On the Brink of Being Elite…Or Obsolete?
posted by Jon Cruz on March 6th, 2007
In “On the Brink of Being Elite…Or Obsolete?,” a recent editorial in the Rostrum, Rami Hernandez — director of forensics at Loyola High School in Los Angeles — discusses the rapid technological occurring right now in the world of speech and debate. Where, he asks, are we headed as a community?
What are your thoughts on his editorial?
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Posted from: 24.12.103.122
March 6th, 2007 11:52
“Do we want our students to be less technically proficient than people in 3rd world countries?”
Maybe not the wisest choice of words.
Posted from: 66.240.48.106
March 6th, 2007 12:10
laptops are a good idea. connecting to the internet in debate rounds, though…that seems quite shady to me, and seems like it would open the door to all sorts of cheating
Posted from: 65.81.145.148
March 6th, 2007 12:17
peteypeteypetey: yo there’s an unattended ostrich nest to the west by that big tree
mmangus: not right now d00d i have to give a 1ar against nuke mal
peteypeteypetey: oh here take my nuke war = extinction backfile
peteypeteypetey wants to directly connect.
peteypeteypetey is now directly connected.
peteypeteypetey: [nukesrbad.doc]
mmangus: thx but does it have a/t ‘those of us lucky enuf 2 b in the 3rd world will survive’?
peteypeteypetey: yah apparently when the nukes take out the internet we’ll lose our only means of subsistence lolocaust
mmangus: roflcopter
mmangus: ps save me an egg if u can?
mmangus: all i got last time was that nasty root shit lol
Posted from: 151.198.226.100
March 6th, 2007 13:07
“discusses the rapid technological occurring right now in the world of speech and debate.”
I think we should focus on grammar first.
Posted from: 71.214.192.89
March 6th, 2007 16:18
nice one, alex!
Posted from: 205.173.47.254
March 6th, 2007 16:23
we should allow laptops and wireless connections to be used when every school can guarantee that every competitor has access to a wireless laptop.
Posted from: 209.98.146.245
March 6th, 2007 18:33
i think using laptops in round is nice, primarily because it gets rid of the mess of having tons of paper all over; i don’t think, though, that internet access is a good idea. being able to be online during rounds decreases the benefits of/ incentive to do preround prep, since you can find information about/answers to most positions pretty quickly (obviously limited prep checks that to an extent) which decreases how much we learn about topics because you only need to research what you hit, rather than what you might hit.
and the obvious problem is that internet would faciliate easy cheating via AIM, etc, with which debaters could feed in round arguments to somebody else to respond to.
Posted from: 24.215.141.51
March 6th, 2007 18:59
Quite frankly, I doubt that with the +/- four minutes of prep time that debaters will be able to efficiently ‘cheat’ in a round.
Most people aren’t going to waste time trying to 1) find someone who has A/T’s, 2) wait for someone to type up the block, 3) send it over.
Even if that were true, if both debaters are given that ‘advantage’ I don’t see why it’s cheating anymore. Couldn’t one say that blocks are cheating since they might be written by someone else?
—
Extemp rounds encourage participants to keep up with current events but it’s ludicrous to expect a student to know every bit of news happening globally.
People constantly make erroneous statements in extemp or outright falsifying arguments but this type of behaviour is ignored because it’s ludicrous to expect a student to know the exact location of article X, Y, and Z that pertain to a certain topic.
Computers would facilitate with a) finding articles and b) provide a wider variety of updated and credited sources.
Posted from: 75.73.105.13
March 6th, 2007 19:27
Obviously having access to evidence on a laptop instead of files in tubs is better for the environment, but the pre-tournament preparation for debate and extemp is the critical step for continuing these activities as educational ones. I’d say disallow Internet access in rounds and the draw/prep room.
Posted from: 67.139.169.130
March 6th, 2007 19:54
I personally think virtual tournaments would take all the fun out of debate…
I also don’t think internet should be allowing in rounds, even if cheating might not happen that much, there is still a possiblity of AIM conversing on args.
