February 14, 2018 Today the only things we worked on were the posters for the upcoming MAD Week, as well as the Extension Sessions. The Extension Sessions will be using LEGOS to help educate the students, followed by a very brief slideshow.
February 12, 2018 We discussed doing something during MAD Week called Extension Sessions, so that teachers who want their students to learn more about Genes and Genetic Diseases would have that opportunity. We developed all of the plans for these Extension Sessions today.
February 7, 2018 Worked further on our posters for MAD Week, and looked at the progress on the video.
January 31, 2018 Today we met with Student Government to show them our progress on the MAD Week video, which they really liked. After they left, we discussed the format of our posters, as well as a catchy hashtag for the student population to use.
January 24, 2018 Continued our discussion on our participation in MAD Week, and began our research. Our goal is to create an informational video to show the whole school to give them an idea on what the diseases are, and where the money will be going.
January 17, 2018 We debriefed from our CSU field trip, and talked about the various information that we gathered from the experience. We also discussed our upcoming participation in our schools charity week, MAD Week. The charity for this year is a foundation that supports research for Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), and another foundation that supports research for Fanconni Anemia.
January 11, 2018 Our field trip to CSU to visit various labs involving CRISPR-Cas9, and also have lunch with the CSU iGEM team. It was a good opportunity to have a bonding experience with everyone, and we got to learn a lot about the field. The professors were very helpful, and talking to the CSU iGEM team helped us understand what the future will look like.
January 10, 2018 First meeting back from Winter break. We discussed advisory resources from other high school iGEM teams, and where we will be going from here. We also discussed our carpooling situations for our field trip to CSU on the 11th, and what time we should all meet.
December 13, 2017 We had our iGEM Christmas party, and did a White Elephant gift exchange. It was a really great bonding experience for the team, and we got the chance to talk about what its going to look like after Christmas break.
December 8, 2017 A very quick meeting today to just check on our results. All were successful! We were very happy with our results, and feel very confident in bacterial transformation now.
December 7, 2017 We went through and performed the What A Colorful World Lab, and it went very well. The team as a whole know how to do bacterial transformation fairly well, so there were no issues.
December 6, 2017 Today we prepped our materials for the What A Colorful World Lab. We went over the lab procedure to prepare for it.
November 30, 2017 We all met at 5:30 to prepare for 8th Grade Night. We got everything set up, and waited for the families to come. Our demos went well, and we were able to answer questions that families had. Talking to the parents also went well, we think that the majority of the families came away feeling more comfortable, and with a better understanding.
November 29, 2017 Coming back from Thanksgiving break, we had a meeting today to plan out who would be doing what on 8th Grade Night; 8th Grade Night is where the incoming freshmen and their parents come to the high school to check out what BHS has to offer. We divided into two groups, the Talking to Parents group, and the Demo group. The first group would be talking to the parents about their experiences in BHS, and what they like about the academy itself. The second group would be doing the Elephant Toothpaste demo, and kind of getting the families interested and fascinated by science.
November 15, 2017 We had our first fundraiser today at Chipotle. We were all able to spend some quality time together outside of our team meetings, which was great. We raised a small amount of money, and hope to do more fundraisers soon in order to prep for our attendance fee.
November 9th, 2017 Had a short meeting to check on the plates with the transformed E. Coli. Only one group was successful in their transformation. One set of plates were not placed upside-down, and the other set did not have any E. Coli whatsoever. This could either be an error with the mini-prep, or with the bacterial transformation, there is no way to know. November 8th, 2017 Performed our bacterial transformation lab, using the pGLO plasmids that we extracted and mini-prepped from formerly grown +pGLO E. Coli. The transformed E. Coli were loaded onto the LB/AMP/ARA plates that were made at last weeks meeting. We discussed the how we should spread the word about our Chipotle fundraiser, which will occur on the 15th.
November 1st, 2017 During our meeting today, we decided to begin documenting our weekly meetings! It’s a great way to look back and see how much we’ve progressed. Since the beginning of the school year, we have met (and will continue to do so) in room 9200. At today’s meeting, we discussed the beginning of the weekly journal, our upcoming Chipotle fundraiser, and made LB/AMP/ARA plates for our bacterial transformation lab, which will occur at next weeks meeting. The newer members to the team were taught how to make these plates, and what to expect from next weeks lab.