Museums have long been the repository of important cultural items. They make these items available to public view in exhibitions in specially designed architectural spaces, and more recently, in the virtual spaces provided on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM. By making their collections accessible to the public in carefully crafted and coherent presentations, museums serve an important mission of perpetuating cultural heritage through the educational experiences they offer to the public. Schools share a mission of cultural preservation with museums, making them natural partners in the development of effective educational experiences for young citizens. The creation of virtual museums as classroom learning projects is one emerging strategy schools have explored that makes use of new digital media, the World Wide Web and multimedia authoring. This paper presents a culturally responsive emerging model for school-museum collaboration. The Four Directions Project has been working with American Indian Schools to explore the uses of technology for culturally responsive teaching. One approach Four Directions is exploring is school-museum collaboration for student-created virtual museum projects. A Four Directions Model for school-museum partnerships has emerged from these experiences. Two example projects are described and the benefits of virtual museum projects are discussed. (Contains 11 references.) (AEF)