NHD Process Paper
Our group decided to choose the Vietnam War because we all are Vietnamese and share the same customs. We wanted to learn and increase our knowledge about our history and background. We all knew a little about The Vietnam War and its basic facts, but we wanted learn about it more in depth by comprehending what, why, and how conflicts appeared during the war. Having connections with families and friends made it easier for us to get primary sources for this topic. With the connections we would get the different perspectives of how each person felt and got affected on the war. We all agreed that researching about the Vietnam War would be a great choice for us to do our NHD project on. Our thesis was “After the French left southern Vietnam, the U.S quickly stepped into the war to prevent the power of the Communist spreading all over Vietnam, like it already did in northern Vietnam. The U.S intentions were to stop the spread of the communism and the Domino theory because they feared that communism would effect their nation politically.”
Our group researched the basic story and the outcome of the war. By knowing the whole story it made it easier for us to split up the story into four parts, we each did our own research for that particular part and each part was joined together to create one thesis. Each part was elaborated to get specific parts of the war, such as all the perspectives, allies, reactions and etc. Tai had the background history of the Cold War and allies, the background should explain which brought into the war in Vietnam, and who led through the war . Alesandra had why and how on the U.S involvement, she elaborated on what had caused the U.S to join the war which was the foreign policies and the domino theory, and of course South Vietnam wants all the help they can get so they welcomed the U.S in the war, by letting the U.S be involved they got new upgraded weapons and new technologies. Kelly had the political and economic reactions of all of the nations included, and Jennifer had the decisions that affected those who were involved which was on the last page of the project. On the last page, there were images that depicted the feelings of Americans and the Vietnamese after the war. Each of us were responsible for a page. Each page was organized so that its easy for the viewer to understand the Vietnam War. It started from how the war started and ended with the result. Splitting the War into specific parts and having each member elaborate on each part, was a well-thought out plan because it was extremely organized and not time consuming.
For our presentation we decided to create a Weebly website because it was the best for all four of our schedule, with all four of us doing different activities there was no time we can all agree on. If we did a board or documentary, it would have been a burden to make time for all of us to meet up and we would have to carry a board around and constantly add information at different times would have been impossible due to the fact that we only have one board and having a board doesn’t have access to showing videos. Also we didn’t want to waste ink from printing our photos and so Weebly was the easiest choice and more organized. Weebly was easy because all of the group members were able to access the page while at home without meeting up. We were able to work on the page on our own time. Meeting with our group members were a major problem, because we have different schedules.The majority of our primary sources were videos and pictures. We found the videos to be most helpful because it was a primary source, it was factual and it’s a visual. So when we gathered our information, it was easy for us to see and understand, so we thought it would be the same for the people who will view our website. Kelly had 2 videos that related to her pictures and it showed the scene of what happened in those pictures. She had political cartoon and did an I see, it means and described everything she saw and what it meant, also she had quotes from books and she explained what they meant, like she related back to her thesis. Kelly had two pages for her reactions and made each page a different topic, the first page was political issues and the second was economic issues. Alesandra had one video and a political drawing, they were all extremely helpful because the video gave us an image on her part of the war and the political gave us a perspective of the nations at that time period. Jennifer had a video on her page. The video shows how the Vietnamese feared the communist after the war ended. Youtube was a very helpful site because we were able to search up a lot of visual primary sources.
The Vietnam War project relates to the NHD theme because it depicted two huge debates between nations. One debate was the Soviet Union/ North Vietnam attempting to change the form of government in South Vietnam to Communism. Because of this debate, the U.S had to get involved which had cause another debate within the nation of the U.S. This debate was whether the U.S should fight in the war and after the decision was made, the people of the U.S had their own perspective that did not agree with the government’s decisions.
