During the designated time for Capstone a total of about 6 – 7 weeks I felt like it was an amazing experience.  Although the work was hard to go through I am thankful that I made it through Capstone. Almost. Working on my script writing my essay and trying to memorize my script….. All of that has made remarkable memories in my mind.

In my opinion memorizing my script was the hardest part in the Capstone project. One technique I used is to write down key words and emphasize on which made it 10 tons easier. Since my topic is heavy see for yourself my script.

Brief  Introduction – Slide 1 (The Cold War Era By Jason Ling)

Hello my name is Jason Ling and for my Capstone project I chose the topic of the Cold War. Just by a show of hands who here knows about the Cold War? Good cause’ you’re about to learn more about.

Back on the focus, The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and its satellite states (the Eastern Bloc), and the United States with its allies (the Western Bloc) after World War II. The Soviet Union is a union republic which incorporated different countries that formed a greater and stronger country. Communism and Capitalism played an important part in the Cold War. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. And Communism is a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

Spies – Slide 2 (CIA vs. KGB)

Because America feared the expansion of communism something called the Red Scare was starting to stir in the U.S in 1917 30 years before the Cold War had started. The Red part of the Red Scare can be known as the Soviet Union Scare also considering Red as in communism and Soviet Union as the leader of it. It happened because of early Soviet – U.S political clashes which provoked and scared the U.S about the Soviet Union’s spread of its Communist ideology. Soon after it became clear that there were spies who posed threats to both the U.S and the Soviet Union’s security. The two main spy agencies were the KGB and the CIA. So basically the CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency and KGB stands for the Committee for States Security when translated into English. The Central Intelligence Agency was for exploring international relations and solving crimes around the world. The KGB was established for intelligence gathering, border security, and propaganda enforcement. More than half a million people were employed in the KGB.

Slide 5 – Picture of Korean War fight scene

My main Inquiry question is How has the Cold War impacted the world in both positive and negative way? To answer this we will talk about first a negative effect, the amount of money spent and the people who died because of fighting. Let’s start with a quick example, the Korean War. It started in 1950. It was fought because of the idea of democracy and communism. Again. It started because the Soviet Union infiltrated places beyond the 38th parallel which is basically a separation line for North and South Korea. Eventually the conflict ended in 1953 with a win to the U.N. 5 million people died in total and in total 30 billion dollars were spent!

Similarly another negative effect would be that in the financial side of it, the US has spent itself already 5.5 trillion dollars on military arms which a large percentage spent on nuclear weapons. But even worse, most of those nuclear weapons were just wasted and never put into use, just used as a component of threats. When the 5.5 trillion dollars could be used on education we used it on military arms that were almost NEVER put into use.

Slide 6 – Conclusion

Now some positive effects would be: A nuclear war never happened. Threats like the Cuban missile crisis never actually took action. Now if we look deeper into what actually happened According to the philosopher Karl Marx, Such as people unemployed and inequality would be a not a problem. But the inequality part? Not so true and that’s a lie. They claim that they would terminate poverty but in reality it would only make matters worse. The problem is that how they organize their economies wrong. There economic system is called ‘plan’ economy. The specialty about plan economy is that everything is the government’s. The government conducts trade industry and many else. The US has an economic system called Market economy, the Market economic system all the trade and industry are conducted by the Market. So why has communism led to poverty? The plan economy system will lead to economic deterioration, with this you can’t create much wealth and the accumulation of wealth. While Capitalism is a totally different story. The pros of it would be it encourages innovation or in other words, creativity. Another positive effect might be that it increases competition. In communism basically everything is the government’s so there is no competition. For example if a shop is beside another shop in the US and is the ame shop there is competition but if there are no private owners there is no competition. But there also are some negative effects on it too. And I am going to list them now. As stated before there is competition but if the competition goes intensive that it is out of reach. Elders and Children won’t be able to consume any skill. Which is kind of a big problem. Anyways, in my opinion I think that the Cold War was absolutely necessary. Communism to me is like a dark dimension where everything is messed up and obsessing with human rights I mean, who would want property controlled by the government? Sharing your house with strangers. As a result, how is the communism beneficial except for killing people? When Mao ZeDong was ruling the 4 years of the Great Leap Forward a horrendous project that united people in farms and every bit of food was given to the government. But nevertheless the U.S succeeded and at least minimized the amount of communist countries. Now today a trade war is going on between China and the U.S. Do you think the trade war is part of the Cold War Era?

