Tricks with Email

Not everything I do is related to debating, and I’m very thankful for that. I like diversity and I like the flow of things to change up.

But everything I do is informed by debating and my relationship to debating. It’s unavoidable. Just as my work in debate is informed by my experiences as a teacher. And my teaching is informed by my experiences – both good and bad – as a student. It is something that eschews linearity and causality.

With fall here, there are new students to teach and new challenges in getting them to understand the course material. I am striving to make every effort to connect everything they are doing to the dominant themes we discuss about communication in the classroom.

Here is an example I’m somewhat proud of. After a few email exchanges in the morning just a couple of hours before the speech was due, a student kept emailing me basic questions about the assignment. I answered them directly and without cynicism – something I find harder and harder to do working in a place that thrives on the discourse of cynicism toward students. I also tried to avoid the disciplinary rhetoric of the disappointed teacher. Another difficult thing to do since our society expects that reaction as a part of normal exchanges like this.  Instead, I tried to bend what was happening in our email exchanges into an example that, hopefully, he could use to understand the aim of the class.

Here is my response to his fourth email, where he asked whether he should tell stories to prove his points or if he should “show pictures” because “pictures are more real than just something that someone says happened to them:”

Strange that all these questions are coming at the last minute… You wouldn’t be working on your speech right now would you?

Everything communicates. Everything you say, or type, or present, is going to be scrutinized by the audience for your motives. This email is a great example. As I read it, I think “Oh here is a student who waited to the last minute to work on the assignment.” Whether that is true or not is irrelevant. All that matters is the motive and the attitude that comes with it.

In this assignment, I ask you to persuade us that you are an expert. If you offer a personal life story, think – what will the audience think of me for offering that story? Put yourself in the audience’s position. What attitude will they have toward you as a result of your telling of the experience. The way you tell a story can be done in many ways. The situation or the “reality” is the same – you are working on your speech at the last minute – but the way you tell that story can set up many different responses in your audience (eg: I was sick, I work a lot, I am super busy with campus organizations, something happened in my family, I actually did work on it many days ago but the computer failed, I have it ready to go but I am just tweaking it and making sure I do it right, I presented it over the weekend to my friends and they offered me some critiques that I need clarification on, etc.) Again, it doesn’t matter what is true or what happened, it matters how you present that truth or occurrence to get the attitude from the audience you want – an attitude in this case that you know what you are talking about, you are fluid in your knowledge, you are an expert!

As for showing the images, same idea applies. What do you mean “show an image?” Long before photography people conveyed images with their words through poems, songs, etc. All of these things still have the same effect. Don’t think you can show a picture and be done. That picture needs attention from you as well. Showing a picture – why? What should we be looking for? What are we looking at? And most importantly in the mind of the audience, “What are his or her reasons for showing this to me right now?” This is the question of motive, and it’s one the audience is going to assign to you. What you don’t want is the audience to think, “He’s doing this to get an A” or “he’s doing this because it’s the assignment.” We must work to transcend that, or the class and all the time and energy we spent on it will be worse than meaningless.

In all speeches, every assignment for the whole semester do this: Work to get the attitude from the audience you want by making sure that you say things that set up the audience to believe you have the motives you want them to believe you have.

For a long time I’ve always wanted to incorporate Burke into public speaking. This should be apparent through the rhetoric I use in the email. After this, he stopped emailing me, and gave a very good speech about, ironically, being really good at instigating and trolling people. After his speech was over, and the class was laughing and applauding, I had to wonder – who was schooled here?

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2013-2014 Will Be A Pivotal Debate Year, Part 3 of 3

The rear LCD display on a Flip Video camrea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Often times at debating competitions you will see me carrying around a video camera trying to record a few debates here and there.