Our group researched the basic story and the outcome of the war. By knowing the whole story it made it easier for us to split up the story into four parts, we each did our own research for that particular part and each part was joined together to create one thesis. Each part was elaborated to get specific parts of the war, such as all the perspectives, allies, reactions and etc. Tai had the background history of the Cold War and allies, the background should explain which brought into the war in Vietnam, and who led through the war . Alesandra had why and how on the U.S involvement, she elaborated on what had caused the U.S to join the war which was the foreign policies and the domino theory, and of course South Vietnam wants all the help they can get so they welcomed the U.S in the war, by letting the U.S be involved they got new upgraded weapons and new technologies. Kelly had the political and economic reactions of all of the nations included, and Jennifer had the decisions that affected those who were involved which was on the last page of the project. On the last page, there were images that depicted the feelings of Americans and the Vietnamese after the war. Each of us were responsible for a page. Each page was organized so that its easy for the viewer to understand the Vietnam War. It started from how the war started and ended with the result. Splitting the War into specific parts and having each member elaborate on each part, was a well-thought out plan because it was extremely organized and not time consuming.
For our presentation we decided to create a Weebly website because it was the best for all four of our schedule, with all four of us doing different activities there was no time we can all agree on. If we did a board or documentary, it would have been a burden to make time for all of us to meet up and we would have to carry a board around and constantly add information at different times would have been impossible due to the fact that we only have one board and having a board doesn’t have access to showing videos. Also we didn’t want to waste ink from printing our photos and so Weebly was the easiest choice and more organized. Weebly was easy because all of the group members were able to access the page while at home without meeting up. We were able to work on the page on our own time. Meeting with our group members were a major problem, because we have different schedules.The majority of our primary sources were videos and pictures. We found the videos to be most helpful because it was a primary source, it was factual and it’s a visual. So when we gathered our information, it was easy for us to see and understand, so we thought it would be the same for the people who will view our website. Kelly had 2 videos that related to her pictures and it showed the scene of what happened in those pictures. She had political cartoon and did an I see, it means and described everything she saw and what it meant, also she had quotes from books and she explained what they meant, like she related back to her thesis. Kelly had two pages for her reactions and made each page a different topic, the first page was political issues and the second was economic issues. Alesandra had one video and a political drawing, they were all extremely helpful because the video gave us an image on her part of the war and the political gave us a perspective of the nations at that time period. Jennifer had a video on her page. The video shows how the Vietnamese feared the communist after the war ended. Youtube was a very helpful site because we were able to search up a lot of visual primary sources.
The Vietnam War project relates to the NHD theme because it depicted two huge debates between nations. One debate was the Soviet Union/ North Vietnam attempting to change the form of government in South Vietnam to Communism. Because of this debate, the U.S had to get involved which had cause another debate within the nation of the U.S. This debate was whether the U.S should fight in the war and after the decision was made, the people of the U.S had their own perspective that did not agree with the government’s decisions.
Reflection Papers
We have selected the Vietnam War such as our topic for NHD because we are all Vietnamese, and we already have a little experience about the war. We wanted to know more about which brought up the war and how it ended, so we divided the Vietnam War into many tasks for everyone in the group to find more sources and details which related to our topic. After that we connected all the tasks together on website.
Everyone in group have a choice to pick what task he/she going to do, and I have chosen to do the background of the Vietnam War. The thing I have to narrow down on this task is the foundation of the war or it means how the war started. To do well on that task, I have to find the time line, the leader of both sides, and who support them during the war. There were two types of source that I have to find are primary source and secondary source. For the primary source, I found some photographs and letters which could explain how the North Vietnam and South Vietnam got military support from other countries. For the secondary source, I found a book and a biography about the war and a leader of the North Vietnam. Those two types of source were helping me understand a lot more about the war events such as the reaction, how the military formed in North and South Vietnam, how long was the relationship of allies… After I got all the sources, I started to take notes on what I took and write the annotated bibliography for every single source. For example, when I found a letter, I have to mark up the text to understand clearly what it is mean for every sentence because letter was a type of primary source and I don’t want to be misunderstood about it. For another example, I made the two columns I See/It Mean for every photograph that I found with the same purpose is not to be misunderstood about that picture. I must write an annotated bibliography for each source because the annotated bibliography could explain how the source related to our group thesis and my task. The annotated bibliography also sums up the source, and it could tell me what the type of source is and how it should be used for project.
