Blu is a small, very curious … Extraterrestrial creature, you will call him. Indeed, he comes from a very distant planet, a very small planet, lost in our Galaxy, which you won’t find in any map.
Blu gets bored in his bleak little planet, so he decides to leave to explore space, to try and understand the surronding world.
So start the adventures of Blu, the guide-character created in 2018 for INAF Astronomical Observatory of Cagliari by the researcher Silvia Casu and the instructional designer Alessia Luca, experienced in new educational technologies, and designed by the skillful pencil of Marta Pinna.
The character of Blu was created especially for smaller children – in the age range of kindergarten and the first years of primary school – in order to accompany them in discovering the marvels of the Universe and help them to study and have fun.
Among the many activities in which Blu is a protagonist, there are some based upon coding with Scratch:
- the videogame Blu explores the Solar System e, a game/quiz in order to become a general of space exploration, developed by Silvia Leurini (INAF-OAC);
- the activity How much do you weigh in the Solar System? in order to discover how the different gravity influenecs your weight in the different planets, realised by Maura Sandri (INAF-OAS Bologna);
- an activity which allows you to revise the multiplication tables, so as to discover how fun it is to study with Blu!
Smaller children can simply follow the instructions and answer the questions, whereas older children will be able to use projects (looking inside them, as they say in the Scratch community) in order to discover how they were realized and engage in planning new adventures. If you like Blu and his adventures with coding, we suggest that you visit regularly this page, because we will add many other activities, as we develop them. On the other hand, if you have ideas for resources suitable for smaller children, and you would like them realized with Blu, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page. We will create them for you, and wll make them available on the platform.
Over and above the activities developed with Scratch, Blu is the protagonist of:
- recreational-educational workshops which took place in 2019 in a few classes of the nursery school, or during festivals and public events;
- educational pilot projects, planned in collaboration the teachers of the schools of Maracalagonis/Ballao and Senorbì/San Basilio/Barrali, carried out in the 2018/2019 [1] [2] academic year;
- booklets and videos on the story of Blu, also in Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC);
- the booklet Blu and the planets of the Solar System, where you will find informations and tips on the planets of the Solar System;
- recreational activity to have fun with Blu;
- the multimedia interactive app The adventures of Blu, planned and developed by Alessia Luca (and by the Cooperative Infomouse) in the framework of their trainign experience at INAF-OAC [3].
In the website of the Astronomical Obseratory of Cagliari, you can find many resources to download for free, including the story of Blu and the posters on the Solar System.
[1] “Blu and the Sky. A project of astronomy education for nursery school, based upon the model of metacognitiv copertiva learning“ by S. Casu, A. Luca, G.L. Deiana, G. Alvito, Poster presented at the Meeting of the Italian Astronomical Society (Società Astronomica Italiana, SAIt) May 2019
[2] “Blu and the Sky: An astronomy education project for pre- (and primary) school children” di S. Casu, A. Luca, G.L. Deiana, G. Alvito, contributed talk at the IAU C1 Astronomy Education Conference, ESO-Garching, Munich, 16-18 September 2019, submitted
[3] “Using New Technologies to Improve Contents Accessibility” by S. Casu and A. Luca, contributed talk at IAUS 358, Tokyo 12-15 November 2019, IAUS358 Conference proceedings, in press
FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS: Scratch is a free programming environment, developed by MIT, Boston, which uses a free graphical programming language, inspired by the theory of learning of constructionism o . Scratch was planned in order to develop computational thinking and at the same time providing the bases for planning, common to any language. It allows to develop educational projects and animationis, as well as simple games, or interactive presentations. And it is simple to use!
