the project • main headings • edurisk.it
The diverse activities carried out within the EDURISK project falls under two main headings: “school” and “virtual itineraries through Italy’s seismic history”.
Under the “school” heading EDURISK brings forth educational tools for the “scuola di base” (infant, primary and lower secondary school), and tests them in the field with the help of a small army of teachers and students from a number of schools scattered throughout Italy. The teachers undertake to fit the EDURISK prototypes within their curricular activities for at least one academic year, at the end of which they assess their effectiveness, suggest alterations/improvements, and provide additional feedback with the projects developed by the classes in the context of the EDURISK experience.
In 2002-2003 the earliest EDURISK educational tools were made: a learning kit for the nursery school (“When the earthquake strikes”); a notebook for the primary school (“Earthquake Lesson”); a primer for the lower secondary school (“Earthquakes: how and why”). They started being tested in the academic year 2003-2004 with the collaboration of 185 teachers and 2367 students from 13 comprehensive institutes of the Italian regions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Emilia-Romagna and Calabria. From 2004 onwards the testing field gradually widened to include most of the administrative regions of Italy.
In the 2005-2007 biennium EDURISK launched a programme of educational activities for seismic risk reduction specially tailored to the requirements of higher secondary schools, with special reference to the vocational schools providing technical skills training in the professional areas most likely to came into close contact with natural hazards-related problems (surveyors, builders etc.). Meanwhile, in 2006, a fourth teaching tool for the primary school was produced, on the topic of volcanic hazard.
Under the heading “Virtual itineraries through Italy’s seismic history”, the EDURISK project set out to develop a multimedial journey leading to the discovery of the manifold traces which destructive past earthquakes left in the landscape, history and popular culture of Italy. The user of this multimedial tool (meant for general consumption from all ranges of age) is led into a virtual walk through what is left of several towns and villages that were once laid waste by some of Italy’s strongest historical earthquakes. The virtual itinerary is proposed as a key to the discovery of the special features characterising seismic hazard in different areas of Italy. The virtual traveller will be able to relive the experience of a past earthquake, to appreciate the consequences of past choices and behaviours, and hopefully to learn how to use past experience as a tool with which to improve one’s understanding of the weaknesses and strenghts of different areas of the Italian countryside.
