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When fully inflated, it stands 11 feet high and 20 feet in diameter; from inside the domed tent-like structure, one can see the entire night sky from any place in the globe and all the stars like never before.

It's the newest addition to the Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES academic arsenal; a digital, entirely portable planetarium a Digitarium, as it's called and it's currently available to 18 school districts in Erie and Chautauqua County.

"This new resource is available for participating school districts to enhance their science programs from kindergarten all the way to high school," said Lisa Wolski, E2CCB Instructional Media Specialist. "It projects the night sky using your exact location. If your school district is located in Sherman, you can enter the latitude and longitude for that area and see the night sky as it would appear in that exact location."

As it would appear, that is, without having to worry about the time of day, cloud cover and light pollution.

The Digitarium is fully interactive and programmable by remote control. It includes many educational features, like the ability to show the constellations projected against the star field. Teachers can download open-source software to prepare lessons for the Digitarium, and they can even write their own scripts to customize their lessons.

On Dec. 7 and Dec. 8, E2CCB's Media Center service brought Greg Anderson, a Digitarium trainer with Seattle's Digitalis Education Solutions, to the Sherman and Orchard Park central school districts to train teachers in the operation of the digital planetariums. Representatives from 16 school districts participated in the trainings.

The Digitarium is available for all school districts that participate in the E2CCB Media Center service. That includes the Bemus Point, Brocton, Chautauqua Lake, Clymer, Dunkirk, Falconer, Fredonia, Frewsburg, Forestville, Gowanda, Holland, Jamestown, Pine Valley, Orchard Park, Ripley, Sherman, Southwestern and Westfield districts.

The Media Center service is provided by E2CCB's School Support Services Division, which is housed at the LoGuidice Educational Center in Fredonia and led by Barb Siemaszko, School Support Services director.