European Seismological Commission, 32nd General Assembly, Sept. 6-10, 2010, Montpellier, France
A. Bobbio, A. Zollo and G. Festa
Increasing our knowledge about the earthquake phenomena and their effects at the earth surface is an important step toward the education of population in high seismic risk regions and can contribute to raise the awareness about the earthquake risk and possible mitigation actions. In this direction two viable paths have been experimented in seismic risk educational efforts.
The first one has an immediate impact, and it is strongly based on traditional communication supports as booklets, brochures, web sites, videos, large public seminars and conferences.
The alternative approach is instead grounded on advanced technologies by the implementation and use of web-oriented accessible tools, which provide a direct link with the modern laboratory systems of data analysis and modeling. This approach is addressed to a more “specialized” public willing to make students the main actors of the scientific experience about earthquakes, by leading them along the laboratory research trail, made of seismogram observation, measurement, analysis and interpretation. These are exactly the principle and basic ideas of the EduSeis project. However the experience gained in this project leads us not to neglect problems and difficulties in the application of structured projects like Eduseis in the Italian school system, in particular the requirement for a big involvement of teachers and seismo-lab researchers.
With the enormous advances in technology and informatics during last decade, it may be the time for the educational seismology to move a step forward, from "data sharing" to "sharing methods for data analysis and modeling". This new view will provide teachers and students with new user-friendly tools for massive seismological data analysis, mapping and interpretation and introduce new approaches in teaching and learning the earthquake risk. In this direction, we mention the possibility to introduce seismology in schools through the modern technologies for teaching and learning the scientific knowledge based on
e-learning platforms.
Driven by the high-tech development of earthquake observation systems, the educational seismology in schools can represent a suitable, integrated environment which makes students, active users of modern technologies rather than passive consumers and the selected vehicle for such training is the seismological observation. Although difficult to implement, this new approach to science education and dissemination will certainly contribute to train the tomorrow’s environmental citizens, preparing them to cope with natural risks and solutions for mitigating their damaging effects.