Client: Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian
Project: American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges

Inspiration

American Indian people have long thrived on, respected, and protected the environments that make up their homelands. Night Kitchen Interactive collaborated with NMAI to create an educational website for use in classrooms, to inform younger audiences about the ways in which American Indian communities continue these efforts today.

Narration

Documenting four American Indian communities, the website highlights first person narration of the environmental issues facing the four tribes and their responses to those challenges.  Interpretive prompts and activities encourage students to draw connections to challenges within their local communities.

Design

To fulfill student and teacher needs, the site presents a media-rich, scaffolded learning environment with progress tracking and assessment features.  A combination of exploratory activities and free-response interpretive questions encourage student reflection and synthesis.

Interaction

Visitors to the website will be able to watch videos, explore interactive activities, and answer questions along the way to gain deeper insights to the integral role the environment plays in the daily lives of American Indian communities. The culminating activity will be the ability to plan classroom presentations, allowing students to collect notes taken across the site as well as observations about their own communities into one central web-based presentation planner.