Making this script was hard enough and trying to memorize it 11 tons harder.

My favorite part of Capstone is making my essay. This was because it was the time to put all my information into a cohesive essay.

To future students where Capstone awaits you should put all your effort into this final project of 5th grade.

The Cold War was my official Capstone project topic. Which was chosen 1 eternity ago. This topic was very compelling to my because it was based on Communism and Capitalism. A Communist society in China and a Capitalist society in the US. So what is the Cold War? The Cold War is a series of geopolitical disputes on the debatable ideology of communism and capitalism. Communism is the fact that everything in the country is owned by the government and Capitalism is when an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Since the U.S competed with Russia’s military, nuclear weapons were no longer owned by the U.S it was also owned by the USSR. Although the Cold war was not based on direct blows, it still involved small wars that were fought across the world also known as hot wars or proxy wars. Hot war can be defined as a war with active military hostilities and proxy wars can be defined as a war instigated by a major power which does not itself become involved. We will later by talking about two proxy wars.  The only reason there was ‘proxy’ wars was because of  the ideology of containment of communism and spread of communism. During the Yalta conference of 1945 Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and FDR discussed what to do with Germany after the defeat of  WW2. They decided that West Germany was going to be controlled by the U.S and the UK and the East by the Soviet Union. One year later after the Yalta conference Churchill remarks, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic and Iron Curtain has descended.” This ideology again was based on the Communism in the east and Capitalism in the west. The cold war was well underway. The Cold War started because of  the spread of communism and the rise of power for the Soviet Union. Did you know that the first president of the country, Vladimir Lenin only ruled for 5 years 1917 to 1922, while the second president Joseph Stalin ruled for 31 years 1922 to 1953. So how did it actually start? Western countries like the U.S has been always hostile with governments which consumed communism. This led to an idea for the U.S to ‘contain’ communism by George.F.Kennan.(Contain as to contain the spread of communism from the Soviet Union.) The Cold War of 1947 has officially started. During the Cold war proxy wars was emerging into view across the world and today we are going to talk about the two wars that was widely known today. The Korean and Vietnam war. Let’s start with the Korean war. These can be considered as a negative effect because of the Cold War because of the people who suffered. The Korean war took place in Korea and started in 1950. The North Korean government were communists and the south were capitalists. Since China was close to Korea it was easier to load troops on the grounds. Within weeks the Soviet union, China and North Korea successfully infiltrated South Korea. America, along with the South Korea was overwhelmed by the advance. Then in 1950, General Douglas MacArthur successfully loaded troops on Ichon, a city in South Korea close to the 38th parallel or seperation line and quickly drove the North Koreans back to their territory. The war came to a stalemate in 1953 by no win of either side. Now, the Vietnam War was a totally different story. The loss was considered a colossal blunder for the United States of America and for John F Kennedy. The reason the U.S lost was because China was so close to the North Vietnam and the U.S was on the other part of the globe. Americans lost 58,000 lives and over one trillion dollars on the military during the war. The two leaders were Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem. Because of Diem’s horrendous ruling people despised, loathed and hated him. That’s why Ho Chi Minh seized his chance and took over all South Vietnam. But why? Why spend so much money and still lose? President John F Kennedy believed in the Domino Effect which was communist states would make vulnerable capitalism countries around become communist countries. For example, if one country fell to communism, like Vietnam, nearby countries like Laos or Cambodia would fall, too. But nevertheless his intentions were good. Because of his and countless others persistence on many ideology, the Cold war ended with a whimper from the Soviet Union and a cheer for the U.S. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed because of the countries that left the Soviet Union. Without those countries Soviet Union was nothing. When the Cold War ended Communism primarily was defeated. But many countries with communism and capitalism who grew really intense in the arms race suffered a great depression some much worse then the one in the U.S. Because of the great spending in military they have ignored consequences and only on what was current. During the war the countries around the world spent over 10 trillion dollars on military. ONLY. Although the Soviet Union’s consequences were not calculated specifically, we could realize that the Soviet Union spent a lot more money than the U.S. Even though the Soviet Union held most of the responsibility, the U.S also had some responsibility. The U.S thought that the Russian Spy Agency KGB posed a threat to the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA. International worries about communism was clearly transcribed through public events. In 1949 Mao ZeDong of China took charge of all China forming the People’s Republic of China. This made the U.S realize how fast communism was spreading. Since we mentioned about spies in the Soviet Union and spies in the U.S we will briefly talk about both of the spy agencies.So basically the CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency and KGB stands for the Committee for States Security when translated translated to English. The Central Intelligence Agency was for exploring international relations and solving crimes around the world. Unlike the FBI it only solves international situations. The KGB was established for intelligence gathering, border security, and propaganda enforcement. More than half a million people were employed in the KGB. It gathered information by using legal resident spies. Although there was also illegal spies in the U.S., they did a good job keeping American suspiciousness to a minimum. The CIA was basically the KGB of America. These two agencies gathered information in projects. For instance, Soviet spy Klaus (Clouse) Fuchs (Fukes) had been eavesdropping on the Manhattan project and is considered one of the most valuable spies in Soviet history. (The Manhattan project was underway during WWΙІ, which led to the invention to the first nuclear weapon). 30 years after the Red Scare, the Cold War had officially started.  This event is called the Red Scare. If the Soviet Union and the U.S could of just cooperated it would be a totally different story. The world spent trillions of dollars on military only and lost some money because of arms not put out to use so it’s basically a waste of money. The countries relationship deteriorates during the war and still continues to this day. So how do we answer our main inquiry question?

