A Basis of Cultural Education: Safeguarding Intangible Heritage Through a Web-Based Digital Photographic Collection

Abstract

The 21 st century came with its own challenges as much as it brought various benefits through the advancement in technology. Cultural heritage is one such "casualty" of the developments in the 21 st century in that there has been a decline in appreciation and awareness of the importance of cultural heritage. Thus, the present study was necessitated with the primary aim of (i) preservation of the intangible cultural heritage of the people of Georgetown through the development of the E-George Town Digital Heritage (E-GDH) system (ii) develop an effective GUI for the E-DGH system in order to stimulate and captivate the attention of users with the aim of raising awareness as well to educate the masses on the importance of cultural heritage and (iii) to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed system in relation to its objective through the administration of questionnaires to target respondents. To this effect the study employed the use of the waterfall model to develop this E-GDH website. The study found that respondents (prior to using the E-GDH system) had no previous experience in terms of oral story telling from their parents. Overall, it was found that the GUI was pleasant and attractive for use by respondents and that they were able to learn easily as a result. Based on the fact that respondents where able to learn with ease due to an effective GUI, the study also revealed that the content they were learning from this website was actually easy for them to understand and that this website was indeed helpful in helping them to understand and appreciate cultural heritage. The meaning and conduct of the education sector in this era of advanced technology has shifted a lot over the years changing from teachers as the primary source of information to what is termed as "learner-centred" where they are given the leeway to learn, explore and make sense of the world around them and the findings from this study falls no short from this notion. The E-GDH website could be used by schools in subjects such as history where the teacher could use this website as reference point for a certain lesson outcome that deals with digital cultural heritage or intangible cultural heritage. Thus the study contributes immensely to the understanding of cultural heritage by raising awareness as well as stimulating the inters of the young generation to appreciate and learn more about their cultural heritage. The prominence of digitalising the intangible cultural heritage cannot be emphasised enough as recent study has shown decline in interests in these area so the development of the E-GDH is one such positive call to action in response to UNESCO's 2003 call for preservation of intangible cultural heritage and by extension, educating and raising awareness on the importance of cultural heritage.