mode in the game for easier understanding. Integrating the suggestion into Bio2048 makes the game better. We were also inspired by the EDUTAINMENT idea of Bio2048, hoping it can be the educational tool and taken into the class for teaching.

Impact on Our Scientific Project

Fig.5.Our presentation in iSWU.

In Puyang lecture, the operation of building plasmids was an opportunity for the students to stimulate their creativity and imagination. We interviewed the public, it was a way to contact them with science. Some products appear to solve the inconvenience of life. So, everyone should dare to imagine. As to students, their rich imagination was an eye-opener to us. Introducing our ideas to pupils will deepen their understanding of biology and show the great prospects for the development of Biology. These practices arouse people’s interests in biology and make them improve their initiative, especially to the students, who undertake the mission of continuing to move forward.

When we first tried to make our inspiration come true, we interviewed and asked people for advice, and our instructor, classmates, friends in iGEM Southwest China Union gave us lots of suggestions, which were about icon design, conception definition, user interface, compression algorithm and so on. As the video you can see, the three questions are the origin of our inspiration, which provides continuous ideas and creations for us.

During the interviews and invitations, we completed designs, then some interviewers in different occupations including primary school and middle school students, passers-by and teachers, provided their feedback to us, most of which was the feeling of this game and some of them helped us improve our methods.

Impact on Our Target Groups

As we put great effort in the design of our project, we want to share what we can do within and beyond iGEM. No one is an island, hence, we believe that we can change a little around ourselves, which can influence more and more people. Different people have different understanding about science, about biology, what we do can make the basic knowledge closer to ordinary people and help them build a valid view of science.

As we believed students in primary and middle school are the most people in need to receive some basic education about biology and synthetic biology to promote their interests. We did a series of activities to achieve this. The students showed great interest to our educational games, during which they hand-on practiced and smiled after they had completed the tasks. We found their enthusiasm grown after the game and they asked us more questions which becomes more imaginative than before. We could feel their happiness when we said goodbye. We believe that the smile is the seed of science rooted in their heart, which we wish can thrive along with them.

Nowadays, many Chinese teachers are bothered by how to make knowledge easier to understand and how to push themselves closer to students. Maybe what we did cannot solve problems essentially, however, we trust that the edutainment is one of the most efficient ways to do something better. The way we convey the knowledge to students, such as the game Bio2048 and plasmid model created by hand, can give an inspiration to teachers.

Ordinary people are liable to misunderstand biology in our investigation. After our propaganda and popularization of biology science, more than 71% people changed their misunderstanding to biology technology. They acknowledged they did not realize that biology and technology was used so widely in everyday life. Otherwise, more than 84% people held a friendly attitude towards tomorrow’s biology development. An old gentleman expressed giant interest about our project Bio101 after our propaganda and was willing to drop in our lab, which surprised us a lot.

Fig.6.The public’s attitude changed after our effort.

We did Human Practices to practice our thoughts and get inspirations. Surprisingly, we found the effects are bidirectional. What we did are mutually beneficial and win-win.