My group and I have decided website for presentation because we have video clips to share, music, and the website could save our time instead of meeting to do the project on the board, so everyone felt enable to do their task. All we have to do on website were to create an account of Weebly website, and design what we need for the page from everyone in the group. To post up the video onto website, we have to cut the video clip shorter to save time for presentation. The task of everyone in my group weren’t easy because everyone have to work hard to find their best source and explain it clearly on the website. The project was challenging everyone in my group, but the solidary of the group mate made the work flow smoothly. My group mates helped me a lot in this project, so I think to work in a group is an advantage. We worked on the source, the website, and the final step is how to present my work. To present my work, I have to talk out loud to whole class about how the war started and how each side of Vietnam get support in the military. And that presentation was a challenging part for me in this project. After the research, I understand more clearly about the Vietnam War, and I feel comfortable to share my experiences about the war to everyone who want to know more about the war in Vietnam.
In the conclusion, I realized that Vietnam War is a good topic in NHD because it was the huge event with a long struggle ever before until now. I could understand more about the political systems which supported on both sides such as Communism supported the North Vietnam, and the Capitalism supported the South Vietnam. The U.S was the biggest ally to the South Vietnam because the U.S wanted to help the countries at risk of Communist invasion. That was the biggest debate for everyone in the world between two nations. Although U.S aid to South Vietnam, but they still lost the war because the American people rebelled because of death of Americans in the war through fifteen years in the war and the U.S didn’t want to waste more money and their citizens on helping because there were two dictators in both sides. And these things about the project made me feel the Vietnam War is in my hand, because I understand more about how the war started and ended with purpose. -TAI LUU
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This year the theme for Nation History Day was debates and in history there are millions of debates to choose from. It was hard to think of a debate that was a huge issue in the past that all of my group members can agree on. Once we selected our topic, which was The Vietnam War, it was so broad. There was so much events and conflicts of this war that lasted 15 years and it was so hard to narrow it down, everything we had chosen was either too broad or it was just not as specific as it’s suppose to be. I remember we wanted to do was the Vietnam War justified, but that was too broad, we also wanted to do what was the mental effects of the Vietnam War but that was also too broad. Then eventually, our group did some more research and we saw that the U.S had a lot to do with this war, we questioned why because the U.S is so far from Vietnam, so why would the U.S involve themselves into such a burden. With all of these questions we had, Mrs. Mastromauro saw that this should be our topic. I was relieved to find topic because I felt so far behind, and I was also glad that we had this topic because of my family history. My grandmother had my mother with a French soldier and I had never really comprehend that so I was super happy to be covering this topic. After the topic was the thesis, which I found the most challenging. We had to be specific and include everything on the project that we were talking about in three sentences. I was frustrated because every thesis that my group had came up with, it would get rejected and after this process that happened about five times, we finally got it right. The whole process on finding a specific topic and making a perfect thesis on it was tough but then shortly after we had to start our research. We immediately broke down the whole story of Vietnam and assigned each member a part so they each can elaborate on it. Tai had the background information, he research on how the communist started and why were they being spread, and those how were it’s alliances. I got the U.S involvement, I had underestimated this, I thought it would be all easy and all I had to do was some research but there’s so much information and you have to go to different site because having evidence from one website was too bias. I researched on the foreign policies and the Domino Theory because this these were some of the main reasons for the U.S joining into the war. Kelly did her research how the reactions of all of the nations included in the war, mainly the citizens of the U.S protested against this war, the north and the south Vietnam just wanted to defeat each other, so they can get their form of government. Jennifer based her research on the effects of the decisions that were made during the war. She found out that most Americans hated the war and the Vietnamese were suffering because all of the warfare supplies were effecting them mentally. We ended up using all of the information that we found, it is a lot of facts and pictures and videos and I am afraid that we won’t be able to cover all of our subjects that we would be talking about. I guess we would just have to make a brief summary. After we got all of our research done we had to put it all in the website, I thought it was going to be really confusing and hard to get everything in the right place, but Weebly is an incredible website to do NHD on. It has the buttons to put picture or load videos and it has different themes that we can choose from that fits best with all four of our interest, which I find very helpful and useful. This website maker thing was the best choice in my