One significant part played in the Cold War was the two individual spy agencies, the KGB and the CIA(I went to the KGB museum for my site visit). So basically the CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency and KGB stands for the Committee for States Security. The Central Intelligence agency was for exploring international relations and solving crimes around the world. Unlike the FBI it only solves international situations. The KGB was established for intelligence gathering. Border security and Propaganda enforcement. More than half a million people was employed in the KGB. It gathered information by using legal resident spies. Although there was also illegal spies in the U.S they did a good job hiding their suspicioness from the government. The CIA was basically the KGB of America. These two agencies gathered information in projects. For instance, Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs has been eavesdropping on the Manhattan project and is considered one of the most valuable spy in the Manhattan project by the Soviet Union. (The Manhattan project was underway during WWΙІ, which led to the invention to the first nuclear weapon) Since The Cold War has impacted the world in a positive way because it made us realize that both types of governments have their inadequate and superior places. For example, communism makes everyone equal even if you are poor and everyone is employed. You see, if the government controls most of the ‘stuff’ the government hires people to work and is their choice to employ or unemploy. But the problem with this is the rich people who work hard everyday would get the same thing as unemployed individuals who don’t even work and the government basically decides everything for you. While in Capitalism, you can decide what you want to do and you won’t have to be equal like while people are rich you could be poor the government won’t help you. This tends to make large inequality. Governments obviously spend too much money on arms during the Cold War and as stated before much were not put into use, just used as a threat. As a result to this is governments and countries losing money while they can spend it on much more useful and valuable things. They could’ve stabilize their economy, ten dollars on the line but if the governments spent the trillions of dollars on economy rather than military equipment plus wasting them, they would have been much more successful. Countries such as Russia and China have withered when the Cold War ended. So after the Cold War the KGB spy Agency of Russia broke down and China has experienced economic turbulences. And the foreign relations with U.S and Russia is not fully in the status of trustworthy. Russian politicians have criticized the American Government as a ‘Civil Rights Watchdog’ or in other words people who are constantly alert of peoples rights, and American politicians has criticized the Russian Government as the ‘political delinquents’. To sum up the article I will capture the main points. Positive effects, everybody learned something about both governments, one that had not evolved thought out of pure air would fall and that philosophy is right, most of the communist countries did fall. Negative effects the wastes on Cold War nuclear weapons wasted and people who died because of battle. Finally, after 44 years of rivalry the U.S has won with capitalism and the USSR has lost with communism. Anyways, in my opinion I think that the Cold War was absolutely necessary. Communism to me is like a dark dimension where everything is messed up and obsessing with human rights I mean, who would want property controlled by the government? Sharing your house with strangers. In a result, how is the communism beneficial except for killing people? When Mao ZeDong was ruling the 4 years of the Great Leap Forward a horrendous project that united people in farms and every bit of food cultivated was giving to the government. My Great Grandfather died because of hunger! But nevertheless, the U.S succeeded and at least minimized the amount of communist countries. And these are the final negative and positive effects of the Cold War.

