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First Laws Proposed By Reformation Party Officially Passed In MAGA

Written by: Noah Hall

Simulated Country: MAGA
School: St Peter the Apostle Catholic High School
Instructor: Ms. Lenna Zimmer
Location: Spruce Grove, Alberta

 

The Reformation Party will officially be in power for the next two years in MAGA. The recent laws passed in parliament were all passed with support from The Party, the opposition of the Reformation Party.

The first action by the new government was the appointment of Gavin Wigelsworth as the speaker of the house, who would be well received after his first session as speaker. The other MP’s in the house are the newly elected president Olivia, as well as three other members of the Reformation party and three members of The Party, including Wigelsworth.

Then the lawmaking began. The first law proposed was the article of Freedom of Speech, which would allow citizens to speak freely without fear of persecution. But, members of the Reformation Party and the general public would question the law as some saw it as protecting those who promote hate speech. Following the accusations, an updated version was proposed which allowed Freedom of Speech with the exception of such speech. The version was accepted and the law was passed 6-0 in favour.

The next proposal was the law of Anti-Corruption, which would prevent the following: abuse of power within government and forcible seizing of land (with the exception of debt, which the government will then take and sell). This was passed with full approval of the house.

The third and final law passed in the session was the establishment of an information system that would allow citizens to gain access to plans by the government, in which citizens could also request the release of more information. The law would be adjusted which allowed an independent party to investigate the government in the case the government fails to follow the law. The bill would be passed with a 5-1 vote in favour.

One citizen was ejected from parliament during the session by Mr. Wigelsworth, citing the citizen was too disruptive.

This isn’t the end of the law passing, as there are still two amendments that will be proposed in the near future.

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CM Country “9H22” in Economic Shambles

Written by: Cohen

Simulated Country: 9H22
School: Prescott Learning Centre

Instructor: Ms. Christy Haggarty
Location: Spruce Grove, AB

9H22 is currently facing a severe economic crisis, with inflation reaching unprecedented levels. The country’s annual inflation rate is currently over 700%, the highest it has been since the collapse of the 9H22 dollar.

This high inflation has led to a sharp decline in the purchasing power of the population, with prices for basic goods and services skyrocketing. Many citizens are struggling to afford even the most basic necessities, and are being forced to cut back on food and medical expenses.

The government, which is already facing political and economic turmoil, has been unable to effectively address the crisis. Efforts to stabilize the currency and rein in inflation have so far been unsuccessful, and many experts fear that the situation may continue to deteriorate.

The country’s economy, once a relatively strong one in Africa, has been in decline for decades, with high unemployment, a lack of foreign investment, and a shortage of basic goods all contributing to the current crisis. In addition, years of political instability, mismanagement and corruption have made the issue worse.

The impact of inflation is being felt by all segments of society, but it is hitting the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest. Many are unable to access basic goods and services, and with rising food prices, hunger is becoming more widespread.

The international community is also increasingly concerned about the situation in 9H22, with some calling for the government to take urgent action to address the economic crisis. However, there is no easy solution to the country’s problems, and it is likely to take significant time and effort to stabilize the economy and bring inflation under control.

It’s important to note that the above information on 9H22 is not updated, my last knowledge cut off is 2021, I recommend looking for recent updated information if you want to know more about the present situation of the inflation in 9H22.

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Civic Mirror Forums Fully Functional

Dear Civic Mirror Users,

We are excited to announce that the forums are running normally again. You may have encountered an error saying that your post contains too few characters, despite writing a sufficient post. This error occurred when using BBCodes, the feature that allows you to enrich your posts with lists, boldsitalics, quotes, images, and more.

This happened because we upgraded from PHP6 to PHP7 to improve performance. The problem was that our current version of phpBB, the software that runs our forums, was not compatible with PHP7. We tried upgrading phpBB, but because of our heavy customisation to better integrate phpBB with Civic Mirror, we decided an upgrade was not the best option. We instead tweaked phpBB to make it compatible with PHP7.

We sincerely apologise for those that encountered this bug in the past, and hope that you will continue to write posts full of BBCodes in the future!

Derek Lam
CM Support Lead,
Action-Ed Learning Resources, Inc.

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Civic Mirror Successfully Migrates Hosting to the Cloud

Written by Daniel Lindenberger
–– Lead Civic Mirror Programmer

At Action-Ed we’ve recently made the jump from traditional servers to Cloud Computing via Amazon Web Services (AWS), and we couldn’t be more excited about it. We thought we’d share a bit about why, and how this will make for a better customer experience.

As Big as We Need it to Be!

With a class-based simulation like Civic Mirror, we can often go from one or two people looking at the site to a few hundred people furiously trading, posting, and working in their country in a matter of minutes. At times, a single click by one of those people can start a cascade of more than a hundred database requests, and a tremendous number of calculations. This means on any given weekday we range from needing a fairly simple system to an extremely powerful workhorse. AWS Cloud computing has allowed us to increase our server power, and in the near future will allow us to vary our server’s abilities to meet the needs of the moment.