Posted from: 65.81.145.148
March 6th, 2007 20:19
i dunno why people think cheating is so hard. isnt this scenario easy to imagine?: x sits through the 1ac, then saves her flow and emails it to her coach as she starts cx. IM’s with args in them start immediately. 3 minutes minimum extra prep and outside help.
Posted from: 68.181.255.99
March 7th, 2007 10:33
i think a virtual tournament would be insanely fun in trying to have. I’ll look into this.
Posted from: 66.41.180.32
March 7th, 2007 12:54
Dave, I don’t want to misinterpret your comment but don’t you mean that we shouldn’t require laptops until they can be guaranteed? Your post seems to suggest that we shouldn’t allow them until they can be guaranteed, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. We currently do allow them in all but the most restrictive of scenarios.
I was sitting behind Wade in his semis round at Emory as he banged away at his laptop and I’m relatively certain that he wasn’t on IM with Weeks. I think a lot of kids use laptops in rounds; both of ours do or at least have access to them in the round.
As well, if someone really wanted to cheat there are plenty of ways to do so. IM is the least of our worries…or at least it should be. Catherine’s concern is also hyperbole since having internet access isn’t a going to significantly alter how people use prep time. It would be like phone-a-friend on Millionaire. Sometimes it would work out but most of the time, the other person doesn’t have enough time to give you the answer.
Any smart debater will have answers prepared like they do now and will likely only use the internet access to answer unexpected arguments. It’s possible that rounds would be better. In any case, you wouldn’t want to waste time Googling everything in prep. I guess Michael is correct in his version but in the end, the kid has to give the rebuttal and (trust me on this one) no amount of prepping either before or during is going to change the fact that the kid has to implement.
More likely, internet access would give students the opportunity to prep more effectively in between rounds, take advantage of online services (storage, Google documents, etc.), and have the ability to verify evidentiary claims. Perhaps a solution to deal with Michael’s objection is that students have to turn off their wireless connection during the round. I don’t think this is really necessary though since laptops are relatively easy to monitor (see my Wade example above), literally. ;)
From an extemp perspective, Rami is correct that there is no reason why students should not have access to internet resources. Again, there’s the concern that someone would write their speeches but I don’t see any concern about this at all at MBA where they allow laptops and have wifi in the extemp prep. Again, the kid has to implement so even if a coach sent them an outline or a whole speech, the kid would still have to deliver it.
Posted from: 71.236.143.182
March 7th, 2007 13:31
Cherian, yep.
Petey…dude I spit the water I was drinking when i read that line…awesome. I’ll be god$#@%ed if my debater is gonna be out-tech’d by some Afghani boy. Take note all patriots: South Eugene has redoubled it’s efforts for victory in light of this new threat from ‘the Third’.
where are we headed as a community? the eye/I of the singularity or perhaps the impact point of the stroid…either way the laptops will be the least of our problems.
on the cheating note, I discovered a fantastic way to cheat using a laptop (obviously my debaters and I have never tried it, but it seems like it would be easy):
If you use google spreadsheets and share your spreadsheet with several people, while you’re flowing a debate you can have multiple people dumping answers into the spreadsheet that pop up almost as soon as the person hits enter. Theoretically, the debater could be flowing while the coach/accomplice is typing answers and notes.
It’s important to recognize all the ways laptops can be used to cheat because we want everyone to be aware and vigilant before some pathetic unethical debaters makes a big stink of it. (The above example actually wouldn’t be a smart move; even if your opponent didn’t notice text jumping onto your screen while you weren’t typing, google spreadsheets is still very beta…as in it sucks.)
On the class question, I’ll skip the substance and go to the wise words from Bill Murray in Rushmore: ‘take dead aim at the rich ones. get them in the crosshairs, and take them down.’
Posted from: 128.135.88.54
March 7th, 2007 13:36
I agree with much of what Hernandez says: the need for virtual debate, the benefits of laptops for evidence transportation and how laptops remove much of the advantage large (rich) teams have over small (rich) teams.