Most of the time people are fine with being recorded. Sometimes they are not, but this number is shrinking every year. Being recorded usually means being put on the internet, and many participants feel this could hurt them in the future if the videos are found by a future employer. 
I think this year will be the year when we mark passing the comfort barrier with the digital in debating competitions.
Why will this happen?
First, the idea of appearing on the internet is starting to turn from a negative, or a sub-cultural form of identification to something more mainstream. The narrative of being found in a web video is changing from one that sounds like embarrassing home videos have been discovered to one of amusement and pleasure, where the discovery leads to more conversation rather than sheepish admission.
YouTube and other video services, like Vimeo, are becoming more professional in appearance and more streamlined. Production values are up on all web videos. The reason for this is simple – digital video and editing software is becoming better, less expensive, and easier to use. Most Universities now have staff that are trained in the editing and processing of videos for the web as a part of their marketing team. I know my university has several people like this, as well as a number of graduate students who edit professional looking videos on their laptops.
The expectation that such videos exist gives many opportunities to debaters to take the discovery of a video – no longer a grainy home video – as a chance to explain to employers what debate does for the individual. It also allows for the creation of a historical record of style for those interested in the waves of what is acceptable in competition or not. Finally, it is one of the best marketing and training devices for your own debate club. 
This does not begin and end with video however. This will be the year that competitions will be considered out of touch if they do not have a strong social media presence before, during, and after the competition. The sharing of Google documents, tweets, and photos from the GA to the tab to the rounds themselves will pass from novel to expected, and it begins this year. If a tournament does not do these things, people will talk negatively about it.  This is a shift from the discourse being one of joyful surprise when a competition does engage in social media from start to finish.
Debate tournaments, for better or for worse, will begin to happen more prominently online this year. Competitions in the future will have strong online components, or even divisions in the near future, where judges will watch a video edited together from various video sources and decide how persuasive it is. Your team speaks from a venue you choose, and the opposing team counters from their own venue. As HD cameras become cheaper, this is where debate will go. Does it mean the elimination of in-person contests? Those will never go away. But like the newspaper, people will discuss the fact that at one point tournaments were the only way to have debate competition – and isn’t it so great that we have all of these ways to access debate competition now? 
That day isn’t here yet, but when it comes, I believe that this season will be the year that people look back on as the last one where the digital aspects of debating were a sideshow.

2013-2014 Will Be A Pivotal Debate Year, Part 3 of 3

The rear LCD display on a Flip Video camrea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Often times at debating competitions you will see me carrying around a video camera trying to record a few debates here and there.

Most of the time people are fine with being recorded. Sometimes they are not, but this number is shrinking every year. Being recorded usually means being put on the internet, and many participants feel this could hurt them in the future if the videos are found by a future employer. 
I think this year will be the year when we mark passing the comfort barrier with the digital in debating competitions.
Why will this happen?
First, the idea of appearing on the internet is starting to turn from a negative, or a sub-cultural form of identification to something more mainstream. The narrative of being found in a web video is changing from one that sounds like embarrassing home videos have been discovered to one of amusement and pleasure, where the discovery leads to more conversation rather than sheepish admission.
YouTube and other video services, like Vimeo, are becoming more professional in appearance and more streamlined. Production values are up on all web videos. The reason for this is simple – digital video and editing software is becoming better, less expensive, and easier to use. Most Universities now have staff that are trained in the editing and processing of videos for the web as a part of their marketing team. I know my university has several people like this, as well as a number of graduate students who edit professional looking videos on their laptops.
The expectation that such videos exist gives many opportunities to debaters to take the discovery of a video – no longer a grainy home video – as a chance to explain to employers what debate does for the individual. It also allows for the creation of a historical record of style for those interested in the waves of what is acceptable in competition or not. Finally, it is one of the best marketing and training devices for your own debate club. 
This does not begin and end with video however. This will be the year that competitions will be considered out of touch if they do not have a strong social media presence before, during, and after the competition. The sharing of Google documents, tweets, and photos from the GA to the tab to the rounds themselves will pass from novel to expected, and it begins this year. If a tournament does not do these things, people will talk negatively about it.  This is a shift from the discourse being one of joyful surprise when a competition does engage in social media from start to finish.
Debate tournaments, for better or for worse, will begin to happen more prominently online this year. Competitions in the future will have strong online components, or even divisions in the near future, where judges will watch a video edited together from various video sources and decide how persuasive it is. Your team speaks from a venue you choose, and the opposing team counters from their own venue. As HD cameras become cheaper, this is where debate will go. Does it mean the elimination of in-person contests? Those will never go away. But like the newspaper, people will discuss the fact that at one point tournaments were the only way to have debate competition – and isn’t it so great that we have all of these ways to access debate competition now? 
That day isn’t here yet, but when it comes, I believe that this season will be the year that people look back on as the last one where the digital aspects of debating were a sideshow.

