Video Games Aren't Vacuous

Video games are becoming a huge component in entertainment and even in life, as hundreds upon thousands of children and adolescents spend any free time available in front of the television. Many adults criticize the video games saying it is a waste of time or that it is rotting their children's brains (Flashback to the 50's and the controversy with the television anyone?). Even President Barack Obama was quoted saying, "With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation." Obama also claims that, "those video games are raising our kids. Across the board … kids are spending a huge amount of time, not on their studies, but on entertainment" (http://www.gamasutra.com). Is what he says the complete truth though? Yes, kids may be spending a bit too much time playing their games and not enough time doing their homework, but can't some video games actually teach students in a more interactive and entertaining way?

Recently I finished a video game called Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I played for maybe one or two hours each night after coming home from both school and work to unwind before going to sleep. This game took place in the Cold War and I had to play the part of an American spy that was infiltrating the Soviet Union's weapon base, and trying to save a man that was being tortured until he would create a more disastrous weapon than the atom bomb. Coincidentally, at the time I was playing this game, my classmates and I were learning about the Cold War in history class. I understood the Cold War from the class and text book alone, but there was no emotion or first-person insight involved until I would play this game at night. By placing me right in the middle of the Cold War, Metal Gear Solid 3 helped me understand how tensions arose across both the Soviet Union and America. I finally felt how it would be to distrust your closest comrades, your
leaders, and even your government in fear that they were enemy spies or were setting up a plot that no one could discover -- or else be killed. The game also made me think about a few things that I never had before: American citizens defecting over to the Soviet Union and vice versa, and spies killing other spies of their own kind just so they wouldn't be discovered or appear suspicious by the country they were invading. By playing this game, I realized that the Cold War was a much more frightening and larger ordeal than I had thought when I learned about it through class and textbooks.

I am aware that there are also plenty more educational yet entertaining games out there in the market, and they are not too hard to find. Many games also focus on strategy, which is a great skill for any child to enhance and can help in a variety of life's problems. So, as it turns out, some video games may help children understand their studies MORE than if they just read something out of a text book, or invested their time into playing football. What are some video games you have played recently and how/what did it teach you?

SH, Period 5

Herbert Hoover and the Hoover Dam

Before Herbert Hoover was in politics, he was a very successful engineer. He was trained and got his degree in mining and civil engineering. He was a very successful engineer, humanitarian and an administrator. He was a lover of the outdoor activities--especially fishing. He ran gold mines in Australia and China. In his early thirties, he was a multi-millionaire.

When Woodrow Wilson was president, he asked Hoover to be the food administrator for World War I. Hoover was Secretary of Commerce for seven years under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge's cabinets. He also passed laws for farmers and agricultural companies.

Just eight months into office, he faced "the Crash" of the stock market fueling the Great Depression. Many blamed Hoover for the Crash, but he had warned President Coolidge of the uneven growth of the stock market. In fact, he told construction companies to speed up their jobs. Also, he cut one hundred sixty million dollars in taxes. The employment of five thousand people to construct the Boulder Dam helped curb unemployment. The dam was built to prevent flooding of the Colorado River. Hoover helped prevent pollution by encouraging people not to litter and to keep fishing waters clean.


Hoover Dam stands seven hundred and twenty five feet high. It has seventeen turbines that generate up to 2074 mega watts of energy per day. The naming of the dam itself created controversy. FDR's cabinet objected to it being named the Hoover Dam and called Boulder Dam. During Harry Truman's presidency, it was changed to Hoover Dam. He also asked Herbert Hoover back to the White House to help with food distribution from World War II.

The first person to post the correct answers to the following questions (only do one so that someone else may have a try), gets extra credit. Besides the presidency, what other jobs did Hoover have? Why was the Hoover Dam made? What did you find most interesting about Herbert Hoover and/or the Hoover Dam.

By DD
Period 4

LBJ: His Life and Times

Lyndon B. Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, just a little ways away from Johnson City in Central Texas. As Johnson grew up, he felt some of the effects of rural poverty. He attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now known as Texas State University – San Marcos), and Johnson sometimes taught students of Mexican descent, teaching him compassion for the less fortunate.

In 1934, Johnson married his wife, the former Claudia “Lady Bird” Taylor, whom would help him on his 1937 campaign for the House of Representatives. His campaign was successful on his New Deal platform.

During a brief time as a lieutenant commander in the Navy during World War II, Johnson won a Silver Star in the South Pacific. He was later elected to Senate after six terms in the House in 1948, and in 1953, he became the youngest Minority Leader. In 1954, when the Democrats had won control, Johnson became the youngest Majority Leader. Dwight D. Eisenhower even worked closely with Johnson due to his rare skills.

John F. Kennedy chose Johnson as his running mate for the presidential election of 1960. Johnson became the Vice President when he and Kennedy won the election, and was sworn into office as President in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated.

