Call it a camera exchange program.

But for students at Connellsville Area High School in Pennsylvania, the Gigapan camera system, originally designed by elements of Google, Carnegie Mellon University, and NASA, is proving to be a highly valued learning too.

Just in case you need a quick rundown, a Gigapan camera takes a whole lot of pictures in rapid succession, and then uses those same photos to form a much, much larger panoramic shot.  It’s as though you used a regular camera, took multiple pictures, and then spread them all out on your living room floor and, armed with a whole lot of scotch tape, taped them all together.

Anyway, the Gigapan camera so far has allowed students at Connellsville to exchange information about landfills with students in South Africa, and information about local festivals with students in Trinidad. So far the camera’s use has proven very successful, and provided plenty of new things for the students to learn about.  And at the bottom of it all was one camera.