opinion because any of my group members could have access to it at anytime. I can’t even imagine having a board, all of us four have such different hectic schedules and I honestly found it impossible to have all of us meet up at a house or a library and work on it, and what if one of us needed to add something it pronto? How would we be able to have access to it. I also feel like having a board we be such a burden to carry home and back and repeat the cycle for days. For creating a story to put on our website was pretty easy, I thought it was easy because we had already split the research into four parts, and all we had to do was put in into order and fill in all the blanks that were missing between our slides. The one thing I kind of regret throughout this whole project was picking a group that were all of my friends in the class. The three of us, Kelly , Jennifer and I were best friends ever since kinder-garden and Kelly is Tai’s cousin so we were all pretty close to each other. I regretted this because all we did was talk and we really weren’t serious about our project. I felt like we could have got much more done if I weren’t friends, but I the same time I am glad that all of us four became partners, because we were all so comfortable with each other and there was no awkward moments. We all contributed ideas comfortable and had no problems telling each other wrong from right. I feel like I have learned a lot from doing this research. I most definitely got used to searching up sources and this project will totally make my research for english easier. It was hard to find out specific facts about a certain topic that you are researching but now that I have found about ten sources for history I feel like doing the research paper would go by a lot faster since I basically have practice. -ALESANDRA PHAM
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My group chose The Vietnam War and we had a difficult time on narrowing down our topic. We didn’t know what we wanted the narrow topic to be so it took us awhile until we decided on our topic, which was the how the United States got involved with the war and how it lead to the economic and political failures of the war and how it affected the people who were involved. Afterwards when we got our narrowed topic down it made it easier for us to create our thesis. I thought narrowing down the topic was very challenging for my group because we didn’t know what we wanted. We were told several times to be more specific because The Vietnam War was too broad and eventually we got down to the Economic and Political Problems of the Involvement of the War, which then made it easier for the group to split up four parts of everyone in the group.
I learned with conducting researching that the two main sources were primary and secondary sources. At the beginning I thought that primary sources were going to be hard to find because I thought I wouldn’t have that much people to talk to, but then I found out primary sources wasn’t just interviews. It could be photos, documentaries, and videos and that helped me in gathering in my primary sources and it made me realize in the end that primary was much easier than secondary sources. Types of data bases that were the best and most trustworthy were the books I got because I didn’t have to go online and search up much. I brought the books home and to school and didn’t have a problem because I didn’t need an Internet, but I need the Internet for some of the research I did, which were most of the quotes. Also I had YouTube videos, which I thought put a nice touch to my project because even though I had pictures, I also had a video of it and it showed how that scene was. I thought the videos would let other students/teachers understand that scene more because I know it made me feel as if I were there when I watched the videos. Taking notes on the project at the beginning was complicated for me because there were so many attachments and it looked like a lot of work and I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it all.
When we first got introduced to NHD and chose our topic my group just looked up basic information on the war. Afterwards when I got to pick my section for the project, which was the economic and political failures I began my researching on issues from the North, South Vietnam and the United States. I didn’t really understand my thesis and topic at the beginning, but afterwards I did when I understood the thesis more and asked my group for help. Every time I did something and got information I would ask my group is what I am doing right, just to make sure I was on the right track. When I researched my topic up I learned many interesting facts and how issues were so bad during that time. I felt very sorry for the people who had to go through the war when watching the videos and looking at the pictures. I searched up a couple quotes and one was given to me and those quotes helped me talked about how people and Martin Luther King Jr. felt about the war. My videos showed the scene of my pictures on website. Also books helped to gain knowledge of North Vietnam Women and how they were treated during the war.
How I knew what to decide to put on my project was I knew I wanted pictures to be able to look at the images and explain them and the videos eventually just came in by itself because I thought the pictures by it looked boring so I added in the videos. I wanted my page to look simple and neat, so I created two pages one for political issues and the second page for economic issues. Having them separated gave me an easier time to know which page was for what. At first I was planning to keep everything on the same page, but I was told we each needed more than one page and so I created two pages. Even though everyone else in my group didn’t want two pages, I thought I would be the one with the two pages, in case I would get in trouble for having one.