However, his thesis “If we fall behind on this, we risk becoming irrelevant and could even be supplanted by other activities our students
choose to undertake” is, and I am sorry for the debate jargon, just plain non-unique.
The reality is that college and high school debate are seeing decreasing participation across the board. Most big-name programs are either private or from upper-class suburban areas. For rural or urban schools debate is almost non-existent (except for UDL leagues, which, in my opinion, is the only organization working to solve this problem).
The cost of travel, evidence, training, coaching, judging, and generally running a tournament increases as there are less people involved. We wouldn’t need virtual tournaments or large travel budgets if every high school in the area had a medium sized program. And this is a problem no number of laptops is going to solve.
Posted from: 65.81.153.55
March 7th, 2007 16:05
the argument that online help wont make that much of a difference is pretty weak. sure, no one would do it every round. but in the rounds where it counts the most and i just dont have time to prep answers to an arg i dont understand, id love to have a chat with a coach.
fine, kids have to deliver the actual speech. and fine, coaches help kids write blocks. but when you’ve broken a new arg (the kind that would be most likely to make the other kid use the internet) those blocks dont exist yet and the element of surprise is on your side. extra help is extra help, even if it doesnt equate to an automatic win. as a debater who never had an argument coach, idve been pretty pissed if eric got to play corner man when i was taking on mountain view bc i was having a rough enough time w/ shess or the post on their own.
i think laptops are fine. i flow on mine. it makes me faster in prep, faster in the speech, and more clear. however, internet access should be disallowed during debates. i think this ‘easy to directly monitor’ solution is empirically denied. i play games on my laptop fairly often after im done speaking. as far as i know, no one but my partner has noticed. there needs to be an explicit rule against internet access in rounds so that people know its not ok and so that penalties can be in place if it happens.
at the risk of seeming like im in debate withdrawal (and trust me, given the amount of work im _supposed_ to do in the next 3 weeks, that shouldnt be the case), im gonna go through the first section of the article and point out some shortcomings that people seem to be glossing over.
1. the $100 MIT XO laptops. ok, aside from this part being offensive/imperialist, there are some practical problems. those laptops arent exactly full-featured computers for teaching high-tech future business skills. they run a simplified OS (a form of fedora core 6), they are specially designed for children (have you seen them? they look like a toy), the clock speed of the CPU is 366MHz, and they only have flash memory (no hard drive). they were originally designed with a built-in hand crank for power. they are functional only for a very narrow range of applications. the project is just designed to introduce children to the idea of computing. this doesnt really match up with the goal of college-preparatory training for the future generation of high-powered ultra-tech-savvy students.
2. tech education key. theres no reason this needs to happen during debate rounds or extemp prep. i bet kids dont use laptops in phys ed class but theyre probably smart enough to realize that that doesnt imply tech = evil like the article asserts. this argument is amnesic. if anyone believes that debate has not fully embraced the internet, go find cases from the early 90s or before. debaters actually had to like, go to libraries to find evidence. policy debaters actually carried quotation cards with newspaper and magazine clippings in little boxes. why cant we encourage kids to use the internet except actually during debates/prep?
3. more recent information. i really wish i didnt have to stay up past midnight to cut cards that would have a date stamp one day more recent than the other teams, but i do it nonetheless. again, no reason this has to happen in rounds. i think info thats 12 hours old is pretty acceptable for 95% of arguments. we did used to get our news from daily newspapers and newscasts, after all…
4. “Rather than living in a fantasy
world, students would be able to check
what is happening in the real world at this
moment and seek the truth of any given
situation. One of the chief criticisms of
debate is that it has little application to what is going on in the real world (i.e. nuclear war scenarios and normative thinking).