Experimenting Made Simple

The nature of AWS cloud computing allows us to easily make an exact copy of our main server, and try out different things to see what works best. Upgrades to the operating system, web server and other elements of the server become easy to compare and if they don’t work, we simply disappear the new server. We can try different architectures – does one more powerful server work best, or three interconnected servers with different roles? These experiments can be done relatively quickly, and we can easily switch to any configuration that shows improvements.

We’re already seeing substantial improvements from our initial cloud server, and this only means good things for Civic Mirror’s uptime and reliability. Stay tuned, we’ll be unveiling a few new improvements soon to the underlying systems that let Civic Mirror run so many simulated countries across the world all at once.

Daniel Lindenberger
Lead Programmer,
Action-Ed Learning Resources, Inc.

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Happy New Year Super-Awesome Civic Mirror Users!

pioneered_final

Have a Great 2017!

We just want to thank all of our users for using the program. Without you guys, Civic Mirror and this transformational social studies program would not exist. Thanks for your continued support, and we look forward to working more with you in the future.

And if you want to share this program with someone you know, please encourage them to register and request a CM Free Trial!

To showcase just how awesome our users are…

Here’s a video created by a student explaining what Civic Mirror is and her experience with it. We think this is way cool.

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“Playing Civic Mirror Was One of My Best High School Memories.”

Quote from Olivia Haynes’ Acceptance Speech

unnamedBy Jovan Djurdjevic, Social Science Teacher at Iroquois Ridge High School in Oakville, Ontario

In conversation today with our Gr. 12 Student of Excellence award winner (chosen out of a graduating class of 310), Olivia Haynes, explained that presently, her younger sister (Gr. 10) comes home everyday and the two of them excitedly discuss what happened in Georgia’s civic mirror class. Olivia helps Georgia strategize and explained that she used to stay up late selling food for large profits, as her hidden agenda was a capitalist.

Remarkably, Olivia stated: “Civic Mirror is one of my best high school memories.”

To me this was remarkable not only because of the statement but because of who it came from. Olivia has been a very active student and has participated in a great number of co-curricular activities at our school and even in international business competitions. So for her to make this statement, I’d say, is quite telling!

Great work, Civic Mirror! You are helping engage, educate and inspire youth around the world! 🙂

~ ~ ~

Postscript, from “Younger Sister”

I am the younger sister Georgia from Olivia‘s testimonial. Again, thank you so much for creating an amazing game that allows me to think and strategize in ways I never thought possible from myself. I’ve learned so many people skills (I guess I should mention manipulation skills as well) and how to apply them to friends that I’ve known for my whole life. Really looking forward to seeing the testimonial on the website!

 

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No More Draft Manuals!

PDF Versions of Published Manuals Now Available

CM ManualsWe are proud to announce that users can now access the PDF versions of the published CM Manuals on civicmirror.com. Whereas before users could only make copies of the Draft Manuals, from the Getting Started page, links to the super synchronized and awesome versions of the manuals are available.

NOTE: Teachers are permitted to make in-school copies for them and their students, on the condition that they do not upload them to an online space that is not password protected.

Hooray!

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Announcing Better Country Navigation & Trial Features

Relevant Country Switching

switchCivic Mirror allows teachers to turn the social studies classrooms into countries and their students into citizens. For teachers running multiple classes, our “Country Switch / Logout” menu has allowed teachers to toggle between their classes. For long-time users, however, the list of CM Countries was becoming way too long as it displayed all countries from years past.

Today we released features that streamline this navigation feature, so that only “Active Countries” are shown in the dropdown list. If teachers want to look at their old countries, they can do so from their Profile page, or their Manage Countries page.

Trial Expiration and Upgrade Info

For too long we have been bothered by how poorly the web-interface communicated Free Trial information to new users. This feature release also makes things much more clear in this regard.

For starters, the Country Switch dropdown now displays when trial countries expire (see below):

Screen Shot 2016-02-25 at 11.28.35 AM

And when users go to the “Manage Countries / Order” page, they will see direct links to upgrade or request extensions (should they need a bit more time).

request

And whether a user upgrades or asks for a trial extension, we now have features to make this easier too. See below, for example:

Screen Shot 2016-02-25 at 11.30.32 AM

We hope this makes your CM experience even better!

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“War Declared” at Boston College High School

Breaking News from Mr. Gartside’s Social Studies Students Using Civic Mirror.

Story by James Kester & James Martin

boston_college_HS_WarAfter the President of the Republic of Vendette earlier today showed great disrespect to the United Tribes of Kevron, the country decided to respond in the form of war. The United Tribes of Kevron state that their demands listed on the document were for the better of both countries so that both could prosper.

In an interview afterwards we were able to gain some opinions of the people. Here are some quotes,

” It was really kind of harsh what Jerrad did to disrespect both our and even his own country by destroying possible connections to ours. He gave us hope and then took it away and now I’m just sick of it.”

Another citizen lamented,

” I used to mainly go on the side of the revolution because I wanted a change in government, but now I realize that there is no way that I can achieve that if I don’t join the revolutionaries because Jerrad has abused his power and turned his role from a president to a dictator.”

This was rebutted by another citizen who said,

” Is it not the job of the president to keep the peace and do what is best for his country”

And a final citizen ended with these foreboding words:

” I said it before and I’ll say it again, we will not be reluctant to change up our strategy to get what we want. You better prepare yourself Vendette for war!”

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