There were advantages and challenges working in a group. I thought the advantage was having each person in the group having their own part and letting them research by themselves instead of depending on someone else doing that part for another student to do the other. Also we didn’t have to meet up on weekends/days or afterschool to work on a board or video together, instead we all got to go home and do the project on our own time. That let us work on it on our own hours because if we needed to meet up we would probably end up fooling around and not doing anything or we wouldn’t all have the same time schedule. The challenges I thought we had was at the end of the project we all tried to meet up, but everyone was busy and couldn’t meet up with each other or we wouldn’t have ride. I got mad at that we couldn’t meet up because since I get nervous of presenting I wanted to do a run through. Also when we had class time I asked everyone to do a run through no one would listen, so when I got home I tried a run through myself, but I didn’t really get much out of it because I wanted to know if my part sounded correct and good. Another challenge I thought was when I went on the weebly site, it looked like no one had worked on it and I thought we wouldn’t get it done. I worked on my part and I got parts of it down and I went afterschool to get help. I told my group to come, but they would always ditched or be busy, which also got me mad.
I learned about myself and my research skills from completing NHD is I understand how to do annotate bibliography and how to collect sources, which is a new skill. Also I learned when it comes to NHD it is very serious and there is a lot to be done. There was a lot of time and effort put into my project and I’m happy that NHD is over with and I felt like I gained a lot of knowledge. I learned things about The Vietnam War that I did not know before because at the beginning of my project I didn’t know anything about the Vietnam War and now that NHD is over I know so much more than I knew before. If I could add one thing to my project I would add music to give a whole touch to my page. The presentation I saw had music and my website only has one song, I thought that since I had a video I wouldn’t need music, but I realized music can have a lot of meaning to it. The process of completing NHD was very long, we had many weeks to work on it and I understand why. There are a lot of things we need to know and understand for NHD. I didn’t think I would be so important that it would such a big part of grade and I think my project came out good to have a decent grade. The process was not easy, the group was totally mess at the beginning and wasn’t focusing, but afterwards we settle down and did our work. National History Day Project was a new type of project I experienced because I have never did a project this major before. -KELLY NGUYEN
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The National History Day project was an amazing experience. Although it was challenging, my group and I was able to defeat it and created a website with all the information we found on the Vietnam War. Selecting a topic for our group was quite easy. We all shared a common ethnicity and background. Our parents all migrated to America from Vietnam due to lack of freedom. So we chose to do research on our history to find more about what our parents and older generations had experience. Once we knew we wanted to do the history of Vietnam, we traced it back to why there was lack of freedom, and why our parents migrated. That's when we developed our thesis statement. Our thesis statement clearly states how communism was spread in Vietnam, and why the United States decides to take action towards the spread. Communism limited the people’s freedom and the power was concentrated on the government so the people had no voice in. The thesis statement was then further broken down into parts, so that each of the group members would do research on that specific section. I was chosen to do research about how the decisions made effected the people of Vietnam and Americans.
When I was conducting my research, I found a lot of information on Vietnam, but what I found was most helpful and useful were the primary sources. Primary sources were factual and it made sure that it wasn’t opinionated or retold and altered by someone else. Pictures and videos were great for this research. The majority of my web page consisted of pictures and videos that told the story of both American and Vietnamese citizen’s feelings during the time of the war. Secondary sources were also used but they weren’t as efficient. I had to read it and determine whether it was a reliable source or not. Those were more time consuming. Next I paraphrase, summarized, or quoted what I thought was important. It made it easier for me because I didn’t have to go back to the sources and reread everything when I put my web page together. All the information was clearly presented, and all the necessary information was already there for me when I assembled the final product. I thought the images that I’ve found told a great story just from looking at them. So when I constructed my page, I included lots of pictures. Underneath the pictures, I would have a small caption briefly explaining what is happening in the picture. On the side, I would have a detailed paragraph further explaining the picture
Everyone in group have a choice to pick what task he/she going to do, and I have chosen to do the background of the Vietnam War. The thing I have to narrow down on this task is the foundation of the war or it means how the war started. To do well on that task, I have to find the time line, the leader of both sides, and who support them during the war. There were two types of source that I have to find are primary source and secondary source. For the primary source, I found some photographs and letters which could explain how the North Vietnam and South Vietnam got military support from other countries. For the secondary source, I found a book and a biography about the war and a leader of the North Vietnam. Those two types of source were helping me understand a lot more about the war events such as the reaction, how the military formed in North and South Vietnam, how long was the relationship of allies… After I got all the sources, I started to take notes on what I took and write the annotated bibliography for every single source. For example, when I found a letter, I have to mark up the text to understand clearly what it is mean for every sentence because letter was a type of primary source and I don’t want to be misunderstood about it. For another example, I made the two columns I See/It Mean for every photograph that I found with the same purpose is not to be misunderstood about that picture. I must write an annotated bibliography for each source because the annotated bibliography could explain how the source related to our group thesis and my task. The annotated bibliography also sums up the source, and it could tell me what the type of source is and how it should be used for project.