Well if you have that problem, allow students
to access information in a moment’s
notice to counter those claims.”
thats a pretty absurd argument. first of all, im not sure what normative thought has to do with anything. second, having a laptop in a debate doesnt make you any less likely to look for cards that are worded w/ the strongest rhetoric possible. third, i dont know why you cant predict impact scenarios and cut answers before the debate. there are really only a few possible internal links that anyone runs.
i think the rest of the article makes some more mistakes (for example, the optimism about funding - public schools in my hometown cant afford textbooks or sports teams, let alone laptops for all) but ive ranted long enough.
ps: i think we should avoid the trap of so many other vbd threads and not collapse this into ‘is debate declining overall?’
Posted from: 69.107.78.151
March 7th, 2007 16:47
having the internet in round would provide a significant advantage to people who have argument coaches. just imagine an outround that the coach is observing. as soon as the opponent gives an argument, the coach is typing away answers into the aim window. all the student has to do in prep is to make sure they understand the responses well enough to give them. HUGE disadvantage for the opponent. and doesn’t that image just seem wrong? (yea i know that last sentence isnt really an argument)
Posted from: 70.189.215.213
March 7th, 2007 17:43
Someone (it might be the article) said that its not cheating because everyone has access to the internet and its resources. Regarding debate, I see two main problems:
1. The debate becomes a debate between the coaches, which would occur if both debaters did what swanson (#17) talked about.
2. The debaters wouldn’t have to comprehend the argument in order to deliver it. Many people, who utilize computers on a daily basis, are able to type very quickly (75+ wpm). The coach would simply have to be able to type faster than the debater can speak.
Posted from: 68.209.198.15
March 7th, 2007 18:02
I use my laptop in most rounds. If a judge asked me to turn off my wireless card, I definitely wouldn’t be offended. The difference between an annoying light in the front being on and off is all it takes to ensure a 100% check on abuse.
Laptops are very handy to have around in terms of organizing files and being able to type answers to your opponent’s case if reading off your laptop would cause for a more word economical overview than if you made it up as you went along as most debaters do. Further, I’ve found it immensely helpful to be able to type quick responses into a word or excel document (especially during fast 1AR’s) so that I don’t miss an important turn or response to a turn.
Most importantly, when negating, laptops + spider solitaire = don’t have to listen to the 2AR. This is probably the biggest advantage I can think of. =)
Posted from: 66.41.180.32
March 7th, 2007 20:46
first, wade, i wasn’t going to mention your spider solitaire playing but there was this nine of clubs….
second, my point isn’t that cheating won’t make a difference. certainly if epalm were talking to post before a rebuttal that would be bad for most opponents. although, i’m not certain it would have made a difference in that st. marks final. :p
i’m just saying that if kids want to cheat, they’ll find a way and wireless internet is not the only way but man, wes’ idea is a great one! we use google docs all the time and i can’t believe i didn’t think of that. but it’s a lot of effort to cheat in the time-limited format so i think the attempts at cheating will not be deterred by a lack of wireless access or will be rare occassions. still, if we want to have the kids turn off wireless in the round, i don’t think that’s a problem at all. aside from busting a new case/arg, i’m not sure what the difference is between scouting and this method of cheating. most of the time i say i’m flowing, i’m actually writing answers to your case anyway. i think having wireless access at the tournament is great though so that i can prep in between rounds, cut cards, validate your cards etc. i think it’s also very important for me to IM my friends as a judge, play a text twist, and check on britney in rehab.
Posted from: 68.175.60.62
March 7th, 2007 21:08
Let us never speak of that final round again, please. :o)
Posted from: 66.41.180.32
March 7th, 2007 21:25
haha…i forgot, jon, i’m sorry.
Posted from: 128.135.88.54
March 7th, 2007 23:20
Michael, I haven’t been following any VBD comment threads recently to know if people have already discussed this. (From a brief survey, I can’t find one so if you want to point me, I’d be grateful!)
But I do not understand why we as community constantly engage in discussion over dividing issues like technology, mutual-preference judging, stylistic disputes, big-schools vs. little schools, etc. when there are problems that we face that (and I think it is safe to say this) we all agree on what needs to happen.
