Vacation Homework

Use your vacation time to prepare for NCMUN! Here's your homework:

Research your country: If you have completed your country questionnaire, you're in good shape. If you haven't than make sure you visit the following links.

• CIA World Factbook
• US State Department (Click on your country. Once on your country's page, explore some of the links, in particular the "background notes.")
• BBC News Country Profiles
• Sites like Infoplease.com and Answers.com (Your country's page will likely have many other useful links.)
• Library of Congress Country Studies (Not all countries are listed here, but the ones that are have excellent and detailed profiles.)
  

Research your topic: The best way to do this is to actively read (take notes, highlight, etc.) the study guides provided by NCMUN, but you should definitely go beyond that and visit some of the sites listed below.

• NCMUN (Simply click on your committee's study guide to access it. Most will have links for suggested further research as well. Hint: USE THOSE SUGGESTED LINKS.)
• News agencies, like Time, CNN, and the BBC. (Search your topics on their websites, and you'll get commentary, news, and history of those issues. When we get back from vacation, you can even search the school's physical archives of Time and Newsweek for more information.)
  
• US State Department (Enter your topic into the search bar and you'll find plenty of articles, reports, and links.)
• Information websites like Infoplease.com and Answers.com (my personal favorite).
• Infotrac (This is a school resource and may require you to enter a password [the school password is porch]. It has tons of resources, and you should check out the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center in particular. Search your topic and it will spit out viewpoints, articles, and more.)
  
• Google or Yahoo (The world wide web has tons of information on your topics, and search engines are the easiest was to sift through it all.)

Research your country's position on your topic (extra credit): This will be our focus once we get back from vacation, but you should get a head start now on collecting information for your position paper. Try to find out how your country feels about the issues. Googling your country and your topic together should give you plenty of useful links. In addition, if your country has an online newspaper (that can be translated to English...), try searching for information about your country there.


So that's your homework. And don't worry; your research really shouldn't take a great deal of time if you use the tools provided, and I think you'll actually find it very interesting! If you need any help though, please don't hesitate to contact the Secretariat. You can either comment on the blog, or email us at mvuhsmodelun@gmail.com.

Also, we will be meeting on Wednesday, March 4th (the day we get back from vacation), from 6:00 to 8:00 in the library.

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your vacation, and I'll see you on Wednesday!

- Maddie