After Kennedy had been assassinated, Johnson’s first priority was to get the bills passed that Kennedy had left behind or that had been unable have been passed, such as a new civil rights bill and tax cut. Once he had achieved some of these tasks, he began focusing on creating “A Great Society.” In 1964, Johnson won the presidential election with 61 percent and by the largest popular vote margin in American history. The margin was over 15,000,000 votes. In January 1965, Johnson made The Great Society his main priority. With The Great Society, there would be aid to education, attack on disease, urban renewal, civil rights laws, and aid for the poor and underdeveloped communities. He was able to get Congress to pass many of his laws by using the name of John F. Kennedy. Congress would sometimes make a change or add to the laws however. Many elderly people found help in the 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act.

With Johnson as President, the U.S. made great strides toward a better country. The country made amazing headway in the exploration of space with Johnson supporting the NASA program from the very beginning. Despite the great achievements that were being accomplished, two major crises were tearing the country apart. Even though Johnson had been able to get anti-poverty and anti-discrimination programs started, unrest and riots in black ghettos troubled the nation. He managed to do everything that he could against segregation and to keep order in the U.S., but there was not an early solution to help the troubled country. The other crisis was the war in Vietnam. Johnson put forth the effort to stop all Communist aggression and to end the fighting, but it continued. By 1968, he had limited the bombings of North Vietnam in hope to begin peace negotiations because of the large controversy about the war back in the States. Johnson also withdrew as a candidate for the presidential election in 1968 to solely search for peace. Nixon would become president the following term.

After Johnson left office, peace talks were well on there way. He would not live to see them be successful and end the war though because on January 22, 1973, Johnson died of a severe heart attack at his ranch in Texas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d_24rNoPDU

Here is the website that the information above is from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/LyndonJohnson

Watch the video of Johnson’s inauguration and tell me what part you found most moving and why? In addition, what do you think was the best thing that Johnson did while he was in office? Explain your reasoning.

Tim Tavenner
Period 4

Vietnam War Overview

The Vietnam War, 1954 – 1975, originated from a long time battle between the French and Vietnamese over the rule of Vietnam. Vietnam was ruled as a colony of the French for one hundred years, but was forced to leave. In 1954, France and Vietnam signed the Geneva Peace Accords, which divided the communist northern Vietnam and the republican southern Vietnam at the 17th parallel. This division was only supposed to last until the elections of 1956. The U.S. and John Foster Dulles had other plans however because they felt that the Geneva Accords granted too much power to the Communist Party of North Vietnam.

In 1955, the Eisenhower administration provided massive amounts of support to help form South Vietnam. The following year, Ngo Dinh Diem, a strong anti-Communist figure from the South, won presidency and almost immediately claimed that the North was attacking. He began a counterattack and passed repressive laws. Citizens were upset about these laws. Many people in the Kennedy administration were split on the question whether or not Diem was the right man for the position that he filled. From 1956 – 1960, the Communist Party of Vietnam desired to reunify the country using only political means. They tried to get Diem to collapse by applying a tremendous amount of internal political pressure. In 1959, and again in 1960, Communists convinced the Party to use revolutionary violence to overthrow Diem. A broad based united front to help mobilize those that opposed the South’s government resulted. It was called the National Liberation Front and was formed at the end of 1960. Anyone that opposed Diem and wanted to unify the country could join the NLF.

In December of 1961, Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions and to asses how much American aid the South would need. Some advised Kennedy suggested sending more help to stabilize the Diem regime and destroy the NLF, while others suggested withdrawing all together. He decided to take the middle road and sent some aid of machinery and weapons, but would not intervene entirely by sending whole-scale troops. The NLF continued to win however and the Strategic Hamlet was formed to help separate the villagers from the NLF. By 1963, Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had caused large scale upsets amongst many of their own supporters. Several people protested, such as the Buddhists whom would publically burn themselves to death. Diem and Nhu were later captured and killed. Kennedy was assassinated three weeks later and Lyndon B. Johnson became President of the United States, and as problems continued to worsen in Vietnam, Johnson wanted to get more involved in the war. He asked for more expansive war powers. In 1964, a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin was supposedly shot at on multiple occasions. Johnson used this as a way to get the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed to gain more power in the war and to get more involved. In 1965, he sent the first combat troops to Vietnam.

By 1968 however, things had deteriorated for the Johnson administration. The North launched coordinate attacks on all major southern cities. These attacks later became known as the Tet Offensive in the West, and they had forced Johnson to bargain with the Communist Party. He began hinting that he would not seek re-nomination as president and that he would compromise with the Communists to end the war. In 1968, secret negotiations to end the war began in Paris and Richard Nixon became president. Nixon had secret plans to end the war. He wanted to bring American troops home, to rely more on air attacks, and have the South’s army take care of more of the ground attacks. During the Nixon years, war also expanded into neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, causing great upset all over. The air war did not deter the Communist Party however, and it made for hard demands in Paris.

