As our survey result shows, there is an obvious lack of awareness of Dengue virus and it’s related knowledge, so our team planned several activities to popularize related knowledge and the synthetic biology infomation behind it. Also, it is a good opportunity to promote our team and project.
Education session with children
Based on our first and second public surveys, we found that most people's basic knowledge of the dengue virus is vague or even never heard of, so we decided to conduct a class on the dengue virus, targeting children aged 5-12, as the first step to reach the public audience. In June, we visited a local community service center in Shanghai to hold a dengue Popularization event and introduce our team and project to the general public.
We were able to interact with 21 elementary school students in grades 1 to 5. We arrived early at the Tianlin Street Community Service Center in Xuhui District, Shanghai, and set up the classroom to conduct an effective program. The purpose of the class was to raise awareness of the dengue virus among the children, to enhance their prevention awareness and behavior, and to reduce the occurrence and spread of dengue fever. To draw the children's attention and interest to mosquitoes and the dengue virus, we provided hands-on experience activities by introducing a mosquito extermination game and the question and answer session at the beginning and letting them make a small model of the dengue virus with clay.
We started the class by explaining the basics of our topic, such as basic information about the dengue virus, infection routes and symptoms, treatment difficulties, and prevention methods. Some parts were presented through video presentations and quiz questions.
At the end of the lesson, we asked the children to draw a poster about the dengue virus with paper and watercolor pens to show what they know about the dengue virus after listening to our presentation and what they can do to prevent it. They also took the posters home and showed them to their families and friends. After this class, the children had a more in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the dengue virus and were able to identify different kinds of mosquitoes, know how to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes, how to clean up the environment, and how to seek medical treatment in time.
Education session
We were delighted that the children showed a positive learning attitude and participation and were able to take the initiative to ask and answer questions and express their opinions and suggestions about the dengue virus with their own words and drawing brushes.
Regarding the feedback on the popularization we conducted, the children said that the activity was interesting and valuable; they learned a lot of new knowledge and had much fun. They said they would tell their parents and friends about the knowledge and pay attention to their health and environmental hygiene. Their parents said this activity was meaningful and necessary, and they had more understanding and alertness about the dengue virus and appreciated our teaching method and patience. They said they would support and cooperate with the community to prevent and control the dengue virus and encourage their children to continue learning and participating in popular activities like this. The person in charge of the community service center expressed her satisfaction with the success of the event. She felt that the effectiveness of our teaching and the response and performance of the children exceeded her expectation, and we are grateful for the support and assistance from the community service center and other partner organizations. We will also seek more cooperation and exchange opportunities to make more contributions to dengue virus science education.
As we learnt from the survey, the social media is really popular and useful platforms to promote and popularize knowledge nowadays. Our team has created several different social media to present our team’s work and the related knowledge. Our major social media is Wechat official account and Little Red Book which are the most commonly used platforms in the local community. We posted eight different contents by now, including introduction of our team and project product, popular science article and video about Deague fever, what is synthetic biology and it’s basic applications. So far, we only have few followers and hundreds of likes in the social media, yet we believe it is meaningful to keep publishing such educatoinal contents as it will play a positive influences.
Our posts on the social media
Besides the educational contents on the social media, our team has created several education tools could be used online or offline. For example, we have created an educational slides to introduce dengue and how do we prevent and cure it. Since the slides is to educate children audiences mainly(between 7-12 years old), we had designed several interactive activities and short educatoinal videos within it to ease the children from learning and participating the lecture.
Our education slides
(Please click here to get our slides - attachiment 1 )
Moreover, in order to let online readers to understand the basic knowledge of dengue fever and how to prevent it, one of our team member had drew a picture book.
Picture book
（Please click here to get the picture book - attachiment 2）
Through these education activities and contents, involving people of all ages,the information about dengue fever and synthetic biology is popularized to the greatest extent as the best we can do, so that the public will pay more attention to the topic and our project. The content swe published are combinations of pictures, words and science videos, so that the audience can have a comprehensive understanding of our progress and purpose.