Vietnam War-25 Years Later

Vietnam War-25 Years Later

Dear Pac Rim Multi-Media Design Group:

Your team has been highly praised by museums all over the world for your innovative, accurate, well documented, and comprehensive museum exhibit designs. At the Smithsonian Museum of American History, we pride ourselves on our unbiased view of American history and exhibits that tell the complete story of historical events. Therefore, we have selected your team to be one of a select group of elite museum exhibit designers to submit a detailed plan for a major exhibit at our museum.

We would like you to design a museum exhibit for us entitled, "The Vietnam War-Looking Back After 25 Years." We are planning an exhibit with photos, interactive exhibits, text captions, artifacts, and creative ideas that will make us want to select your team.

We would like the exhibit to answer the following focus questions:

What were the major events, turning points, and results of the Vietnam War?
Why was there a Vietnam War, what countries fought in it, and why?
What are the lessons we learned from the War in Vietnam? Explain the mistakes that were made, what should have been done differently.
Who was against the Vietnam War, why, how did they protest to end it?
What has happened to Vietnam since the war?

The Museum would like you to send us a detailed proposal with complete information on what you will include, a detailed plan of what the exhibit would look like, the answers to the important questions detailed above and a bibliography of your sources.

Sincerely,
Constance Lee Lookingback
Constance Lee Lookingback, Ph.D.
Museum of American History Curator

Task: Your group received the letter above and now you face a deadline to design your presentation and present your proposal. Your first task is to divide the assignment to research each of the important questions below:

What were the major events, turning points, and results of the Vietnam War?
Why was there a Vietnam War, what countries fought in it, and why?
What are the lessons we learned from the War in Vietnam? Explain the mistakes that were made, what should have been done differently
Who was against the Vietnam War, why, how did they protest to end it?
What has happened to Vietnam since the war?

Day One: Assign the questions to each member of the group and research the answers using textbooks and the Internet links listed below.

Day Two: Write the first draft of the answer to each question and do additional research. Make sure that you use in text citations for each fact that is not common knowledge and each idea that you use that is not your own, and each quotation.

Day Three: Turn in the answers to the focus questions.
After all the questions have been answered in a written document, you will then make a graphic design plan for your proposal. Remember the Smithsonian will choose the best proposal based on:

Comprehensive and accurate information
Creativity with an exhibit that will address all the multiple intelligences: Audio-Linguistic, Visual-Spatial, Mathematical-Logical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Musical-Rhythmic
Fair and unbiased
Interesting and educational
Complete requirements: all questions answered, drawing of plan, bibliography

Day Four: Your museum plan, explanation, sample exhibits, bibliography, and self-evaluation sheet is due at the end of the period.

Day Five: Presentation to the judges.

Resources:
History text books
Internet Sources