My name is Sakti Subramanian, one of the three Project Heads at iGEM Community running the SynBio 101 project. The SynBio 101 initiative aims to increase the interest in synthetic biology worldwide by providing accessible materials for students. Our plan is to create modules that will be shared to teachers across various regions of the world, and implement these modules in schools through the usage of frugal DIY lab kits.
We are currently recruiting, so if you or someone you know has experience in education, synthetic biology, open science and accessibility, hardware, and regional leadership, we would love to have all of you join us. Also, if you know any one who could help with graphic design or video editing, please let us know.
We need people from every region so make sure to let others outside this community know too!
As someone with a background in biology (but not synthetic biology) and science communication/outreach, I am excited by this initiative. Hope you find great people for your team!
I hope that the materials created will be fully open source! And if a curriculum and accompanying content is developed, it should definitely be added to this list that @amchagas created.
Yeah, it’s going to be open source - both the hardware and the curriculum. We’re going to have everything developed by early May - the piloting in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and North America from May through June.
Do you have any suggestions for organizations to reach out for further recruitment support? We’ve formed an international team, but there’s still some room left to expand in terms of representing every region.
Do you have any suggestions for organizations to reach out for further recruitment support? We’ve formed an international team, but there’s still some room left to expand in terms of representing every region.
Two come to my mind:
The Creative Commons Slack group has education and science related channels where there are people who might be interested in this. It’s fairly international. They also have a Matrix chat room via Element which serves the same purpose, but currently has far less users.
The Wikipedia & Education Users Group is very international. Despite the name, their work is not strictly related to work on Wikipedia itself, and this community might help make the right connections. Similarly, the Wikimedia Foundation (which funds, but is not Wikipedia!) does a lot of work on education and might connect you to the right people.
BTW, Wikipedia is the most famous, but not the only project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. Their other projects like Wikibooks or Wikiversity could be good potential places to host your curriculum once its ready!
This summer I am going to be organizing a web site that as a pointer to OSH projects, curricula, etc. I’ll send more about this later. This month I have to get the funding from NSF’s Innovations in Graduate Education grant submitted. If that gets funded, I will hold a GOSH conference during the 1st week of January of 2025.