2013-2014 Will Be A Pivotal Debate Year, Part 2 of 3: Old Dogs Meet New Tricks

Lincoln at a debate with Stephen Douglas. This is a photo of the original work, part of a private collection temporarily on display at the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial in August of 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Here’s my second reason why this season will be one to remember in debate history. And it’s not more praise of new formats in the U.S. It’s in praise of the traditional formats, and what they’ll have to do to once these newer formats start to surge in popularity. This year they will definitely surge, but the next few years will be crucial for the traditional American debating formats.
Here’s where people start to become afraid: What will happen when my beloved format disappears?
The short answer is nothing – these
formats will always be around. The longer answer is everything –
for each of these formats is going to need to re-map itself in the
light of the rise of alternative forms of competition.
I think this is the year where we will see a rise in careful, comparative narratives that will explain current American formats in the light of Worlds debating and World Schools debating gaining a larger foothold. More interest in debating among students will require more explanation of why formats do what they do – why they speak so fast, read so much, why they structure their arguments the way they do. All of these questions are not threats but opportunities – of course the easy reaction is to see them as a threat, and respond accordingly. I hope we do not take the easy path.
Re-mapping is nothing new. Veteran high school
coaches reading this will most likely remember the rise of L-D
debate, or the introduction of Public Forum. These formats are
incredibly popular, and required the teachers of CX or policy debate
to re-draw the map of what the value of their format was and is. Public forum is requiring this right now as it surges in popularity.
This is going to become a boon for
these other debating communities. The re-mapping – or re-explaining
the boundaries and features of the terrain of their format – is a
good thing. It is incredibly valuable to have to return to the roots
of your preferred form and have to explain it in the light of some
alternative. New perspectives will come out. New approaches. New ways of understanding. And new people getting involved who would not have given debating any interest if it weren’t for the new explanations.
Those who draft the
explanations are also drafting possible directions for these formats
to go in the future. Once something is explained, the possibilities
unfold for what that thing can be used for. The demarcation of limits
or the celebration of potential is what will shape the minds of newer
debaters as they practice the format. And as we are all aware, the
practice of debaters shapes debate. What counts as good and bad
debate is something determined by us through our speeches, teaching,
and judgement.

Additionally, for those of you from Europe, you will find WUDC and WSDC formats under the strain from large numbers of interested Americans coming to competitions and asking a lot of questions to your communities. I believe, in a similar manner, this will improve those formats due to the rigors and challenges of having to explain something in a new way to an unfamiliar audience. This re-explanation will shed new perspectives, through interpretation and conversation, that might not have been there before.

This is going to be a great year
because we will look back and not just see the rise of one or two new
formats, but a rise of several new formats – new because we will be
seeing them in a different manner than we did without the reflection
these changes provide.
The biggest surprise to those who might be fearful that we are going to lose policy debate (even though the numbers are sky high in participation) is that policy debate has been lost before. And before that.
What I mean is that policy debate, the way it was practiced in 1993 was very different than 2013. Almost different enough to call it a different format. Likewise, if you go back to 1973 you would find those debaters to be more like Worlds debaters in style and argument structure than contemporary policy debaters. The same is true for the much younger, but no less popular Lincoln-Douglas format. 
Those who criticize the new formats as “fake debate” don’t understand this. All formats that are traditional today were either created deliberately or have evolved over time to become something unrecognizable to those who practiced the same format 30 years ago. Any NDT debater from the 1970s is baffled by the style and direction of contemporary NDT debate. 
Was this change bad? Absolutely not. I’m not trying to defend past formats. I am trying to defend the idea that change, and challenge, is good for debate. Bringing new options in means that defenders of the traditional formats will have to re-articulate the value of that format. Without such external threats, no re-evaluation occurs and then no good explanations are at the ready for why we do what we do in a particular format. This had dire consequences at many universities and colleges in the U.S. who had been doing debate in the policy format without thinking about why they were doing it. When the challenge arose to defend their funding, they had to scramble to construct a persuasive defense on the spot. And many didn’t make it. They relied on audience inappropriate, dated defenses of debating that just didn’t hold up to the modern, sophisticated university faculty member who simply did not understand what it was they were seeing. In sort, they had learned the format, but not the art of argumentation. Ironically, they were so good at the limitations on argumentation put on them through becoming experts in their format, they were unable to defend themselves from extinction.
The rise of these new formats might help avoid that problem. I believe this is the year that debate educators will start to teach the art of argumentation first, and the rules of format second – as it should be.
I was having dinner with two debate educators in Houston when I stumbled into the following explanation as to why the arrival of new formats make purveyors of the old formats so nervous – those nervous educators are teaching the format and not the art of debate. They don’t think there’s a place for them in the future because the format will be gone. However, they forget that they are teachers of debate, not a particular kind of debate.
It’s an easy switch back, as every format has within it the concepts of burden of proof, rejoinder, rebuttal, evidence, claim, proof, and the whole lot. Teaching those things is why formats exist. These things do not exist at the pleasure of your preferred format. 
I have a feeling that this year, many debate educators will return to the roots, so to speak, and stop teaching format in favor of teaching the roots of the formats. These formats exist to assist in the teaching of the art of argumentation. It’s not the other way around, but in a stagnant environment, I could see that misstep happening. Injection of variance in competitive formats will cause students to ask different questions about the rules which will make educators have to explain the concept of evidence across multiple formats, not just two similar ones.
Choice of format does not obfuscate the teaching and learning of the art of argumentation and its various theoretical components. Those who call one format or another “fake debate” have just been blinded by the power and seductive nature of their chosen format. One thing is for certain: History shows us that within a generation, your favorite format will be unrecognizable to you. This is why the teaching of the theory of argumentation should trump the teaching of the rules of a format. And this is the year that this will start to happen.
Fear not. Your favorite format isn’t going anywhere. It’s just going to improve with a little help from some new neighbors, and a little self-reflection.