My group and I have decided website for presentation because we have video clips to share, music, and the website could save our time instead of meeting to do the project on the board, so everyone felt enable to do their task. All we have to do on website were to create an account of Weebly website, and design what we need for the page from everyone in the group. To post up the video onto website, we have to cut the video clip shorter to save time for presentation. The task of everyone in my group weren’t easy because everyone have to work hard to find their best source and explain it clearly on the website. The project was challenging everyone in my group, but the solidary of the group mate made the work flow smoothly. My group mates helped me a lot in this project, so I think to work in a group is an advantage. We worked on the source, the website, and the final step is how to present my work. To present my work, I have to talk out loud to whole class about how the war started and how each side of Vietnam get support in the military. And that presentation was a challenging part for me in this project. After the research, I understand more clearly about the Vietnam War, and I feel comfortable to share my experiences about the war to everyone who want to know more about the war in Vietnam.
In the conclusion, I realized that Vietnam War is a good topic in NHD because it was the huge event with a long struggle ever before until now. I could understand more about the political systems which supported on both sides such as Communism supported the North Vietnam, and the Capitalism supported the South Vietnam. The U.S was the biggest ally to the South Vietnam because the U.S wanted to help the countries at risk of Communist invasion. That was the biggest debate for everyone in the world between two nations. Although U.S aid to South Vietnam, but they still lost the war because the American people rebelled because of death of Americans in the war through fifteen years in the war and the U.S didn’t want to waste more money and their citizens on helping because there were two dictators in both sides. And these things about the project made me feel the Vietnam War is in my hand, because I understand more about how the war started and ended with purpose. -TAI LUU
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This year the theme for Nation History Day was debates and in history there are millions of debates to choose from. It was hard to think of a debate that was a huge issue in the past that all of my group members can agree on. Once we selected our topic, which was The Vietnam War, it was so broad. There was so much events and conflicts of this war that lasted 15 years and it was so hard to narrow it down, everything we had chosen was either too broad or it was just not as specific as it’s suppose to be. I remember we wanted to do was the Vietnam War justified, but that was too broad, we also wanted to do what was the mental effects of the Vietnam War but that was also too broad. Then eventually, our group did some more research and we saw that the U.S had a lot to do with this war, we questioned why because the U.S is so far from Vietnam, so why would the U.S involve themselves into such a burden. With all of these questions we had, Mrs. Mastromauro saw that this should be our topic. I was relieved to find topic because I felt so far behind, and I was also glad that we had this topic because of my family history. My grandmother had my mother with a French soldier and I had never really comprehend that so I was super happy to be covering this topic. After the topic was the thesis, which I found the most challenging. We had to be specific and include everything on the project that we were talking about in three sentences. I was frustrated because every thesis that my group had came up with, it would get rejected and after this process that happened about five times, we finally got it right. The whole process on finding a specific topic and making a perfect thesis on it was tough but then shortly after we had to start our research. We immediately broke down the whole story of Vietnam and assigned each member a part so they each can elaborate on it. Tai had the background information, he research on how the communist started and why were they being spread, and those how were it’s alliances. I got the U.S involvement, I had underestimated this, I thought it would be all easy and all I had to do was some research but there’s so much information and you have to go to different site because having evidence from one website was too bias. I researched on the foreign policies and the Domino Theory because this these were some of the main reasons for the U.S joining into the war. Kelly did her research how the reactions of all of the nations included in the war, mainly the citizens of the U.S protested against this war, the north and the south Vietnam just wanted to defeat each other, so they can get their form of government. Jennifer based her research on the effects of the decisions that were made during the war. She found out that most Americans hated the war and the Vietnamese were suffering because all of the warfare supplies were effecting them mentally. We ended up using all of the information that we found, it is a lot of facts and pictures and videos and I am afraid that we won’t be able to cover all of our subjects that we would be talking about. I guess we would just have to make a brief summary. After we got all of our research done we had to put it all in the website, I