In order to allow more people to know about our project "New Blue Light Switch" and our team, as well as educating synthetic biology, we are luck to have an opportunity to organized an major educational event at the Juzhang Hutong Community Service Station in Dongcheng District, Beijing. With the participation of 20 children and their parents, we introduced the project and related synthetic biology knowledge in five different ways to deepen people's understanding of cancer and the role and advantages of optogenetic tools such as the new blue light modulation switch in therapy.
Before we started planning the education campaign, we designed and distributed questionnaires to find out the level of awareness about cancer, cancer treatment and related science knowledge.
(figure 16. Question 11: What is your attitude towards the development prospect of the new blue light regulated switch targeting cancer therapy?)
(figure 17. Question 12: What do you want to know more about the "new blue light control switch"?)
The result shows that more than 60% of respondents did not know new blue light control switch or its related therapy use. These data reviews the importance and necessity of science popularization activities. Moreover, we learned that people want to know most is the theory of the new blue light control switch, and its related market development. Therefore, we had put these info into our education activities design.
We designed this educational campaign based on the feedback from the questionnaire results. There are four offline educational activities and all activities were successfully completed during our event at Juzhang Hutong Community Service Station in Dongcheng District, Beijing.
3.1 Mini Theater
Since the participants for this education event are children aged 7-12, we designed and played a mini theater performance about role of blue light modulation
switch in cancer treatment. The goal is to educate the audiences about to watch out those bad habits in daily life and the danger of cancer.
(figure 18. Mini theater)
3.2 Science Classroom
We held a science lecture to introduce the advantages of new blue light modulated switch and its applications in medicine, including the promotion of optogenetically engineered bacteria into clinical settings, blood glucose regulation, and personalized drug delivery. Specifically, we introduced the advantages of the new blue light techonology and its modulation switch, such as no compound absorption process, less toxicity, and more convenient switching. The young participants were very interested about this topic.
(figure 19. Science Classroom)
3.3 Card Q&A:
Through an interactive trivia game we designed to deepen children's understanding of the role of blue light modulation switch in disease treatment, let the participants to learn the technology which can assist existing medical treatment to destroy cancer cells.
(figure 20a&b Card Q&A)
3.4 Make a poster together
Let the children use their imagination to express what they have learned today in the form of a drawing. 5-6 children formed a group to co-work in one poster, it is a good way to recall the knowledge learnt as well.
(figure 21a&b. Make a poster together)
Event results and audience feedback:
The event came to a successful conclusion that our activities were warmly welcomed and actively cooperated with children. We also received unanimous recognition and praise from parents and the officer form the community service station. The final result was very satisfactory, for both our educating purpose and the participants.
(figure 22 Team membersand young participants)
4.1 Brochure
In order to promote our team and the features and benefits of our project, Blue Cancer has produced a brochure which contains a basic introduction of our project, the applications and benefits of the project and the account information of Blue Cancer's online educational platform.
(figure 23 a-d Page Design)
4.2 Poster
The poster includes our team name--Blue Cancer, the iGEM logo and our team logo, the function and principle of the new blue light control switch, and the QR code of our public number so that we can publicize our project. The DNA in the poster echoes the theme of iGEM's biogenetic engineering, and the virus in it corresponds to our project, which aims to help eliminate the virus through the new blue light control switch.
4.3 Quiz Cards
We designed a set of quiz cards. On the back of the cards are the logos of iGEM and our team, while on the front are the number cards and the function cards. With the virus in the center of the number cards and the blue light in the center of some of the function cards, which allows the children to know that the blue light can assist us in defeating viruses, such as cancer cells. At the same time, we will intersperse some small questions in the process, like some mentioned questions in the previous leture, which let the children have a deeper impression on the new blue light control switch and the virus, also review the content of the previous popularization. (Please find the attachment by clicking here - attachment 1)
(figure 25 Quiz Cards)
Questionnaires and Social Surveys
Online social media platform is an indispensable method to promote our project and educating. Before deciding to choose an online education platform, we issued a questionnaire to investigate which channels with the highest acceptance by the public when comes to science infomation and related educating materias.
(figure 26 . Question8: In which media have you seen science related to cancer?)
As the result shows, 72.51% respondents have learned about cancer on video platforms, which is the reasons why we chose video platforms to publicize our cancer.
Finally, we decided to post educational content on four online platforms to educate people about cancer treatment, new technologies in our projects, the daily work of our team and the related sythetic biology knowledge.
5.1 WeChat Official Account
The content of the WeChat public account is mainly the introduction of our team's daily activities, interviews and offline social interactions. The purpose is to let the public have a certain understanding of our team and projects when they read at leisure, and to arouse their interest in what we are doing through a simple and clear style.
(figure 27a&b. WeChat Official Account)
5.2 Douyin/Tiktok
We mainly share the wet team's experimental routine and the dry team's offline publicity routine on Douyin, which not only fits the platform atmosphere, but also draws people's attention to our energetic high school team.
(figure 28. Douyin/Tiktok)
5.3 Bilibili
Our Bilibili account mainly does some popular science about cancer treatment, our new blue light control switch technology and related sythetic biology knowledge, for those who are interested in related knowledge. Currently, we have 41 followers and our video is been watched about 200 times. We believe the number will go up if we keep updating.
(figure29. Bilibili)
5.4 Zhihu
On Zhihu, we popularized knowledge about our new blue light regulating switch and introduced the relationship between Car-T therapeutic method and our new blue light regulating switch. Also, there are detailed interviews with experts for those interested in cancer treatment and our new technologies.
(figure 30a&b. Zhihu)
Through diverse popularization activities and methods such as online surveys, online & offline education activities, and developing online platforms, we were able to spread knowledge on our topic as well as iGEM and sythetic biology. Both our online and offline educational activities have received positive feedback already. According the results, We were able to engage a broad range of the general public and able to educate the public, which is a challenge but a memorable experience for us.