In this unit, you will take the information you’ve learned in the previous units and apply it in a non-traditional way. Museums all around the world are now making large portions of their collections available digitally through “virtual museums.”
Though they are not a perfect substitute for seeing the exhibits in real life, they at least open a window onto artifacts and events that has never before been possible. And so, we have created an assignment called The Museum Project that will make use of these virtual museums to facilitate your understanding of the humanities. You will begin this unit by writing a discussion about a select piece of art.
This will give you an opportunity to practice what you should be thinking about when visiting the virtual museums and what you’ll do when you create your project. You will then spend some time visiting some of the virtual museums we have provided in “List of Museums.” The Museum Project involves two steps: Curation Creation For The Museum Project Part 1, you will curate a set of images and information from the virtual museums and explain how those will contribute to your museum project.
For The Museum Project Part 2, you will use what you curated to create a final presentation (whether a video, animated PowerPoint presentation, Prezi presentation, etc.). To “curate” means to select and organize items for a presentation, such as a museum or gallery exhibit.
For the museum project, you are going to curate images and information from virtual museums. We separate the curation process from the creation process because curating items is not as easy as it may seem. You must have your final project in mind before you begin. You must spend a good deal of time in the virtual museums to be sure you have enough appropriate images to complete your project. And you may not end up using all the images or information you curate in the final project.
Also, you must use information from the museums we have provided or from another museum web site (a Google image or web search is not acceptable). You must cite the museum from which you get each image or bit. In the creation portion, you will construct a presentation for your classmates. You are free to use whatever media you think will be most effective for presenting your project. You can make a video in which you create your own museum exhibit. You can create an animated PowerPoint or Prezi presentation that combines research and images.
Your presentation should demonstrate both scholarship (you should conduct a bit of research in academic sources, and you should diligently cite those sources) and a fitting connection with the information you curated (your images should support or supplement your scholarship). Here are some general guidelines for the projects you might choose.
If your project does not fit into one of these categories, contact your instructor for help and guidelines. Video: 8-10 minutes of content. Videos should be high quality, using a video editing software such as iMovie or Windows MovieMaker. (Sources should be cited throughout. Complete citations should be listed on the last slide/frame or accompany the submission as a Word document.)
The submission must include a narrative which explains the connections and conclusions that the reader should draw from your video. In other words, you need to write out the narration or be sure that the video makes it evident as you present the material. (Complete citations should be included as “credits” or submitted as a word document.) NOTE: Some videos exceed the file size for submitting to D2L.
Please use an external dropbox or a YouTube link for your submission. Animated PowerPoint or Prezi: 8-10 minutes of content. You may lecture over the presentation or include a musical soundtrack (preferably without lyrics, unless the humanities discipline you choose is music and your content calls for it). If you choose to use music, the submission must include a narrative which explains the connections and conclusions that the reader should draw from your PowerPoint or Prezi.
In other words, you need to write out the narration that you might speak as you present the slides. (Sources should be cited throughout. Complete citations should be listed on the last slide/frame.) NOTE: Some submissions exceed the file size for submitting to D2L. Please use an external dropbox or a YouTube link for your submission.
These are the general outlines of the project. Read the article by John Berger, and spend some time getting used to the virtual museums. Then read the instructions in Research Project Part I. You will begin with an outline of your museum project, and then start curating images and text from the museums.