Jangada Brazil is an online journal maintained by a group of individuals whose mission it is to provide free and open access to Brazilian popular culture on the web. The team is made up of a designer, an historian, a musician, an illustrator, a researcher, and a sociologist, all from various parts of Brazil. This rich collection of cultural artifacts contains a gallery of Brazilian myths and legends, an alphabetical list of more than 2,000 proverbs, and information on practically every facet of Brazilian folklore and culture.
Type of Material:
Online journal
Recommended Uses:
For Brazilian culture and civilization classes or foreign language classes
Identify Major Learning Goals:
The learner will be better acquainted with Brazilian popular culture by reading this online journal. Students of Brazilian Portuguese will enhance reading ability in Portuguese.
Target Student Population:
Advanced learners of Portuguese
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Advanced reading proficiency in Portuguese
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
Jangada Brasil has a wealth of materials in a collection that has been online since 1998. Since that time, each edition has consisted of approximately forty items that are classified in nine categories: feasts and celebrations,music, myths, work, home, cooking, medicine, children's folklore, proverbs and curiosities, the oral tradition, and a collection of bumper sticker phrases. In all, there are 3,500 texts and about 12,00 web pages. There is an impressive alphabetically arranged bibliography that accompanies the site. Illustrations are exquisite and can become themselves the subject of cultural discussions. This site is a veritable goldmine for those studying popular culture and for those who seek to better understand Brazilian film, literature, art and popular culture from all the various regions.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
This site may be used for independent study, as a springboard for research, or as a companion site to works on Brazilian culture. The authors pride themselves on the fact that this is a true inside view of Brazilian culture with an interpretation from a native perspective. Students can read the articles and make cross-cultural comparisons with their own cultures. The study of proverbs is always interesting in any language and can be used to identify recurrent themes and preoccupations. The bumper sticker collection documents the unique folklore associated with the figure of the Brazilian truck driver, many of whom cross vast expanses on difficult terrain in a country the size of a continent. Faculty can use this material as a pre-viewing exercise for many Brazilian films
that feature the truck driver as major character.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The site is essentially an online journal and as such has a consistent format that is easy to navigate. Most pages indicate the last dates on which changes were made.
Concerns:
It would be an enhancement to have mp3 as opposed to midi files for the music.Some videos would also be a welcome addition.
Creative Commons:
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