Teach & learn seismic safety at high school: The sisifo project

We present the educational activities developed within a project that aims at disseminating the knowledge about seismic safety at high schools. SISIFO (SIcurezza SIsmica nella FOrmazione scolastica, that in English sounds like “seismic safety in school training”), is the name of the project and during the school year 2013-2014, fourteen high schools of north-eastern Italy joined it, working in different activities to comply with the school curricula. We provided the teachers with conceptual guidelines together with some educational materials in order to stimulate the inventiveness and the interest of the students. The students were engaged in labs on the earthquake source, in the detection of non-structural seismic safety elements, in monitoring of the local site and building responses and in risk perception surveys. They provided a stimulating, bi-directional learning process that culminated in a workshop, held at the University of Udine (Italy) on April 7, 2014, when the students illustrated their work. The project experience has been positive and we believe that it can be replicated and properly integrated in the future training of high school students.