thought it was going to be really confusing and hard to get everything in the right place, but Weebly is an incredible website to do NHD on. It has the buttons to put picture or load videos and it has different themes that we can choose from that fits best with all four of our interest, which I find very helpful and useful. This website maker thing was the best choice in my opinion because any of my group members could have access to it at anytime. I can’t even imagine having a board, all of us four have such different hectic schedules and I honestly found it impossible to have all of us meet up at a house or a library and work on it, and what if one of us needed to add something it pronto? How would we be able to have access to it. I also feel like having a board we be such a burden to carry home and back and repeat the cycle for days. For creating a story to put on our website was pretty easy, I thought it was easy because we had already split the research into four parts, and all we had to do was put in into order and fill in all the blanks that were missing between our slides. The one thing I kind of regret throughout this whole project was picking a group that were all of my friends in the class. The three of us, Kelly , Jennifer and I were best friends ever since kinder-garden and Kelly is Tai’s cousin so we were all pretty close to each other. I regretted this because all we did was talk and we really weren’t serious about our project. I felt like we could have got much more done if I weren’t friends, but I the same time I am glad that all of us four became partners, because we were all so comfortable with each other and there was no awkward moments. We all contributed ideas comfortable and had no problems telling each other wrong from right. I feel like I have learned a lot from doing this research. I most definitely got used to searching up sources and this project will totally make my research for english easier. It was hard to find out specific facts about a certain topic that you are researching but now that I have found about ten sources for history I feel like doing the research paper would go by a lot faster since I basically have practice. -ALESANDRA PHAM
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My group chose The Vietnam War and we had a difficult time on narrowing down our topic. We didn’t know what we wanted the narrow topic to be so it took us awhile until we decided on our topic, which was the how the United States got involved with the war and how it lead to the economic and political failures of the war and how it affected the people who were involved. Afterwards when we got our narrowed topic down it made it easier for us to create our thesis. I thought narrowing down the topic was very challenging for my group because we didn’t know what we wanted. We were told several times to be more specific because The Vietnam War was too broad and eventually we got down to the Economic and Political Problems of the Involvement of the War, which then made it easier for the group to split up four parts of everyone in the group.
I learned with conducting researching that the two main sources were primary and secondary sources. At the beginning I thought that primary sources were going to be hard to find because I thought I wouldn’t have that much people to talk to, but then I found out primary sources wasn’t just interviews. It could be photos, documentaries, and videos and that helped me in gathering in my primary sources and it made me realize in the end that primary was much easier than secondary sources. Types of data bases that were the best and most trustworthy were the books I got because I didn’t have to go online and search up much. I brought the books home and to school and didn’t have a problem because I didn’t need an Internet, but I need the Internet for some of the research I did, which were most of the quotes. Also I had YouTube videos, which I thought put a nice touch to my project because even though I had pictures, I also had a video of it and it showed how that scene was. I thought the videos would let other students/teachers understand that scene more because I know it made me feel as if I were there when I watched the videos. Taking notes on the project at the beginning was complicated for me because there were so many attachments and it looked like a lot of work and I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it all.
When we first got introduced to NHD and chose our topic my group just looked up basic information on the war. Afterwards when I got to pick my section for the project, which was the economic and political failures I began my researching on issues from the North, South Vietnam and the United States. I didn’t really understand my thesis and topic at the beginning, but afterwards I did when I understood the thesis more and asked my group for help. Every time I did something and got information I would ask my group is what I am doing right, just to make sure I was on the right track. When I researched my topic up I learned many interesting facts and how issues were so bad during that time. I felt very sorry for the people who had to go through the war when watching the videos and looking at the pictures. I searched up a couple quotes and one was given to me and those quotes helped me talked about how people and Martin Luther King Jr. felt about the war. My videos showed the scene of my pictures on website. Also books helped to gain knowledge of North Vietnam Women and how they were treated during the war.
