Team:Calgary/Human Practices/Outreach/Chicago

Part of our Outreach project involved a collaboration project with the UChicago and Illionois iGEM teams. The UChicago team found us through our blog “Synthetic Blogology” and invited us to work with them on the creation of an Ethics ‘Kit’. We wanted it to contain a variety of outreach materials that other teams would use as a sort of jump off point for their own outreach initiatives.

We wanted to create a kit that could be used by other iGEM teams in the future. E wanted it to contain a variety of outreach materials that other teams would use as a sort of jump off point for their own outreach initiatives.

We were inspired by the Registry of Parts to create an interactive bioethics “kit.” Users can choose from a series of slides on various topics related to genetic engineering. Like the Registry, we’ve included background information for each slide, including notes for the speaker and a page for users to add their own experience. We hope that future teams will use these slides as templates and reference material for their own presentations, whether to their own institutions, neighboring schools, or the general public. By allowing other groups to update and comment on slides we hope to create a communal forum for bioethical discussion. Our goal is not to come to single consensus on bioethics education, but to provide an opportunity for every voice to be heard.

To check out our registry, please click HERE.

Also, we were introduced the UChicago team to Second Life and we were able to meet with a member from the team on Genome Island, showing the uses of Second Life in education. We also stayed connected over e-mail starting in the Fall.