Human Geography Emergency Remote Learning Culture Project option

Your Culture project will evolve around our large culture unit where you will select a group of people who share a common culture and create a virtual museum exhibit to share the stories of the people, historical sites, and artifacts that make the history of chosen culture group unique.  Your culture group may vary by scale; it may be as large as Canada (Canadian culture) or as small as a specific First Nations culture (the Haida), as long as you can justify that your group does indeed share a common, unifying culture/identity that is unique from other groups.  NOTE: Since this is a cultural geography class you are not restricted to Canada…you may choose Croatia or the Lan Na of northern Thailand (Lannathai), Iceland, the Tamil of Sri Lanka or the Kurds (just a few examples).

Many thanks to the Creative Educator and the rest of the online world for help with this project.

The International Council of Museums explains that museums serve our society by sharing the “heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.” As you can imagine, it takes a lot of time and money to create, develop, and support a traditional museum. New digital-age tools make it easy to create a user experience that doesn’t exist physically, providing opportunities for community members to learn without having to travel.

Your museum exhibit should include the following elements. 

A.      Culture:

• What are the unique customs of your group?
• Aspects of folk culture….food, music, clothing, entertainment, etc.?
•  How connected are they to globalization and pop culture?  Again, evidence of food, music, clothing, entertainment?
• Women’s roles?
• What does the cultural landscape of your region look like?  What is unique about it?  How do they interact with the environment (environmental determinism or possibilism)?  Sustainability?
• Try to give us a feel of what it means to be a member of your group’s culture.

B.      Language:

• What is the official language?  Is it multilingual?  Diverse?  Other minority languages?
• Historically, trace the official language back….how and when did it come to that region?  From where?  Diffusion? etc. 
• What family, branch, and group is the dominant language in?
• Dialects? Accents? Unique words?

C.      Religion:

• What is the dominant religion?  Is it local/ethnic or universalizing?  Monotheistic or polytheistic?  Is it a branch or denomination of a larger religion?
•  Holy books, prophets, basic doctrines?
• Religious customs and holidays?
• Historically, how did the religion come there?  The source?  Diffusion?  When?
• Holy sites and places of worship?
• Is it a hierarchical religion?
• Include a statistical breakdown/graph of minority religions (if applicable)
• Religious conflict…historically or currently?

D.      Ethnicity:

• What are the race and ethnicity of your group?  Is it unified or multicultural?  If multicultural, include a statistical breakdown/graph.  What are the minority groups?
•  How/when did the various ethnicities/races come together (historically)?
• Is there ethnic/racial tension?  Ethnic violence, wars, or disputes?  (current or historical)
•  Segregation (de facto and or de jure)?  Ethnic neighborhoods?
• A history of racism and discrimination?  Historical and current?

Your museum exhibit must include: a map of your region; pictures of the people; pictures of the cultural landscape (cities/towns, etc.); and a Works Cited page properly formatted in the project.

A great museum isn’t just a collection of artifacts. Compelling collections include stories to place the objects in their historical context. As you begin research and developing the story for your exhibition, you should create a flow chart storyboard that outlines the progression of artifacts and supporting media people will experience in their museum. As you clarify their flow charts, you should continue to research and collect facts, stories, and media artifacts. You will need to collect media for each part of the exhibition’s story. Media artifacts can include: Photographs of artifacts, people, or locations; Audio recordings of interviews; Musical performances connected to a time, place, or person

Because you are creating an online museum intended to be a real community resource, student work will not fall under the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia. You must cite all sources of data collected for this assignment! You should write informational text, narration, and captions for each stop in your online museum. As you work to build your collections, you can organize each stop on the flow chart tour with a single artifact or story. 

You can find Virtual Museum Templates for a PowerPoint museum at Christy Keeler

Online walkthrough/virtual museum templates can be found at Tarr's Toolbox and Emaze

You can use google slides to create a museum. To see how check out Curio Connects and Google

You may use a web site for the museum as well. If so Wix is easy and they have a template here.

Above all check out museums on-line to see what they have done regarding culture

https://www.historymuseum.ca/  for Canadian culture check out https://www.historymuseum.ca/canadaplay/introduction/

https://www.si.edu/

For pop culture check out https://americanhistory.si.edu/superheroes

If you choose pop rather than folk culture check out https://www.mopop.org//exhibitions-plus-events/