A workshop to lay the groundwork for a second cultural exchange between students around the world using GigaPan cameras will take place June 22-24 at the S. Fayette School District campus near the County Airport. At that time, representatives from five local school districts, including Homestead, schools from Intermediate Unit 1, and one school yet to be announced will pair up with partners at five international schools that will be chosen through UNESCO. Candidates include Norway, Brazil, S. Africa, Japan, and Indonesia, but that's not final.

The planning meeting with UNESCO takes place Feb. 16-17 in Geneva. Laura Tomokiyo who runs this program, Illah Nourbakhsh, Randy Sargent, Rachael Bursin, and and a visiting scholar will attend. The group has received some $225,000 in funding from the Pittsburgh and Benedum Foundations to continue the program. Laura says their support shows how important it is to local educators. The grant will cover the equipment given to the students as well as the workshop. Plans are to have another series of international GigaPan exhibitions in the March-May 2010 timeframe. The last one was held in Oct. 2008. The exhibition will travel to all 10 schools in the various countries.

"The impact of the cultural exchange based on the GigaPan camera has exceeded what we expected," said Tomokiyo. "Now we're asking what we can we do to support schools around the world. The relationships formed are something that transcends technology. Local teachers involved in the first exhibition are contacting us about other possibilities. There's talk about putting GigaPans in a school monastery in Tibet. The impact of the prints- so large and so many-has been amazing. There's the pride of the students in what they created and how meaningful what they learned from their peers in different parts of the world. In essence, they were being student journalists using new technologies.

Laura says that the North Slope of Alaska has written their group into a U.S. Dep't of Education grant to use the GigaPan to build up a circumpolar community that would include Alaska, Russia, Canada, and Greenland.

The GigaPan also shows potential for language learning. At Falk Schoo here in Pittsburgh, they've been using GigaPan images to enhance learning in a Spanish class.