South Western Sydney JSDC Team

Check out two new, and very helpful pages that I have put up tonight:

1. Advice on how to use your one hour of prep time
2. A guide to recognising topic ‘types’

I also have a very basic outline of speaker roles – it is an excel file, so click here to download it.

By now you should have received an email with details about joining the wiki I made for our online debate.

Please make sure you know which day you are supposed to post a speech up on the wiki, and feel free to comment on each others pages with suggestions and ideas.

Here are some photos that I’ve taken of the team: at the training day, and at dinner:

There was a great little segment on ‘Stateline‘ this week about the upcoming NSW mini-budget.  I can’t find the video anywhere, but here is a link to the transcript of the segment:

http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/nsw/content/2006/s2414079.htm

Much of the segment was about how NSW politicians are so focussed on keeping there AAA credit rating, and about whether this is good or bad for NSW.  I found these comments at the end of the piece especially interesting – about how important NSW is to the Nation’s economy:

SHARON O’NEILL: The Sydney basin alone represents 25 per cent of Australia’s GDP and is home to the nation’s financial sector. This is the state that will bear the brunt of the downturn in the Australian economy.

PATRICIA FORSYTHE: Sydney and NSW are so critical to the overall Australian economy. Not to be putting money into infrastructure will be letting down the whole economy, the whole Australian economy. I think that’s the message, whether you’re the Government or whether you’re the Opposition, whether you’re the Federal Government or the State Government: infrastructure, moving forward, a clear pipeline, clear certainty about projects – they’re fundamental to our economy.

SHARON O’NEILL: There is now a strong argument that whatever the State Government does in next Tuesday’s mini-Budget, there will be a requirement that the Commonwealth comes to the aid of NSW in these difficult economic times.

ROSS GITTINS: They should be sending more than NSW’s fair share to NSW. Why? Because we are bearing the brunt of the downturn; because we’re not having a resources boom [like other areas in Australia], we’re having a financial problem. And we’re having a housing problem. The downturn in the housing markets are much bigger in Sydney and in NSW than it is in the other states. All of that says, “Don’t be crazy and start cutting in the middle of a downturn.”

Hey everyone – sometimes you may try to post a comment and it won’t come up straight away.  It might say that your comment is “awaiting moderation” or something similar.  This is because sometimes your comment looks like SPAM, usually because you have included more than one URL (link).  The website is just tryint to be careful for us, so that we don’t get spammed.

If your comment doesn’t come up right away, never fear – I DO log on most days and will ‘approve’ your comment when I visit the site.

Another thing you can do to make the site less likey to block your comment is to sign up for your own Edublogs account name.  This is a quick, simple and free process – you can find details about how to do this on my Drama class blog:

http://macfieldsdrama.edublogs.org/sign-up/

If you have a user name, I can also add you as a writer on the blog.  This will mean that you can write posts on the main page, as well as adding comments to my posts.

Tom outlines the pros and cons

Add comments and info if you have any.

Post information here on:

• Whether we are doing enough to respond to climate change
• Whether the NSW government is doing a good enough job
• Whether the Rudd government is living up to their election promises

Post information here on the following issues:

• Whether technology is taking over our lives
• Whether citizens need the government to filter their internet
• Whether Australia should contribute more to foriegn aid

You might have noticed the box/link I have added to the top right of our blog – this link will take you to a MySpace site with information about the proposed Clean Feed.

Here is a direct link to the MySpace site, and a link to NoCleanFeed.com

The No Clean Feed websites are rich sources of information on this topic, and I urge you to research this area.  An entire round of the Championship is devoted to media, and with any luck they will throw in something nice and topical like this.  In a nutshell:

Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.

Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

Online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.

He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.

(ABC News 31 December 2007)

Sound familiar?  Perhaps not as hard core as internet censorship in, say China, but has anyone tried to use the school internet recently??  Slow and poorly filtered indeed.

One area we identified as needing some serious study before the camp was issues surrounding the NSW State Government.

Can you please post a comment here with any info that might be relevant in a debate about State Politics.

For example, today in the SMH there is a report that the “horror mini-budget” that is about to be released may include cuts to state-funded travel for school students. How many of you use a free bus or rail pass? That could be gone soon!
SMH article: Rees to axe free school travel (SMH 02.11.2008)

What else is the state government up to? What are they doing well? What are they stuffing up??