Interesting facts.

• Karl Marx was the inventor of communism and actually fascinated the U.S with his books about communism.
• During WWII the U.S and the Soviet Union was actually forced to join forces rather than join forces by will.
• The bully example up top was from my interviewee Bob.
• Until my actual presentation I will include my second interviewee, Ray a former veteran and aviator of the Cold War.

Sources

• Ray Charles, veteran and help with a interesting part of my future ted talk
• Bob Gilpin, Yale University professor on history help with bully example and information for essay.
• Editors, History.com. “Cold War History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 27 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history.
• “Cold War Influences on American Culture, Politics, and Economics.” Shad’s Blog, 4 Apr. 2010, tradshad.wordpress.com/writings/cold-war-influences-on-america.
• “Cold War.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War.
• Editors, History.com. “Cold War History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 27 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history.
• “Effects of the Cold War.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Cold_War.
• KGB museum; site visit
• Spy Agencies, Intelligence Operations and the People Behind them; book
• The Cold War; book
• Brainpop – The Cold War

So basically + 1 site visit + 5 websites + 2 interviews + 2 books + 1 database

Thank You

During the site visit I chose to visit a significant part of the Cold War, the USSR spy agency the KGB, Committee  for States security or in Russian  Комите́т Госуда́рственной Безопа́сности. It was established in March 13 1954 originally by Russia. Because Russia joined the Soviet Union the Soviets new spy agency was the KGB of Russia. 

I honestly consumed lots of information from the visit. Not only about spies but also about the USSR and their tyrant, Joseph Stalin. Although it wasn’t the most ideal for my topic, it was honestly still useful. There was actual artifacts such as the killer umbrella which had an attachment of a ‘gun’ in the umbrella so it made it hideous. It shot a poisonous ball that will sting you like a mosquito harmlessly, but after a few days you were supposed to get a high fever and die. That was what happened to Georgi Markov a anti – communism activist. Anyways I was shown some real life experiences such as chaining me up on a KGB torture chair, physically. I was also shown the agony of prisoners who were locked in a Russian museum.

Anyways, I was interested in the stuff they were talking about and it really captivating.

During our overall researching process, we had to use the tool of interviewing as a resource.  My interviewee was a 77 years old man named Ray Charles. I think I consumed a lot of information from him and I am definitely thankful to have someone to interview as good as him. Ray has been a veteran himself as well as a son of one.

During the interviewing session, I mostly got everything I was anticipating. Although he spoke one question for a long time I still was able to keep up with him with my notes. During the interview, Ray explained a lot and some background knowledge that helped me understand him better. Since Ray has been at a period of obsolete communication system he hasn’t been able to really been able to balance the time he spoke for each question. 

After a few days I interviewed another person from Yale University and who got a master in it. His name was Bob. He helped me with sub questions which were directly asked. Mostly, I got stuff from his perspective and all was good and stuff.

I hope I exceed the expectations!

Now once we have a substantial topic we generated we have to make our main inquiry question which guides our research. Followed up the main inquiry was sub questions who later on helped answer our main inquiry question. To make the main inquiry question, we had to meet a criteria. In the next few paragraphs, I will tell you the troubles and difficulties I’ve faced during this process of research.

Now to making the criteria. The expectations were to make the main inquiry question we had to make them practical, answerable, cannot be a simple fact, cannot be already known and cannot be too personal. Now do you get my difficulties? Good. Now my own main inquiry question is how has the Cold War impacted the world in both a positive and a negative way? Now check the criteria. This whole process took a total of 5 days. Coming up with sub questions were easy first you need to explain what the thing is. Then you need to get the questions that diverted the questions into a bigger question which was mainly the hard part.

Questions I also considered was quite a variety of questions. For instance, I considered doing something on the arms race and stuff. But since most of them all met the criteria it was difficult to decide. But eventually, I got my sub questions and the main inquiry questions down and ready.

But overall, the experiences were fascinating and I like how things were going for Capstone.

I was looking forward to doing a project that included research of your choice. But guess what, since this is my first year here I have been informed that we are doing a project that at least is similar to the idea and the project is called Capstone. The first part of the project was to find a topic that intrigued you and this is the reflection for it.

