The New York Sophist

English: A Sandisk-brand USB thumb drive, SanDisk Cruzer Micro, 4GB. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thinking about getting a Nexus 7 after heavily researching the various tablets available. I think it will suit what I do quite well.

In reading about it, I also think that tablets suit modern policy debate well too.

One of the biggest changes in policy debate history has been the introduction of laptops and flash drives. A lot of arguments and evidence are shared between teams by being flashed from computer to computer. This saves on carrying heavy tubs of paper around, and saves on printing and copying (both huge expenses in the traditional debating world). But a lot of time and frustration is wasted in the debate trying to get the information from one team’s laptop to another’s. I’ve also seen moments where partners could not get the right information from laptop to laptop.

Tablets would solve this. You hand the tablet with your PDF on it to the other team. They jot some notes, return it to you.

Or even better: The tournament hosts set up a computer as a public server. Bring a router up to the tournament, plug in the laptop or desktop that will have the documents. Everyone connects to the router (it doesn’t have internet, it’s not necessary). Each team puts their documents into a folder based on their team name, and a subfolder for Aff and Neg.  You use your tablet during the debate to access those files.

The only barrier is cost, but at $200 a piece, tablets are a reasonable investment for a debate program. One would spend that in extra baggage fees between one or two tournaments in the paper debating world these days.

I hope to see tablets become the next phase of paperless debating.

English: A Sandisk-brand USB thumb drive, SanDisk Cruzer Micro, 4GB. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thinking about getting a Nexus 7 after heavily researching the various tablets available. I think it will suit what I do quite well.

In reading about it, I also think that tablets suit modern policy debate well too.

One of the biggest changes in policy debate history has been the introduction of laptops and flash drives. A lot of arguments and evidence are shared between teams by being flashed from computer to computer. This saves on carrying heavy tubs of paper around, and saves on printing and copying (both huge expenses in the traditional debating world). But a lot of time and frustration is wasted in the debate trying to get the information from one team’s laptop to another’s. I’ve also seen moments where partners could not get the right information from laptop to laptop.

Tablets would solve this. You hand the tablet with your PDF on it to the other team. They jot some notes, return it to you.

Or even better: The tournament hosts set up a computer as a public server. Bring a router up to the tournament, plug in the laptop or desktop that will have the documents. Everyone connects to the router (it doesn’t have internet, it’s not necessary). Each team puts their documents into a folder based on their team name, and a subfolder for Aff and Neg.  You use your tablet during the debate to access those files.

The only barrier is cost, but at $200 a piece, tablets are a reasonable investment for a debate program. One would spend that in extra baggage fees between one or two tournaments in the paper debating world these days.

I hope to see tablets become the next phase of paperless debating.

Probably a little late on posting this, but thanks to my friend on Twitter, I saw it.

Pretty amazing video, but more amazing are the accomplishments of the students who made it all happen. It took a lot of work.

Probably a little late on posting this, but thanks to my friend on Twitter, I saw it.

Pretty amazing video, but more amazing are the accomplishments of the students who made it all happen. It took a lot of work.

A depiction of the world’s oldest continually operating university, the University of Bologna, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are engaging in a pretty interesting experiment in my debate program.

This arose out of a meeting I held for students who wanted to take on more leadership in the team. Out of this meeting, the students decided to hold a number of training sessions for the new members of our program.

I attended most of them, and have filmed them all. You can watch the series here.

I am very pleased with these videos for a number of reasons. First, I think the quality of the instruction is uniquely strong. Not quite strong, not very good – uniquely strong. I say that because I believe this teaching to come from experience and reflection – praxis, as identified by Paulo Friere, bell hooks, and others as an important element to critical thinking and critical being in the world. I think I might be able to give a more thorough lecture or more detailed presentation, but I don’t believe it would be as good as these due to that extra ingredient of experience.

Secondly. these are proof of concept of something we have known for a long time – that peer education simply works. Teaching is the best way to learn something, and to learn something you need a thoughtful and engaged instructor. Most of these videos are peer education videos, with the exception of the one I did and the ones that the graduate students did. But overall, those videos seem to have the same energy as well. Maybe not mine, but most!

Finally, I think these videos represent the future of the power of digital video and blogs to serve the University. The idea of good teaching, engaged learning, and learner-centered education all come through in these videos. I think I am starting to figure out how to use digital video, blogging, and the internet to teach. I think segmenting instruction and putting it in video collections like this is a huge step in the direction of making online teaching effective.