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2013-2014 Will Be A Pivotal Debate Year, Part 1 of 3

Vienna Debate Workshop-Finale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This upcoming season of competitive debating is going to be one to remember. And we won’t even have to try.
I haven’t posted here in quite a long
time. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my life and really didn’t
have much time for writing. Hopefully I will now be posting here once
a week, and possibly more as the tournament season gets underway here
in the U.S.  
This first post is an examination of why I think this year is historically significant for debaters. Debaters not just in the United States, but worldwide.  Over the next few posts I’ll explain three of these reasons for why I think we will look back at this year as historically significant in the future.
There are a lot of changes. Debate is
in flux in the U.S., at every level. It’s an exciting time if you
know how to look at it. For a lot of people, these changes are
probably a bit disconcerting if not frightening.
This first post is focused on the United States, and why 2013-14 is going to be significant there.
Welcome to the World
Debate is finally becoming a global
activity in the United States. Although we have a long history of
international debating here, it has always been outside of the
tournament or competitive frame. Since the 1920s, British debaters
have journeyed to the U.S. to take a national tour, stopping along
the way for local color as well as to take on the local college’s
best debaters. This tour still continues to this day, but now it sits
along side the arrival of many international options. The Americans have been getting a slow and steady taste of international debating, but this is the year it is going to go from appetizer to main course.
This summer at the national
championship, the National Forensic League held an invitational round
robin tournament using the World Schools debating format. Although
this was an invitation only event in Alabama, the event was held in
order to introduce high school coaches, teachers, and debaters to the
new format they hope to roll out nationally starting soon. The past
two years I have taught at the Houston Urban Debate League summer
camp, helping to teach people this format last year for the first
time. This year I heard so many stories of enthusiasm for it from
teachers and students – and that it has taken off with enormous
popularity. World Schools debating is practiced globally – and it
is the format for the world championships held annually between
nations.
I predict 2013-14 will be remembered as
the year where World Schools was introduced, and in turn introduced
American debaters to a whole new world of international competition.
I don’t think it will replace any High School formats that are loved
by many, but I do think it will give these formats a run for their
money. World Schools debating will introduce the first generation of American debaters to the international style of debating not just as observers, as through watching a tour debate, but as participants.
But furthermore, at the collegiate
level, I believe this will be the first group of debaters in
University who will experience a very different tournament
environment than the one they do as first years. If their tournaments
only offer one format of debating, this is going to change over the
next four years. And these first year students are going to be the last group to
start under an old system and move toward a new one. 

At the University level, the popularity
of British Parliamentary or Worlds debating is gaining a lot of
momentum. Southern schools are going to start picking it up as it begins to spread. The more schools who are doing the format increases the
chances that there will be tournaments held in that format in those
regions. Other southern powerhouses are interested in exploring
Worlds debating as a way of allowing graduate students and law
students to compete. I think this year is the year where we will
start to see all of these things rising, and in a few years we will
look back to this year as the moment when it all started to change.
Of course, many reading this who are from the traditional debating formats in the U.S. might be concerned about what will happen to those formats. In the next post, I’ll explain why the arrival of new and popular formats that offer things the old formats can’t offer are actually helped by this development.

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