Author: Carly Watson Applying to college can be an incredibly daunting experience especially when you factor in trying to navigate the college process as a debater. In addition to all of the normal considerations about where to apply and attend, debaters are simultaneously figuring out how to join college debate teams and how college debate […]
Author: Bruce Najor With the criminal justice reform topic coming to an end, debaters and coaches may find themselves eager to get a jump start on the new topic. For many; however, that excitement can quickly fade when faced with the daunting task of researching an unfamiliar and broad topic. In this blog post I […]
Author: Carly Watson The season is coming to a close but the era of the process counterplan rages on. Whether it’s because the topics are too big, the counterplans are too good, or the negative ground is too bad, the process counterplan is running rampant in high school and college debate. In an SDI webinar, we predicted […]
Author: Carly Watson Every year at the end-of-season high school tournaments, a few arguments that were broken at the National Debate Tournament (NDT) pop up. Because of coaches who work in both high school and college and the public college caselist, there’s a lot of cross-pollination at the end of the year. If you’re preparing for […]
Author: Carly Watson It’s a trope that it’s difficult to get debaters to agree about anything but once the community is on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic we’re going to have to decide what the future of debate competitions looks like. Whether through inertia, deliberation, collaboration, or a series of individual decisions, the […]
Author: Carly Watson We’re now several tournaments into the 2020 season of debate. In the past three weekends, I’ve participated in tournaments using three of the main platforms available for hosting online tournaments – Classrooms.Cloud, NSDA Campus, and the Zoom Room Method (ZRM). For the latter two, I was involved in assisting on the administrative side of things. For […]
Author: Will Repko On Monday, we learned of the passing of Father John “Jake” Foglio. Whether you knew him as “Assistant Professor”, “Chaplain”, or simply “Jake,” Father Foglio was a selfless and warm presence that served our campus community in many capacities for more than 50 years. Perhaps less known was the astonishing access and […]
Author: Carly Watson With debate camps moving online this summer in response to coronavirus, it’s provided an opportunity to think through why we do things the way we do. Lectures are an hour? Is that because there’s an hour worth of content or because we’d reserved the lecture hall for an hour and that was the time […]
Author: Bruce Najor As E-Debate becomes more popular, judges will be asked to make the transition as well. Some of us have already been asked to become familiar with the virtual classroom setting, but judging a debate is a unique task. I’ve judged online scrimmages using Zoom and have some tips! Show up early to […]
Author: Carly Watson Set Goals – Before camp starts, create goals for yourself. What are you looking to get out of your camp experience? Try to keep them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based). Spending weeks of your summer with a goal to “win more” won’t help you when it comes time to making the most out of […]
