ИСТИНА

Modern 21-century students are tech savvy and media active. Their attention and cognitive skills were formed and developed based on the visual culture, the fundamental principle of modern environment. However, this one-sided cognitive and emotional development lacks improvement of social skills in the real time. Moreover, cognitive skills, mostly oriented on perceiving visual information, are superficial. Visual culture experience deprives development of deep analytical and critical thinking skills. Educators who encounter these issues try to resolve the problems through inventive and non-traditional ways. One of them is using the resources of local museums. The phenomenon of small museums exists in different countries. It is a core of local communities and plays an important role in modern education. Museum educators use resources of the local socio-cultural landscape and make students' experience personal. A paper considers different projects small museums offer for local educators. The projects develop local history from the perspective of students' personal socio-cultural landscape. Hence, the socio-cultural landscape becomes an educational approach that helps students create their personal space of cultural heritage. While working on the individual project using historic and cultural heritage, students develop their analytical and cognitive skills through collaborative project-based activities.