About The Appleton Compassion Project
The Appleton Compassion Project is an art project involving over 10,000 Appleton Area School District art students. Starting in fall 2010, participating students received a six-inch-by-six-inch art panel to draw or paint their idea of compassion. Each student also created a corresponding compassion statement that elaborates on the theme of their artwork. The project was a unique opportunity to share the Appleton area students’ idea of compassion to a worldwide community and aspires to teach the practice of compassion through the use of art.
To learn more about the project visit the Appleton Compassion Project website.
About Skyline's Involvement
Upon hearing of this project, Skyline jumped at the chance to partner with the Trout Museum of Art and the Appleton Area School District to create a virtual exhibition to support the Museum’s exhibit, and make it available for people across the globe. The virtual exhibit creates a unique user experience which allows the community to find artwork by student name, school, grade, or teacher in an engaging, interactive way. In addition, the virtual exhibit was key to helping visitors locate a specific piece of art when the tiles were on display in the museum.
About the Technology
Skyline needed to choose a platform that would enable the school district to quickly deal with the demand of thousands of parents and family members wanting to see their student’s work and allow them to manage cost as well. We chose to implement a cloud solution based on Microsoft Azure, which we've been using since Azure’s introduction at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in 2008. The application takes advantage of Microsoft’s DeepZoom and Pivot technologies providing a unique experience for students, parents, and museum visitors alike.
In addition to the virtual exhibit, we created mobile apps for the Windows Phone 7, Android, and iPhone platforms. The mobile apps allowed museum visitors to enter the number of a specific piece of art and view the corresponding compassion statement. The apps also allowed SmartPhone users to see featured pieces of art, search the exhibit by student name, grade, or school, and more.
To learn more about the technology solutions, read the Microsoft published case study.