Here is my recommended song for this post.

So, in the past month we have been doing a small, very fast-paced unit on significant events. This was to kind of kick start our return to the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. We listened to the song “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel, which talks about the significant events of the decades before the songs release. We used that as a basis for our inquiry. The list of the events covered in the song was what we picked from to do research on and present about.

This was my presentation on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (the topic I chose) and the impacts that it had on Vietnam and other international countries.

We began by doing a lot of research about our topics. I focused on learning more about the actual event as well as some of the events surrounding it. I focused on the Vietnam side of the event and not the western side. One of the things I found super interesting was the communist support for the Viet Minh. China had provided the Viet Minh with huge amounts of artillery and supplies which ultimately led to them winning the battle. I had never really looked at the Vietnamese side of the conflicts there from the 50’s to the late 70’s so that was also a really good experience to look at with a different scope than what I’m used to. After doing the research I compiled it all into a document which I’ve included below.

After doing the research we began to work towards our final presentation. On top of the presentation we had to have an artifact to include in our 5-minute presentation. My first instinct was to do an Explain Everything and that’s what I went with in the end.

The idea behind the Explain Everything was to provide a lot of information on the event while providing visuals to help show the events in a physical aspect. The plan was to use segments, without audio, in the keynote presentation to have some movement to help add to the overall presentation.

This was the slide deck for my presentation. The whole point of the project was to show whether or not our event was significant and how it was significant. The downfall of my presentation is that I ran out of time to fully explain why my event was significant. I focused so heavily on the explanation of the event and the subsequent events that I was forced to rush through the significance portion of the keynote.

Over the years I’ve learned how I operate when it comes to presentations. I can usually go unscripted and just explain what I know about the events and give information. I have feel that I have a very natural way of presenting and I work to make it as conversational as possible because that is how I understand concepts the best. I think that really showed through in my presentation, even with the rushed ending (which was probably caused by my presentation style). I spent a lot of time trying to understand the events and the concepts surrounding it and I have a really good memory when it comes to those things and I try to express that in my presentations.

My focus for the significance was on three aspects; Importance, Quantity and Durability. Three things happened as a result of the battle of Dien Bien Phu. First was there was a huge increase in Vietnamese national pride, they had defeated the French which was seen as one of the strongest western powers at the time. Second it contributed to the events leading to the split of Vietnam into a southern and northern half, dividing the country in all aspects including culturally. Lastly, it contributed to the beginnings of the Vietnam War/Second Indochina War.

All three of those events contributed to the outcome of the Vietnam War as well as the foundation of a unified and independent Vietnam. Everyone in Vietnam was impacted by the withdrawal of french troops directly after Dien Bien Phu. They were no longer under colonial rule, which sparked the fire that helped the Viet Cong drive for victory in the Vietnam War.

The huge impact the Vietnam War had on North America may not have happened if Dien Bien Phu was won by the French, the First Indochina War would probably have resulted in continued colonial rule over Vietnam (at least for a longer time).

The impact of Dien Bien Phu effected every Vietnamese person, countless French soldiers as well as citizens affected and the USA. It built the foundation for the fight for Vietnamese independence and it is still talked about today and spoken about, in Vietnam, with huge pride.

 

Overall it was really great to learn about a vital piece of Vietnamese history. There are two major take aways for me from this unit. Firstly, I want to start working to be more creative in my artifacts and presenting the ideas I normally would but trying to think of them in different ways. Second, I want to work on my synthesis skills. I want to be able to take a giant amount of information and be able to present it all within 2 minutes. I have struggled with shortening things down as I believe it’s all important, but that can and has taken away from the root of the research that I am trying to deliver. So, I want to try to work on that moving forward so I can focus more on what the information means instead of what the information was.