From nature to human needs: availability and use of geo-materials in Earth Sciences; an educational approach through the Big History project

Natural Science education in the secondary school follows a recurring logic: preliminary knowledges are enriched with new ones and with new perspectives. Mineralogy and geology are the key-subjects to understand how to utilize “geo-resources” or “geomaterials” for human needs, projecting the human history into that of cosmos. The Big History model allows observing specific topics in a whole, along a geologic time scale. In this paper, the results of the Big History project, experimented in Val D’Ossola (Northeastern Piedmont) are presented. The project has been developed during the last two school years in a Scientific Lyceum. In the investigated area, geologic history spans for several hundred of millions years, from the Hercynian basement outcrops to the current exploitation of local stone, geotouristic development and geoeducational approaches linked to sport activities. The project output of the second year was a geotouristic application for Android, which allowed exploring the area on different temporal and spatial scales according to the Big History perspective.