During this process, I had some challenges obviously, and they were finding the right topic that gave me a total of 6 weeks of research, which is 42 days. 42 DAYS. That if you ask me is a very very very long long long time to do one topic that will captivate you for a total of 6 weeks. The second challenge I faced was getting to know what this project generally was. Since this is my first year here, I had no idea what this Capstone project was. At first, I thought it was to cap a stone but I was wrong. Anyhow the only easy part I faced was I had an abundant amount of topic choices which made me satisfied.

To finalize this topic I had to fish out my best choice out of the 5 choices I preferred. Then I minimized it to 2 topic choices. Then debating between the two topics which were individually the Attacks of 911 and the Cold War. Debating between these two topics and decided on the Cold War.

Overall, I had a pleasant time finding something that interests me!

When starting to do the video, I was feeling adequate for myself. First of all, I had an abundant amount of information on my video and I recorded the answers down so, it wasn’t really that difficult to make. But HOW exactly did the ‘Video Process’ go? Read on to find out.

Making slides on Adobe Spark was pretty difficult because you had to find pictures that exactly fit in, or you had to do a graphic slide. Putting the information in was simple. All you had to do was press the ‘mic’ button and hold, you would get what you wanted. Well, coming up with the right script was easy, since I had prepared an overwhelming amount of info. What was kind of tricky in that was you kind of had to transfer what the person said and make it into your own narration. Then after that, you would check the expectations of the interview video. 2 minutes long? Check. Has narration? Check. Links to the real interview? Check. Right music? Check.

After all those invigorating procedures, I finally got to the end. How do I think of it? Well, I think EVERY 5th grader should do it EVERY year.

During the third part of our project process, we had to record our interview, and eventually make a video about the person we’ve selected. During this conjunction, I think our collaboration was great, considering that the person being interviewed was my mom. But here and there, there was something that sort of diverted the topic. But alas the process was great.

The recording took us twelve minutes to ask 17 questions so about 70% of a minute to ask one question, and if you ask me that is pretty emphasized and long. But the only problem with that is because my mom emphasized too much and diverted us off the right topic and is not what I wanted. But after this process I was relieved, I got nothing too off the topic but still.

Overall this part of the immigration interview project is thrilling and compelling. I am sure that this project is going to succeed. 

After that we were starting our interview. Since I chose to interview my mom, she was chosen for a couple of reasons, she spoke fluent English and and also understood it. But anyways the interview went successfully pleasant. I got to learn a lot about my mom including true moments and memories.

When I asked her about why she chose to move to America. Fortunately I got the exact right answer wanted. She told me she wanted to seek a better life despite the good things back there but the government there was trash. The ‘president’ now was a dictator who wanted to rule as long as he lived. Something else was because the schools were strict on rules and descriptlines and the U.S had way more pressure. Everything she said was exactly what I wanted so everything is good on that.

After a long 12 minutes our interview finally ended positively. Somethings I could have did better is trying to make my mom answer short and terse answers since it took 12 minutes and I’m sure that’s not what a typical interview length would be. Anyways I like the eloquent language y mom has used.

So far our interview project has been going great.

Immigration Interview Blog Post #1

During the first process of our project, we were asked to interview an adult’s experience when he or she came to America. At first I had the slightest idea how I was supposed to find that person, but then I thought about interviewing my dad.

Even though my father immigrated modernly I presumed that we had to interview who traveled on sea, but I asked Mrs.Cooper and she said that it was fine. Coming up with questions were kind of easy because you just have to come up with something relevant, so that made it easy for it to construct the questions. Most of the questions I planned to ask him were not about how the trip itself because he traveled on a plane and it wasn’t really that vigorous to sit on a plane and do nothing, compared to sitting on a cramped ship where food was even a struggle and water was even a difficulty. You would sit on the boat for an estimate of 1 to 2 weeks compared to flying for about 1 day. Anyways, the general types of questions I asked him were open-ended such as what were your feelings when you came here and what was your intention coming here ……… 

Next I knew I needed to ask insightful and meticulous questions. Not just a Yes or a No question. For instance questions like: Why did you decide to go to America? and why? or What did you feel nostalgic for when you arrived in America? Questions like this makes you have to answer something more insightful than a Yes or a No. Also, it also has a follow-up question that makes the patient explain more deeply.

But even so I think that the process so far is going great and I am eager to go onto the next part of this project. 

Thanks for reading! Add a comment!!!!PLZ!!!!!!