The New York Sophist

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.

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.

Here’s a better debate from Binghamton. The debaters still need to work on clear linkages of their arguments to the issues at hand or the issues that are supposed to be in the debate, but compared to the other one I posted yesterday, this one is of a better quality. Some of the teams are the same in this round, so that’s a positive thing – they can debate in a more interesting way than the way they did in the quarterfinal.

One interesting moment in this video is the clash between Closing Government and Closing Opposition. Closing Opp went through to the final, as did the Opening Opp. Examining the differences between what Closing Gov did and Closing Opp did could be an interesting class exercise. Having students re-do those speeches might also be very productive.

Debate: Pay North Korea war reparations. Binghamton debate tournament 2012 from Steve Llano on Vimeo.

Here’s a better debate from Binghamton. The debaters still need to work on clear linkages of their arguments to the issues at hand or the issues that are supposed to be in the debate, but compared to the other one I posted yesterday, this one is of a better quality. Some of the teams are the same in this round, so that’s a positive thing – they can debate in a more interesting way than the way they did in the quarterfinal.

One interesting moment in this video is the clash between Closing Government and Closing Opposition. Closing Opp went through to the final, as did the Opening Opp. Examining the differences between what Closing Gov did and Closing Opp did could be an interesting class exercise. Having students re-do those speeches might also be very productive.

Debate: Pay North Korea war reparations. Binghamton debate tournament 2012 from Steve Llano on Vimeo.