Oficina Internacional de Educación

The GigaPan Dialogues seek to promote empathy and understanding between cultures and create a greater sense of community through an exchange of explorable, high-resolution digital imagery.

Using a robotic camera provided by the programme, children in participating schools take explorable, high-resolution panoramic images of the world around them, and share them with their contemporaries around the globe. The sharing of their community’s sites, landmarks, events, and places of importance to them encourages self-reflection and a deeper understanding of community and self-identity.

Students are challenged to think deeply about inclusion and diversity in their communities. Within parameters easily defined by local infrastructure, they embark on a 21st-century community-networking journey to explore, document, and discuss the images and community identity.

Tangible Outcomes of the program include a gallery or presentation for the outside community showcasing the images and what the children have learned. The program targets equally the intangibles, however. Children come out of an exchange with skills in digital photography, ICTs, internet research, communication and social media, deeper understanding and awareness of their partner community, and an enhanced sense of identity that comes from documenting one's life with pride and dignity.