The first teacher training day was held in Santa Barbara, CA in partnership with UCSB's Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (KITP).

KITP holds annual one-day conferences that brings over a hundred science teachers from secondary schools from around the country to UCSB. During the day, the teachers get to meet and talk to several of the worlds experts on different areas of the latest and most exciting physics research. More information about KITP and the teachers conferences can be found here.

This was the first year that KITP joined with LCOGT for this conference and the second day training is planned to become an annual event. Paul Roche and Sarah Roberts from the UK joined Rachel Ross at UCSB on March 17th for the conference and the following day for the teacher training. The training session was modeled after those run in the UK by the Faulkes Telescope team and covered the basics of how to plan an observing session, how to use the telescope, and some ideas of what you can do with the data collected. Thanks also to Wayne Rosing, who opened the training session (and saved the day with several extension cords!), and Rachel Street, Marton Hidas, and John Martinez from LCOGT who helped out!

The presentation given by Rachel Ross can be viewed here (streaming either as Quicktime or RealPlayer or downloaded as a pdf .