{"id":3987,"date":"2025-09-03T11:04:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T09:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/education-and-projects\/education\/educational-projects\/the-adventures-of-blu\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T11:04:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T09:04:29","slug":"the-adventures-of-blu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/outreach-education\/education-and-projects\/education\/educational-projects\/the-adventures-of-blu\/","title":{"rendered":"The Adventures of Blu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-565 size-thumbnail alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Blu_sguardo_sx-1-150x150.png\" alt=\"The Stories of Blu\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\">&#8220;<em>Blu <\/em><\/strong><em>is a very curious little being&#8230; you would call him extraterrestrial, and indeed he comes from a very distant planet, a tiny planet lost in our Galaxy that you won&#8217;t find on any map.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Blu is bored on his desolate little planet and so he decides to set off to explore space to try to understand the world around him<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thus begin the adventures of Blu, the new guide character created in 2018 for INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari by researcher <strong>Silvia Casu<\/strong> and instructional designer <strong>Alessia Luca<\/strong>, an expert in new educational technologies, and drawn by the skilled pencil of <strong>Marta Pinna<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>After the character of <a href=\"http:\/\/astrokids.inaf.it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Martina Tremenda<\/a>, the protagonist of many of INAF&#8217;s outreach and educational activities in the Astrokids project, here is a new character designed for younger children, in the preschool and early primary school age range.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blu<\/strong> is the protagonist of<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>playful and educational workshops held during 2019 in some preschool classes or at festivals and public events;<\/li>\n<li>two pilot educational projects, designed in collaboration with teachers from the Maracalagonis\/Ballao and Senorb\u00ec\/San Basilio\/Barrali schools, conducted in the 2018\/2019 academic year. [1] [2] <\/li>\n<li>the video game &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/scratch.mit.edu\/projects\/387044490\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blu Explores the Solar System&#8221;<\/a>, a game\/quiz to become a general of space exploration, developed on the Scratch platform by <strong>Silvia Leurini (INAF-OAC)<\/strong>;<\/li>\n<li>the activity &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/scratch.mit.edu\/projects\/393167342\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How Much Do You Weigh in the Solar System?<\/a>&#8220;, to discover how different gravity affects your weight on different planets, created on the Scratch platform by <strong>Maura Sandri (INAF-OAS Bologna);<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>booklets and a video about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/divulgazione-didattica\/didattica-e-progetti\/didattica\/progetti-didattici\/le-avventure-di-blu\/la-storia-di-blu\/\">story of Blu<\/a>, also in <strong>alternative<\/strong><strong> augmentative communication<\/strong> (AAC);<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-578 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Schede_Blu_Pianeti-5-208x300.png\" alt=\"The Stories of Blu 2\" width=\"208\" height=\"300\"><\/li>\n<li>the booklet &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SchedeBLU_pianeti_colore.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blu and the Planets of the Solar System<\/a>&#8220;, where you can find information and curiosities about the planets of the solar system;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/divulgazione\/page.php?id_page=123&amp;level=4\">playful activities<\/a> to have fun with Blu<\/li>\n<li>the interactive multimedia app &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1vAbO1fcLL5m7jVJvGvXQ5YsXMzjA5pVn\/view?usp=drivesdk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Adventures of Blu<\/em><\/a>&#8220;, designed and developed by Alessia Luca (and the Infomouse Cooperative) as part of her internship at INAF-OAC [3]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Browse the attached documents to find the story of Blu and posters about the solar system (NB the <em>ecoprint<\/em> versions are designed for printing and can be colored by children).<\/p>\n<p>[1] &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/PosterSait19.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Blu and the Sky. An astronomy education project for preschool based on the model of metacognitive cooperative learning <\/em><\/a>&#8220;. S. Casu, A. Luca, G.L. Deiana, G. Alvito, Poster presented at the Italian Astronomical Society (SAIt) Congress in May 2019<\/p>\n<p>[2] &#8220;<em>Blu and the Sky: An astronomy education project for pre- (and primary) school children.<\/em>&#8221; 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<\/p>\n<p>[3] &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/silviacasu_IAU358.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Using New Technologies to Improve Contents Accessibility<\/em><\/a>&#8220;, S. Casu and A. Luca, contributed talk at IAUS 358, Tokyo 12-15 November 2019, IAUS358 Conference proceedings, in press<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Blu is a very curious little being&#8230; you would call him extraterrestrial, and indeed he comes from a very distant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3954,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3987","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3987\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}