D-Space at Xplora Science Teachers Conference, CERN, Geneva, 15 - 18 June 2006.

D-Space Service Presentation, Teachers Training Workshop and SkyWatch 2006 Contest Awards Ceremony.

Xplora, within the Pencil Project, organised a science teachers conference at CERN, Geneva. The conference took place from 15 to 18 June 2006, focused on open source and ICT in science education, science teaching approaches, the role of science centres in education and more. The D-Space Service contributed with a D-Space service presentation, a teachers training workshop and the SkyWatch 2006 awards ceremony.
Mr. Menelaos Sotiriou of the department of international programs at QPlan presented the D-Space Service and its educational role. After the presentation, the participants could freely use the service at D-Space's stand the rest of the day and realized their observation requests.

The next day there was a workshop in a computer room provided by CERN. The workshop started with a presentation from Mr. Menelaos Sotiriou about the usage of D-Space service. Dr. George Neofotistos, MENON Network EEIG, continued with a validation report and finally Dr. Ioannis Papamastorakis, professor at the University of Crete, discussed matters relating to the use of robotic telescopes and technical aspects regarding the users' observational requests. At the end of the workshop the participants had free time in the computer room to subscribe and use the D-Space service aided by the D-Space team. The event provided additional meaningful information for validation purposes through the developed questionnaires.

The last day of the conference the SkyWatch 2006 Contest award ceremony took place. Dr. Ioannis Papamastorakis demonstrated the use of robotic telescopes by remotely moving a telescope located in Skinakas Observatory, Greece, using a web page. There was a camera next to the telescope, broadcasted the event and the participants could see the telescope moving.
After this demonstration there was a brief presentation about the contest. The SkyWatch 2006 contest has been initiated on late March and was an on-going event for the D-Space program. It went through a number of phases: namely the call for applications, the first screening and the final phase. Throughout the call for applications teachers interested in using the service to build and realise a scenario, filled in an application available through the dedicated to contest site (http://www.discoveryspace.net/skywatch2006).
The perspective participants submitted their ideas to be initially screened. The best proposed scenarios were selected to the second phase, where the participants had to use the Go Observing feature of the D-Space service in order to realize their previously described scenarios. The contest underwent the final phase where those previously selected best scenarios were the cause for bringing the teachers to the conference with paid expenses from D-Space. There were 5 of them selected to be awarded and presented at the conference.