The Astronomy Olympiad italian experience
Abstract
The International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) is an internationally annual astronomy scientific-educating event, born in 1996, which includes an intellectual competition between students aged between 14 and 17. In Italy, the Olympiad is coorganized since 2007 by INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) and SAiT (Società Astronomica Italiana) becoming every year a more visible and global event in the italian scenario (in 2011, INAF institutes participating to the local activities were 13). Unluckily, the Italian Committee of the Olympiads cannot involve directly nor rely on schools, since astronomy is no longer part of the scholastic programs. For this reason, the Committee needed to develop in the last years a non traditional mediatic approach that allowed in 2011 to reach a participation of more than 500 teenagers to the Olympics. We will give an overview of the Astronomy Olympics project in Italy and of this non conventional mediatic approach.
- Publication:
-
EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011
- Pub Date:
- October 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011epsc.conf.1311S