Activities

During our trip in October-November 2009, GalileoMobile passed through areas where astronomy outreach is rare but, at the same time, places that have high sky quality. Most of the time we visited schools in small cities or villages, thus benefiting from low light pollution.

In each of our stops, we usually performed visits to different schools. During these visits we organized educational games, designed simple experiments and exchanged myths and stories about the stars. During day-time we could often observe the Sun (using solar ND filters) in the scool’s courtyard. Whenever possible we also organized star parties which were open to the public to show the Moon, stars, planets and other celestial objects with our telescopes (kindly lent by the IYA2009 Secretariat. Finally, we gave a Galileoscope as a gift to every school we visited (a donation of IAU and UNESCO) along with an inflatable Earth globe (a donation of our partner UNAWE, as well as astronomy posters and postcards from our partner ESO.

We compiled all the teaching material in a handbook called "Cartilla de Actividades GalileoMobile", which includes the instructions for the hands-on activities and the explanations of the physical phenomena studied in each of them. Our methodology is to convey basic physical concepts in an interactive and playful way.

This handbook is freely available and can be downloaded directly from our website under the tab links. Printout versions will be additionally sent to each of the visited schools. The "Cartilla de Actividades GalileoMobile" is also a corner stone and starting point to develop the GalileoMobile Project all around the world.

"This material may be used freely by anyone for educational and non-profitable purposes, provided that GalileoMobile is referenced and the original sources are cited."