By 1972, a preliminary peace draft had been drawn up. This peace treaty was rejected and though, and things were only made worse when Nixon bombed the North’s largest cities. These air raids brought immediate condemnation on the international level and forced the Nixon administration to review its tactics and negotiation strategies. In early 1973, the Nixon White House convinced the South that they would not abandon them if they signed on to the peace accord. Therefore, the final draft was signed and open hostilities between the U.S. and North Vietnam ended. The Paris Peace Agreement did not end the conflict in Vietnam however. The North and South continued to fight until 1975 when the North captured the South’s presidential palace. The North had won despite the attempts the South made to keep from political and military collapse.




Here is the website that I got the information from, but there is much more to be found. Use this link and the other information on this page to accomplish the following tasks.

http://www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/history/index.html

Do you agree with the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam? Why or why not? Use the timeline feature on the PBS web page to choose what you think are the three most important events and explain why you chose the ones that you did.

Tim Tavenner
Period 4

I Will Remember the Titans

Remember the Titans is a great film. There I said it. I love this movie, from the first scene to the end credits. The cast is amazing, the story is amazing, the football games are amazing. The story takes place in 1971, just months away from a non-segregated high school to become open. The head coach, Herman Boone, played by Denzel Washington, is black. The assistant coach, who used to be the head coach until he was replace by Boone, is Bill Yoast played by Will Patton. Both these actors have an amazing chemistry, struggling with each other, fighting each other, and in the end, becoming best friends. They are not the only inter-racial friends that are formed throughout this movie. There is an entire side plot dedicated to two of the defensive players, the white Garry, and the black Julius.

In the film’s beginning all the characters are racist, black and white. The white boys do not want to play with the blacks and the black boys do not want to play with the whites. Boone decides to change this by taking them to a secluded college campus for summer camp. His first controversial move is to assign the buses to offense and defense, and not by black and white. When they arrive to camp and there is still hatred, Boone decides to make room mates inter-racial as well. Over time the players begin to respect each other and eventually become friends. They get back from camp to come home to all the racist tension. As the players are getting adjusted to life outside of the hate free camp, Coach Boone is told that the board of education did not expect him to make it as far as he did. To make sure that Yoast gets his old job back, and that they do not have a black head coach, the board will fire Boone if they see any sign of trouble, which means if the Titans lose a game, Boone will be fired. From then on it is a struggle to win each and every game. Yoast, though still upset about his job, sees the importance of the success of Boone and the Titans, and helps Boone take them all the way to win the championship game.
Though this is a Disney movie there are a lot of mature themes. Including one scene when the school first opens and there are white students out front along with their parents yelling and mocking the black students. This movie is the best sports movie ever made in my opinion and should be watched immediately by any one who has not seen it yet.

After watching the movie, what did you find most disgusting. What made you think, “wow, this really happened?” Also what did you think was the worst act of racism in the movie, white or black? What did you think was the best act of equality shown in the movie?

By Ryan Donovan
Period 4

History of Checkpoint Charlie

by Kayla Harrell, Period 4

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 by the East German government. Shortly after the wall was built, President John F. Kennedy ordered the U.S. forces to build three checkpoints at different points in the wall through which diplomatic corps and allied forces could enter West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became the most famous. Checkpoint Charlie got its name from the American alphabet. The others were Alpha and Bravo…a, b, c. By 1962, this checkpoint was the only place that foreigners visiting Berlin could cross from West to East and back again. Checkpoint Charlie was removed in June of 1990, when German reunification was finally complete and nearly a year after the Wall came down. Today, a line of bricks traces the path where the Berlin Wall once stood and visitors will find a replica of the Checkpoint Charlie booth and sign at the original site. The original booth is in the Allied Museum in Zehlendorf. The watchtower, also part of the original checkpoint, was removed in 2000 to make way for stores and offices even though, there currently is no commercial buildings occupying the space.

To view the news articles from the time of Checkpoint Charlie visit here (or click on link):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1062037.stm

For more on the Wall and Checkpoint Charlie (or click on the link):
http://www.dhm.de/ENGLISH/ausstellungen/breakthrough/S4.htm

For extra credit:
*What was the reason the Wall came down? (first person to comment correctly, be sure to identify self and period number)
*Why was Checkpoint Charlie the most famous? (first person to comment correctly, be sure to identify self and period number) Also, if you did the first question, please let someone else answer this one :)


The sticker on the Berlin Wall artifact reads: "Original Berliner Mauer, Checkpoint Charlie, The Wall-Le Mur, 13.8.1961-9.11.1989."

New Presidents Song?

Given the following song it gives you a quirky way of remembering the order and a little fact of the presidents, but it only goes to 43 George Bush. Does anyone have any ideas to add our 44th president? I want you to post your verse of Barack Obama; it can include just texts or you can even include a video if your an overachiever. Teacher's note: You will not be able to post a video, unless you bring it in on a flash-drive. This would bring in more extra credit than a text post, as it requires more effort. GREAT IDEA NATE!


Nate Reichenbach
History period 3