SLM 521

Online Museum Visits, elective #8

Assignment , part 2

The Food Museum http://www.foodmuseum.com/

ONLINE MUSEUM VISITS: THE FOOD MUSEUM

Today you will explore The Food Museum and complete four mini-activities for this in-class assignment. This should not take you more than the class period to complete!

The Food Museum is a small, funky museum site—actually a roving exhibition of food resource. It is home to the currently proposed Smithsonian Food Museum. It has the components good sites we have discussed in class (with respect to links and organization, as well as presentation, balanced graphics and text, video available, but not overwhelming), and some other distinctions (most notably, an interactive Food forum). One of the goals of this site is to educate everyone through the universal medium of food, as well as to help eradicate both obesity and famine.

You will want to refer to your copy of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the American Meal and your notes to complete one of these exercises. You may also refer to any of the websites we have explored in our discussion of the Slow Food Movement in this country, including Slow Food USA .

ASSIGNMENTS:

1. GATHERING INFORMATION: Poke around this site and its exhibits, in an overall way—not too pokey, you only have an hour!. Pretend you are dropping in, or looking from above. Make a list of 5 things you want to come back to at this site when you have more time, and look at in-depth.

2. SOLVING a PROBLEM: Please go through the exhibit Feast or Famine. Use this exhibit, plus our reading of Fast Food Nation, and your recent exploration of the Slow Food Movement to synthesize a persuasive paragraph. Give me three concrete examples of solving this problem (Feast or Famine), on a national and global level. Please put this in your Writer’s Log.

3. SUMMARIZING a TOUR or EXHIBIT: Please select from either the Crepes, Watermelon, or Licorice exhibits. Go through the exhibit and write apop-up ad for my desktop for this exhibit. Convince me to click on that link.

4. WRITING A REFLECTION: Please visit the Food Museum Blog . Read at least three posts there, and choose one to respond to, drawing on your personal experiences. This will be a short (or can be long, if you like) version of a reflection piece. Make a meaningful contribution to the blog comments, based on your own experience.