Bioinformatics goes to School: From the lab to the classroom, hand in hand with the teachers.

ANA JULIA VÉLEZ RUEDA; GUILLERMO IGNACIO BENÍTEZ; FELIPE TAU; PATRICIO CHINESTRAD; GUSTAVO PARISI; SILVINA FORNASARI; LEANDRO M. SOMMESE; JULIANA GLAVINA; MARTÍN SALAS; NICOLAS PALOPOLI

Mendoza

Congreso; 10CAB2C. 10th Argentinian Congress of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; 2019

Asociación Argentina de Bioinformática y Biología Computacional

BACKGROUND: The dynamic nature of technological developments invites us to rethink the learning contexts. From this perspective, science education can be enriched by the contribution of new computational resources, making the educational process more up-to-date and challenging. The usage of integrated technologies in basic education represents a challenge for teachers, who must develop new strategies on a daily basis to inspire real intellectual curiosity in students.Bioinformatics is a key interdisciplinary field, contributing to the understanding of biological processes that is often underrated in secondary schools. It can help engaging students to integrate multiple fields of knowledge and generating an enriched and long-lasting learning environment. To assist in bringing bioinformatics as a tool into the classroom, we have continuously developed lessons and taught Python programming for bioinformatics to secondary school students since 2017. This year, we have also developed classroom guides ad hoc and delivered workshops to train teachers into bringing the tools of programming and bioinformatics into their classes.RESULTS: During the workshops high school teachers learnt the Python language programming to code simple tools to answer biological questions. They were also able to explore different databases applications as bioinformatics tools and several resources for obtaining valuable biological information in the classroom. None of the participants had any previous knowledge of bioinformatics. However, teachers from both biological and technology specialities recognized that connecting those fields in the classroom was a difficult but much needed task. The workshop allowed teachers not only to integrate the basic biological knowledge taught in the classroom with programming but also to rethink the way of materializing abstract concepts with tools commonly used on scientific research.CONCLUSIONS: Our experience with the bioinformatics workshop for teachers helped us to evaluate the guidelines we have developed. New formats of workshops for high school students will be explored, jointly with teachers and researchers, to generate proper ways of applying bioinformatics tools to the biology content prescribed by the curriculum design. New bridges were tended to bring these practices into the classroom and we continue working together to expand this experience.