Soweto students will be opening a gallery to expose their work, entitled “GigaPan Conversations: Diversity and Inclusion in the Community” at Museum Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa. The gallery runs from October 5th through October 26th. It exhibits a selection of large (7 by 1.5 meter), high resolution panoramas created by the students at Lavela High School (Soweto), Falk Middle School (Pittsburgh) and the Manchester Craftmen’s Guild (Pittsburgh). The show is interactive; it will also display selections of the conversations between the students from across the two continents and visitors of the museum are encouraged to extend the conversations on the gallery walls. The student created panoramas were obtained by using a robotic camera (GigaPan) to capture shots of their community and then loaded onto a website. Software was then used to merge all the photos taken by the GigaPan into vast panoramas. A key feature of the photos is the level of detail they contain; from a picture of a crowded market, a user can zoom in to a detail like a belt buckle for example. The students took a snapshots of the details, commented on them and conversed with others.
The project was developed to help children from different backgrounds understand each other and their cultures. Using GigaPan, children are learning about the world and teaching their contemporaries about their heritage by sharing community sites, events and places of importance. By creating their own interactive community the students are developing a deeper understanding, consideration and respect for others, their beliefs and values. In September, students at Naparima Girl’s High School in Trinidad and Bishop’s High School in Tobago were trained in the technology and will soon join the students from Soweto and Pittsburgh in the GigaPan conversation.
Additional Project details:
In addition to the gallery, members of the GigaPan team, Illah Nourbakhsh (Carnegie Mellon University) and Christopher Strebel (UNESCO IBE) are planning a follow up to their April visit to Lavela High School. The visit is expected to focus on assessing and evaluating the project; for example: exploring avenues to improve the current learning platform, assessing sustainability and looking at possible next steps.