How I knew what to decide to put on my project was I knew I wanted pictures to be able to look at the images and explain them and the videos eventually just came in by itself because I thought the pictures by it looked boring so I added in the videos. I wanted my page to look simple and neat, so I created two pages one for political issues and the second page for economic issues. Having them separated gave me an easier time to know which page was for what. At first I was planning to keep everything on the same page, but I was told we each needed more than one page and so I created two pages. Even though everyone else in my group didn’t want two pages, I thought I would be the one with the two pages, in case I would get in trouble for having one.
There were advantages and challenges working in a group. I thought the advantage was having each person in the group having their own part and letting them research by themselves instead of depending on someone else doing that part for another student to do the other. Also we didn’t have to meet up on weekends/days or afterschool to work on a board or video together, instead we all got to go home and do the project on our own time. That let us work on it on our own hours because if we needed to meet up we would probably end up fooling around and not doing anything or we wouldn’t all have the same time schedule. The challenges I thought we had was at the end of the project we all tried to meet up, but everyone was busy and couldn’t meet up with each other or we wouldn’t have ride. I got mad at that we couldn’t meet up because since I get nervous of presenting I wanted to do a run through. Also when we had class time I asked everyone to do a run through no one would listen, so when I got home I tried a run through myself, but I didn’t really get much out of it because I wanted to know if my part sounded correct and good. Another challenge I thought was when I went on the weebly site, it looked like no one had worked on it and I thought we wouldn’t get it done. I worked on my part and I got parts of it down and I went afterschool to get help. I told my group to come, but they would always ditched or be busy, which also got me mad.
I learned about myself and my research skills from completing NHD is I understand how to do annotate bibliography and how to collect sources, which is a new skill. Also I learned when it comes to NHD it is very serious and there is a lot to be done. There was a lot of time and effort put into my project and I’m happy that NHD is over with and I felt like I gained a lot of knowledge. I learned things about The Vietnam War that I did not know before because at the beginning of my project I didn’t know anything about the Vietnam War and now that NHD is over I know so much more than I knew before. If I could add one thing to my project I would add music to give a whole touch to my page. The presentation I saw had music and my website only has one song, I thought that since I had a video I wouldn’t need music, but I realized music can have a lot of meaning to it. The process of completing NHD was very long, we had many weeks to work on it and I understand why. There are a lot of things we need to know and understand for NHD. I didn’t think I would be so important that it would such a big part of grade and I think my project came out good to have a decent grade. The process was not easy, the group was totally mess at the beginning and wasn’t focusing, but afterwards we settle down and did our work. National History Day Project was a new type of project I experienced because I have never did a project this major before. -KELLY NGUYEN
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The National History Day project was an amazing experience. Although it was challenging, my group and I was able to defeat it and created a website with all the information we found on the Vietnam War. Selecting a topic for our group was quite easy. We all shared a common ethnicity and background. Our parents all migrated to America from Vietnam due to lack of freedom. So we chose to do research on our history to find more about what our parents and older generations had experience. Once we knew we wanted to do the history of Vietnam, we traced it back to why there was lack of freedom, and why our parents migrated. That's when we developed our thesis statement. Our thesis statement clearly states how communism was spread in Vietnam, and why the United States decides to take action towards the spread. Communism limited the people’s freedom and the power was concentrated on the government so the people had no voice in. The thesis statement was then further broken down into parts, so that each of the group members would do research on that specific section. I was chosen to do research about how the decisions made effected the people of Vietnam and Americans.
When I was conducting my research, I found a lot of information on Vietnam, but what I found was most helpful and useful were the primary sources. Primary sources were factual and it made sure that it wasn’t opinionated or retold and altered by someone else. Pictures and videos were great for this research. The majority of my web page consisted of pictures and videos that told the story of both American and Vietnamese citizen’s feelings during the time of the war. Secondary sources were also used but they weren’t as efficient. I had to read it and determine whether it was a reliable source or not. Those were more time consuming. Next I paraphrase, summarized, or quoted what I thought was important. It made it easier for me because I didn’t have to go back to the sources and reread everything when I put my web page together. All the information was clearly presented, and all the necessary information was already there for me when I assembled the final product. I thought the images that I’ve found told a great story just from looking at them. So when I constructed my page, I included lots of pictures. Underneath the pictures, I would have a small caption briefly explaining what is happening in the picture. On the side, I would have a detailed paragraph further explaining the picture
