The Parallel Globe and the Globo Local Project.

Astronomy is a motivating and intriguing topic and can be a meaningful way to introduce basic physics ideas about motion and light. However, educational research shows that traditional ways to present it in formal as well as in informal contexts leave, or even induce, misunderstanding of basic ideas. In this paper we discuss in particular how to overcome the difficulty to join local observations with the outside vision of the Earth rotating around a "tilted" axis with the North "up", and the South "down", represented by the common commercial globes. We present the Parallel Globe, the model/tool we designed to help people understanding their position on the Earth in relation with other locations on the planet, and the Globo Local Project, in which we promoted to observe the parallel globe at different latitudes and longitudes during the Equinoxes and Solstices 2011. Some conclusions and possible evolution of the project are presented analyzing first results about values and difficulties on the scientific as well as on the social and democratic plane.