Previous year heritage - Remisee
Remisee - a social project, developed by 2022 iGEM NU_Kazakhstan team, that is aimed at integrating children with visual impairments into biology and synthetic biology through development of educational materials and organization of inclusive events. Since for this iGEM season the teams line up significantly changed and the Remisee project is left as a heritage from ex-members. This year as new team members we decided to help with the maintenance and development of the project by conducting several events listed below.
Braille workshop
As Remisee is mainly aimed at children with visual impairments and their integration into science education, we decided to conduct a free Braille workshop for the students of our university. During the event, experts from the Dara Foundation were invited in order to educate participants on the basics of the Braille writing system and teaching methods for children with visual impairments. Graduate students of inclusive education at our university were invited as main participants of the workshop. Moreover, participants were able to play a biology board game, which was also designed by our team in previous years for people with visual impairments. All the participants were given a certificate of completion at the end of the workshop.
Our Braille workshop was quite a unique event and caught the interest of many people. With its help, more people became aware of problems of inclusivity in science, especially for visually impaired individuals. Despite promoting inclusivity, we aimed to inspire more people to engage themselves in providing equal opportunities in education for everyone.
Video lectures
Another goal of the Remisee project is to engage more children in science from remote areas. Students in rural areas experience a lower quality of education and need more access to educational materials in the STEM field.
Moreover, Kazakhstan is historically a multicultural country; the local population is bilingual or even multilingual. Thus, we needed to create educational materials in biology that are accessible in various languages, specifically for our country - in Kazakh, English, and Russian.
In that way, around 20 video lectures were recorded by our team members in Kazakh language on the topics of Biology and Synthetic Biology. Scripts for lessons in Russian and English are read and translated; in the future, we will continue recording them. The issues started from the basics like mitosis and meiosis and continued to more profound and complex topics like CRISPR and Genetic Engineering, Bioremediation, and Biosafety. We shared videos with schools in rural areas, so that they could share them with the students. You can find a link to the video lectures here.
Inclusive events
Summer Camp
This summer we conducted our annual event iGEM Summer Camp for high school students dedicated to raising their engagement in Biology and Synthetic Biology. More details about the camp can be found on our Education page.
Among 89 participants 16 belonged to socially vulnerable groups, also 72% of participants were females. Throughout the camp we did our best to provide an equal environment for each student.
In addition, we invited students from all regions of our country to participate, thus the camp was conducted in two modes: offline and online. We wished to give an opportunity for everyone to participate in our camp, even for those who did not have a chance to come in person.
Furthermore, during the registration to the camp students were choosing the preferred language of instruction, hence camp was conducted in 3 language groups: Kazakh, English and Russian. All groups had the similar lecture agenda for the week, all presentations were translated to their respective languages. Below you can see the example of one of our lectures on the topic of Bacteriotherapy in all 3 languages.
This year we thrived to make our camp as highly inclusive as possible. By providing 2 modes and 3 languages of instruction, as well as places for socially vulnerable students we believe that we were able to fulfill the equality and equity in STEM education for our camp participants.
BioArt exhibition
This year we conducted our another annual event - Bioart exhibition. Prior to the first exhibition, it was known that Kazakhstan's museums were among the few with fully functional accessibility elements for those with visual impairments. Our team members have gained a great deal of experience dealing with blind and visually impaired people over the past few years. Therefore, we made the deliberate choice to remain true to the original exhibition's goal of offering those with visual impairments an inclusive and accessible venue. Important elements of our inclusive exhibition space include the following:
1. Braille descriptions of artwork are given to make sure that those who are blind or visually impaired may understand and interact with the artwork that is on exhibit.
2. All of the materials utilized in the exhibition are tactile, enabling visitors to examine and engage with the artwork firsthand.
3. Biomaterials, Textiles, and Paper: The materials used to create the artworks are biomaterials, textiles, and paper, which guarantees total safety for tactile investigation.
4. Accessible Fashion Show: Our exhibition's renowned fashion show will be recorded on video for the benefit of anyone with visual impairments. Later on, costumes will also be on exhibit so that everyone in attendance may interact and touch the works.
Furthermore, the fashion show's use of biodegradable materials serves as a sobering reminder of how much we need eco-friendly products in our daily lives. We also endorse the sustainability tenets maintained by the iGEM community, emphasizing how important it is to be ecologically aware in all aspects of our work.
