Virtual Annual Art Fair 2020-21: Hawar International School
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Please share a brief background of your innovation.
Hawar International School held a virtual experience of the annual Art Fair where all students’ works were displayed using Lapentor, a virtual tour software that provides the user with 360-degree streaming, floor plans, maps, hotspots, panoramas, and virtual reality. It is a cloud-based solution that allows users to access their tools through any web browser on their preferred devices.
How was it planned?
A committee consisting of members of the Art departments and the head of ICT brainstormed ideas on how to celebrate art and HIS’ young artists during the pandemic. The most innovative idea was to bring the art exhibition to the students and their parents via VR experience using a real 360 and panorama photo of the school to build a connection and sense of belonging to the school even during the lockdown.
Did you face any challenges in implementation?
Digitalization of students’ works as well as ensuring that all of their art pieces are included in the fair were some of the main challenges. Others included embedding different platforms and links in one source as well as making sure that it is easy to navigate even for younger audiences.
We wanted to ensure that students remain engaged, so, a certificate of participation at the end of the VR experience followed by short feedback was generated for each participant.
A brief assessment of your results
The VR experience garnered over 2000 views on the platform, making it a successful one. More than 400 certificates were generated automatically for the participants.
In hindsight, what were the most valuable lessons learned? Could things have been done
differently?
With regard to the circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic, we learned that the most valuable lesson was that we can and will continue to engage our students via virtual reality and we have continued implementation of VR even after school resumed full operation.
