Schools Outreach

For the first time in 2019, the EGU organised an activity targeted at school students in Vienna. The event at the Vienna International School aimed at teaching students (grades 10 and 11) about how 3D virtual reality can be used to explore Italy’s active volcanoes and other geological landscapes.

“We want to interact more with local communities and bring the work of the EGU geoscientists closer to the school children of Vienna,” says Giuliana Panieri one of the members of the EGU Outreach Committee. She, together with committee member Mathew Stiller-Reeve, are charge of organising the school event.

Each year the EGU awards grants to one or two special public engagement activities so they can continue their outreach to different audiences outside research. In 2018, one of the grants was won by Fabio Luca Bonali and his team to further develop virtual reality tools to help engage high-school and first-year university students with motor disabilities with the Earth sciences. Fabio is a post-doc researcher at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DISAT) at the University of Milano-Bicocca who co-founded the outreach organisation GeoSocial Science & Media.

During the EGU General assembly, Fabio and members of the EGU Outreach Committee visited the International School in Vienna to tell them more about Fabio’s fabulous work.

The event (in English) is took place at the Vienna International School on Tuesday 9 April. EGU will use the feedback from the activity to explore new possibilities to expand these events to other schools in Vienna. “We will continue to offer the opportunity to the public engagement grant winners to connect them with schools to communicate their passion to the next generation of scientists and leaders,” says Mathew Stiller-Reeve.

If you are a teacher at a school in Vienna and would like to connect with this initiative in the future then please get in touch with Mathew (mast@norceresearch.no) and Giuliana (giuliana.panieri@uit.no).