Speech and Debate for Information Literacy

Hello all!  I’m getting ready for my first week of school and I finally have all my tech up and running.  I thought I would do a quick post this morning on something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, but have not actually acted on to this point.  While working with the UDL and searching for different ways to justify speech and debate team funding in the incredibly tight budgets of high school district officials and principals, I discovered the focus on “information literacy” in many secondary and post-secondary school goals.  This is an area that has only accelerated in importance as online learning environments, electronic information sharing and technology in the workplace has exploded in past years.  It is my thought that the demands of competitive speech and debate programs are the same demands for mastering information literacy.  Take this excerpt from a recent presentation given by David Warlick of the The Landmark Project:

“Being a reader today means being able to: find the information, decode it, critically evaluate it, and organize it into personal digital libraries.” 

Gee - that sounds like what our students do for every speech/argument they produce during the season! 

 Many institutions of higher education have information literacy/competence goals.  Perhaps you may be able to use these to justify expanded programming, more funding or cross-curriculum cooperation with the speech and debate team activities.  There are also grant programs for information literacy projects at some institutions.  This may be a way for you to access some additional funding and be awarded with a grant. 

I’m sure I will be revisiting this issue in the future, but would love to hear if anyone out there has used this connection on their campus already and if so, how it worked out for them. 

Policy Debate Resources at your fingertips…

As promised - here is the one page of web resources for policy debate.  Enjoy!  If you have questions or additions, please comment or send me an email!  Thanks!

Cross-Examination Debate Association (CEDA):  http://cedadebate.org/

 

National Debate Tournament (NDT):  http://www.wfu.edu/organizations/NDT/

 

U. of Vermont’s Debate Central: http://debate.uvm.edu/

This website is a great resource for training tips, online videos, and history of debate.  There are videos of debates from past topics and a ton of links to other debate resources.

 

Wake Forest’s DRG resources (tons of great policy debate theory essays): http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/DRGArtiarticlesIndex.htm

 

Edebate listserv:  Subscribe by going to http://www.ndtceda.com/mailman/listinfo/edebate

 Debate wikipedia (terms of debate with short explanations):  http://sdiencyclopedia.wikispaces.com/

Set up as a wiki with numerous college coaches/directors contributing, this is a great resource for both students and coaches. 

 Debate Central:  www.debate-central.org

DebateCentral.org is a website which is aimed at high school debaters; however, it offers comprehensive information about debate in general.  It provides resources for research as well as information on current events.

 West Coast Debate Forensics Friend:  www.wcdebate.com/forensicfriend.htm

This website provides a lot of basic helpers for both coaches and students.  Although aimed at the high school debater/coach, much of the information crosses over well to college.

 National Debate Coaches Association:  http://ndca.debateteams.net/

This site includes an OPEN ACCESS EVIDENCE DATABASE!  Although designed for the high school program, the evidence will include college files from some summer institutes as well as college programs who are sharing their files.  Instructions for use are included on the webpage URL above in the column on the right.  I have copied them:

To access this server, please visit the following:
http://savefile.com
Userid: NDCAevidence2007
Password: debate
After logging in, please click on “Projects and Files”, which is 1/3 down the page. You will see each institute listed and the number of files that have currently been uploaded.  Sue Peterson’s CEDA Mentoring blog:  http://bk2nocal.wordpress.com/I started this blog over the summer and plan to start posting on a regular schedule during the school year.  Requests for information can be submitted to me at the email address above and I will do my best to get the information and respond via a blog post, as you probably are not the only person with that question!   

Hiatus continues…

The internet gods have been less than friendly over the course of the ADI and the ensuing move to my new place.  I am scheduled to have DSL in my home starting Monday - so I plan to begin regular posting then.  Email has truly simplified my life, but boy does it pile up quickly.  So, I’ve been playing catch up every moment I am able to access a signal, and doing a very poor job of actually catching up. 

A few reminders for those of you in the California area - Make those Cal Berkely season opener hotel reservations!  I called a couple of days ago and barely got my three doubles.  To those of you at the NCFA Coach’s Conference this weekend - hope all goes well and sorry I could not be there.  I am posting a resources page for policy debate as my next post which will be part of the “Starting a Policy Debate Program” presentation that Becky Opsata is doing for me at the conference.  If you have questions, please shoot me an email or comment on the post! 

Here is to good internet connections!

The season begins…

Sorry for the hiatus.  I have been in the process of packing and getting ready to move to my new job and decided I would wait until August to take up the official “first season” on the blog.  So, here it begins (a few days late). 

 I have been working at the Arizona Debate Institute for the past week.  If you are involved in policy debate on the college topic, I encourage you to visit the webpage and check out the “Lecture Notes 2007″ link to see Dr. Dave Hingstman’s very thorough introduction to the topic and Gordon Stables’ (USC) lecture on being negative on the topic.  My topicality notes should soon be posted there and I’m sure other lectures will be posted as we get them into Jon Bruschke (CSU Fullerton) to post.  The information is really invaluable, especially the topic specific information.  In addition, if you choose “ADI Evidence” and scroll down to the fourth link on that page, labeled “Word document template” you can access a formatted evidence briefing template with macros set up to supply shortcuts for changing fonts for tags, cites and evidence as well as auto page numbering, etc.  Its a great resource for those starting out in electronic briefing. 

For the last four years, I have worked in a skills lab at ADI.  Often, the majority of the students I work with have either no or very limited debate experience.  This year is no different.  And, every year I am amazed at the enthusiasm and creativity that these students bring to debate.  The first brainstorming session with my lab was incredible.  They came up with a dozen or more affirmative case ideas and many, many negative argument ideas.  And they were excited about them!  The topic this year seems to be intriguing to the first year debaters - a dramatic change from last year’s topic.

I am working on an Afghanistan affirmative and the students in my group all have less than one year of experience and they are finding some amazing evidence and are very excited about the affirmative.  We are specifically working on a “Poppies for Peace” case with a little bit of a twist and the evidence seems very accessible for the students on both the aff and neg.  They are really excited, which makes me really excited. 

I am home for a couple of days meeting with movers to get estimates, but I’m cutting cards and reading the cards that the students are sending me.  We certainly won’t be able to exhaust the literature base for the affirmative this week and next, but we’ll get a pretty good start and the students will have a clear direction when they go home if they decide to read this affirmative.  That is really all you can ask for from a two week debate institute….to get the ball rolling!

The other affs that are being worked on are an Iran Grand Bargain aff, a Peace Process aff for the Palestine Authority, a Syria aff of some sort, another Afghanistan aff that will focus on economic reconstruction, probably with microloans, and a Lebanon aff probably dealing with humanitarian assistance.  So far, I find the topic fascinating.  Lots of good literature and varied perspectives on the issue allow for great literature for both the aff and the neg.  And the current events connection really make the debates meaningful.  Both Dr. Dave and Gordon talked about the fact that a version of our topic was posed as a question to the Democratic presidential candidates, Obama and Clinton, and some sparring has ensued between them that represents a simplistic version of the debates we will have this year at tournaments.  That, to me, is pretty cool.

I am going to try to have a schedule on the blog.  I will try to aim my posts to fit into a few different categories:  Instructional; Research on Forensics; DOF Planning/Info; Resource Review; Current Events Tie-in; General/Misc.  That is six categories, so I can take a day off every week and still get it all in!  I may decide to change these categories and if you have suggestions, please put them in the comments!  I’m looking forward to using this as a space to share information and frustrations and hopefully explore solutions! 

Tomorrow I will begin the weekly schedule with DOF Planning/Info!