When will the NFL (or the NDCA) start seeing itself as the promoter of high school debate and not just the administer of the national tournament?
Posted from: 167.206.203.14
March 8th, 2007 11:26
The problem doesn’t really seem to be whether or not we should have laptops at tournaments or whether all schools should use laptops, rather it’s internet/cheating during a round.
Solution: Turn the wireless card off.
Asides from that cheating aspect what other objections do people generally have in terms of computers in forensics?
Posted from: 128.135.98.92
March 8th, 2007 15:26
NC: The problem for many coaches and programs is that their schools / students cannot afford to buy laptops for tournaments. It creates yet another disadvantage for programs in economically poorer areas (generally the places where we can hope to find debate growth).
And having a laptop in a round does give a big advantage to a team. While I think pen and paper flowing is faster, programs like google desktop search or spotlight on the mac would (and do) allow debaters to qickly find the exact card they are looking for.
Moreover, as more people use computers for debate, eventually custom debate software will appear that will widen this advantage gap.
Posted from: 68.209.198.15
March 8th, 2007 15:32
I don’t understand how “custom debate software” would widen the gap any more than me opening cards.doc and hitting control+f “Smith.” Also having multiple very organized expandos can have the same effect.
Posted from: 68.115.113.47
March 8th, 2007 19:23
Scott, I think your concern is a generally valid one and I assume that Mr. McGinnis was alluding to a similar point. My question was whether we should ban laptops since not all debaters can afford them. This is independent of (and a predecessor to) answering the question of wireless access. While it is true that laptops may advantage debaters, there are a whole host of aspects to debate that wealthier schools are advantaged by. For example, schools with multiple coaches, access to the internet and high speed printers generally, as well as students who are able to afford camps and brief books, etc. Assume that we are comparing school X where the students do not have a budget for debate and there is a teacher who takes kids to tournaments at the student’s expense. School X does not have access to any of the above listed resources (and probably many more) but still attends tournaments that School Y attends. School Y is moderately wealthy, they at least have the access and opportunity to purchase the above listed resources. There is a clear and palpable gap between the ability of the students to compete on an equal playing field. The resulting dilemma is whether we should attempt to level this playing field by forcing the schools who can afford to have access to certain resources to forgo that access in order to level the playing field. Notice, I’m not suggesting that it is desirable or undesirable nor am I using the term “leveling down.” My question is whether we should restrict access to laptops because it widens the gap. If the answer to this is yes, why are other resources exempt from investigation? Should we also be suspect of schools that have additional resources and as such should we take additional measures to provide students with the most level playing field possible? Where should we draw the boundary between what is an acceptable resource and an unacceptable one?
Again, I’m not per se on one side or the other but admittedly from a larger, more established, and relatively well financed team, I carry biases that I can’t ignore. We certainly carry laptops and printers with us, we use them between rounds. I know many students do. If we limit access to laptops in round, does that resolve the problem or should laptops/printers/wireless cards be restricted from use during tournaments as well?
Posted from: 68.115.113.47
March 8th, 2007 19:36
As a side note and as an NFL employee, I strongly believe that the National Forensic League is very committed to building programs as well as the community at large. Tyler wrote an excellent article in this same issue of the Rostrum on outreach. It is certainly my view that Scott Wunn believes that his responsibility is first and foremost to promote growth in the number of programs as well as the success of existing program and secondarily, to run the national tournament. That’s precisely why the pilot program was created, under his leadership, to develop regional offices. As well, his is nearly single-mindedly focused on how we can improve access to resources for speech and debate students to materials that will help them succeed in rounds as well as to schools to succeed in starting fledgling programs as well as sustaining existing ones.
In short, I can certainly attest to the fact that the NFL views itself as a promoter of students and programs in the activty, which it also accomplishes through running the culminating tournament to crown a national champion.
Posted from: 205.196.218.26
March 8th, 2007 22:26
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