Video diary by a girl in 2012.

My point of divergence in the US is that Rachel Carson, the biologist whose book, Silent Spring helped push forward the environmental protection effort, and combated the use of a dangerous pesticide DDT, instead never switched her major. From my research, I found that that Carson had originally planned to have an English, but later on switched to biology. Without Carson being the voice against the environmental impact of DDT, I envisioned the future to have all of the results of the use of DDT- but ten-fold. There were 3 major things that I decided would come about from the excessive use of DDT: 1. Malaria would be eradicated. When looking for DDT sources I came across several sources that ask the same question that I pose. Apparently, those sources spoke of a Malaria free world if the pesticide had continued to be in use. I saw a graph that showed a very sharp decline of deaths of malaria, but then an even sharper increase after the brief decline. I concluded that Malaria is directly affected, so Malaria would have to be gone in the world DDT is still used. My second major thing: the prices of fish are sky rocketed. My third major impact is also within my second. The fact that fish prices are so ridiculously high is because their aquatic habits are contaminated with runoff containing DDT. That is explained when the character I portray say that she can't even swim in the ocean. The result from the contaminated water is that the majority of the fish have died off, making them endangered. Yet they are still for sale (greediness of humans anyone?). 

Those were important details in my portrait of the future. I can say that I wish I had made my video journals look more...personal. I wanted them to look plain and seem almost impromptu, because I was supposed to be a random spewing of thoughts. Hence the reason why I didn't add things like transitions and stuff. I wish I could have given my character a more personality of my own- I hope remnants of myself didn't shine through too much. So I think if I were to do it again, I would make a person dramatically different from myself.

Aside from that, from this project I've realized the immense impact that little events have on our world. It makes me think of all of the world's great and evil leaders- how much things would be different if these people took different roads in life. I'm aware that we would would live in an entirely different world. I also realize that our world is the way it is because of the same people stayed tenacious and never let go of the vision that they had in mind. Mind you, that can be good or bad. Though regardless, it teaches the ever-repetitive lesson, "never give up", which mostly lives up to the praise that it receives.                                               

In my project, my point of divergence  is that Germany did not have to pay for all of them war crimes after World War I. The article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles had never been written and an alternative article: article 239 had been passed in its place.  After my DOV, Hitler never took over Germany because Germany didn't go into the Economic turmoil they went through. The Communist Nation of Germany had taken over, and Joseph Stalin from Russia had become that ruthless dictator of Europe. World War II had never began and the Cold War was amplified. Since World War II never happened and Germany didn't split, a lot of Germany's scientists didn't come to the US. This lead to the USSR winning the Cold War and the United States handling the Cuban Missile Crisis wrong; which ultimately lead the nuclear destruction! Ultimately, I enjoyed this project because of the broad topics we could pick from. The one thing I especially enjoyed about the project is the freedom of what I wanted to happen after my DOV. I really enjoyed researching about Joseph Stalin and how ruthless, and an overal bad leader he was. I feel like Hitler extremely impacted the future and how it changed. I could improve this project by making the transitions a lot more fluent and crisp, maybe with a little bit more time I could of done that.

My point of divergence was governor Alfred E. Smith from New York winning the 1928 presidential election instead of Pres. Herbert Hoover. President Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed Pres. Herbert Hoover for starting the great depression and therefore, I chose this as my point of divergence. I liked this project because you could actually choose any topic you want and you get to change something small that twisted everything. I chose this topic because I wanted to know more about the Great Depression because I don't recall myself learning about that time period in any of my classes. I just heard it was a really mournful time period in US History. I researched and learned that Herbert Hoover was the protagonist, he was the president during great depression and he was blamed for it. So I asked the question, what if the presidential candidate who was running against him during the previous election, would America had to suffer the great depression time period. The other candidate was either Alfred Smith or Calvin Coolidge and I realized that Calvin Coolidge withdrew himself from running as a president after his son's death. I debated whether to chose Calvin Coolidge rather than Alfred E Smith multiple times as my point of Divergence because Calvin Coolidge was an interesting character. Therefore, if I were to do this project again, I'd choose Calvin Coolidge as the president during the great depression era. The most challenging part of the project was the final product, I didn't know what to put and how 2012 would look like because of my point of divergence. The most interesting that I came across through my research was the great depression occurred a decade after the roaring 1920s. Roaring twenties was a time period when America was on the top of the world, America was known as the richest country in the world. However, a decade after, Americans were loosing job, they couldn't afford anything. The unemployment rates increased up to 25 percent, which is a lot, millions of citizens were losing their job. 

​Primary Sources:

My awesome website that I created with yola!


I really enjoyed this project. The topic of my project revolved around the Space Race; previous history states that USA had captured German rocket personnel, giving them the advantage to win the Space Race (Landing on the Moon first) against Russia. My point of divergence for this project was "What if USA captured decoy German rocket personnel." 

Through my point of divergence you will see complete chaos and total change for what the USA and Russia has become for 2012. I briefly explained and tied in primary sources, both prior and post, to my point of divergence. The future that I envisioned of my POD was for the Russians to land on the moon first. Nevertheless, the USSR to remain together and would become the most wealthiest economy in the world due to their findings on the moon. Also, the USSR would gain partnerships of other countries (China and Japan) to support them in creating advanced technologies for the market.

I liked everything about this project, specifically the creativity and openness we were given to choose what we wanted to do and how we could create the final product. The most difficult aspect of this projects was successfully tying everything together in an appealing matter. Also, creating primary source documents were difficult because of the detail required to connect with my POD.

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This is a picture of one of the primary sources I made for our "What If?" project. The "What If?" project is mostly a creativity project where we can create an alternate future that occurred due to one specific change in American history. We then would need to create three primary sources to validate a future where this event had happened. Finally we then tie all three sources together along with three other real sources prior to the point of divergence into one final product. For my final product I made a website for a museum that featured American History for the alternate future. One can access this website by clicking here. 

For my project the main idea was, what if Napoleon Bonaparte never sold the Louisiana Purchase exclusively to the United States? My point of divergence was when Napoleon was considering to sell the Louisiana Purchase he asked his council for advice. In real history the council disagreed with him and he sold the territory in spite of them. However in this alternate future his council agreeded with him and so he considered the full possibilities of selling it to the other neighbor of New France, Spain. He ended up selling it to both to get more money, in this way it created much tension between the US and Spain, which turned into a war for many years after.

The alternative future would then be very different. The main difference is because of the increased contact with Spanish culture a much larger percent of American society speaks Spanish. In addition the united states is in a constant state of alarm in preparations of any kind of violence from Spanish troops. The two countries in the current day are at a cease fire much like North and South Korea. IN addition to this there is also a heavy Native American influence on American culture. Because Native Americans were never moved out west they were forced to interact with colonists and the mix of culture was more evident in society.

I had mixed opinions about this project. I like the creativity aspect and the ability to explore a change in history. It shows that the smallest of moments can change the future greatly, and it really helped with noticing how important small changes have been. The process for this project was simple I stayed on top of my work and did everything in a timely manor. It was challenging to make primary sources look old.

In the comments, post your story.  Then... read through other stories and build on it with another one of the primary source documents.  Keep the stories interesting and relevant.  No shenanigans, please.  Goal is to represent a story line that creatively incorporates the primary source docs in a building story.

http://prezi.com/v7b-s9aoqtlo/american-dream-of-the-future/

Here is the link to the Prezi I made demonstrating the effects that will happen and change the way the American Dream will look like in the future.