The earliest use of the Journey through Space and Time Materials was through the Charles Sturt University Remote Telescope Project (CSURTP) was initially set up, in 1999, for use specifically by upper primary school (Years 5 & 6) students (McKinnon & Mainwaring 2000) as a 12 telescope that could be used to gather images in real time via the internet. This has since been expanded to include high school level (Years 7–10) (McKinnon 2005, Danaia 2006) and beyond. Some senior students in Australia and Canada have used the system to acquire data on variable stars as part of their science assessment requirements to undertake an individual research projects.

The ‘Eye Observatory’ Project, using this facility and materials developed for the CSURTP, provided an educational evaluation of over 2000 students and 101 teachers from 30 schools as they went through an investigative structured inquiry procedure (Danaia 2006). Highly significant gains in terms of the students’ understanding of astronomical phenomena and a marked reduction in alternative conceptions via using a subset of questions from the Astronomy Diagnostic Test (Hufnagel et al. 2000) were achieved. Students’ perceptions of science in school and in the larger world showed significant gains, although these varied dramatically between differing schools, teachers and student groups.

(History adapted from PASA Review Paper by Fitzgerald et al. 2014)