March 23, 2008

• Is Your Season Over?

  Is your season over? Do you still have the itch to engage in argumentation and debate? Here are a couple of websites where you can pick an argument:
  Hey MonkeyBrain!
  The creators of Squidoo have created a format that allows for debate as well as Squidoo-style information sharing.
  Debate.com
  Someone has finally done something with the debate.com domain. Some [...]

January 9, 2008

• FeedDemon and NetNewsWire Are Now Free

  Arguably the two best RSS reading packages, FeedDemon for the PC and NetNewsWire for the Macintosh are now free. I have been a paying customer and willing beta tester of FeedDemon for several years and I highly recommend it.
  If you are not using an RSS reader to keep up with debate news and debate research, [...]

January 3, 2008

• New Debate Evidence Program

  Evidence Scribe is a new evidence management and brief creation program developed by Isaac Evans.
  Using a powerful yet lightweight database structure, Evidence Scribe allows you to add, edit, search, organize, [...]

August 23, 2007

• Speech and Debate Timekeeper Updated

  Speech and Debate Timekeeper has been updated to 2.1. What is Speech and Debate Timekeeper?
  Speech and Debate Timekeeper is a multi-platform debate timer for various debate formats and individual events. It has speech order and time limits preprogrammed for Policy, Lincoln-Douglas, Parliamentary, Public Forum, World Schools, Karl Popper, and miscellaneous debate formats. It also tracks [...]

August 1, 2007

• Tournament Registration Systems

  Global Debate Blog has an interesting entry comparing the two major tournament registration systems: Joy of Tournaments and DebateResults.com.

March 8, 2007

• Elite or Obsolete?

  There is an interesting essay in the March 2007 issue of The Rostrum titled “On the Brink of Being Elite…Or Obsolete?” by Rami Hernandez from Loyola High School of Los Angeles. The article advocates the use of computers in speech and debate competitions. Actually, the article argues that the activity risks becoming irrelevant to today’s [...]

February 14, 2007

• Debatepedia

  Websites designed to facilitate public debate seem to be very popular right now. The most recent entrant is Debatepedia. It uses wiki technology to allow users to add and modify arguments.
  Debatepedia is the new free wiki encyclopedia of arguments and debates. As a “wiki”, it enables anyone (you included) to easily present and organize the [...]

January 31, 2007

• ConvinceMe: A New Way to Debate Online

  TechCrunch has a write-up about a new website, ConvinceMe.net, that is designed to promote online debate. It has a competitive element which makes it a little different than other sites we have mentioned.

January 12, 2007

• Use Cite Bite To Deep Link To Articles

  Cite Bite allows you to send or post links to a specific section of text on a web page. Hmm. Sounds like debate evidence to me.
  I can imagine creating a unique URL for every piece of evidence so other people can quickly find the original quote. Here’s a sample link:
  http://www.citebite.com/l7y5n6v2syai
  It doesn’t work exactly right if [...]

November 25, 2006

• Database Pioneer Passes Away

  From today’s New York Times:
  H. Donald Wilson, who prepared the original business plan for what became Mead Data Central and its pioneering Lexis-Nexis database, died on Nov. 12 at his home in Mitchellville, Md. He was 82.
  Nothing has changed debate as much as affordable access to full-text databases.

November 14, 2006

• Follow-up: Laptop Computers and Debate

  Last month our poll question was: Should debaters be allowed to use laptop computers during debate rounds? You said:
  52% No
  45% Yes
  03% No Opinion
  In September, the NFL Executive Committee defeated a proposal, 0-9, that would have allowed laptop computers to be used in CX, LD, and Public Forum Debate. The committee then approved a proposal, 5-3-1, [...]

October 7, 2006

• Laptop Computers and High School Debate

  There is an interesting discussion over at Wisconsin Forensics Daily concerning whether or not laptops should be allowed in high school debate rounds.
  In college debate, laptops are common place. Debaters use them for research, brief writing, flowing, etc. Most colleges have wifi that competitors can access during the tournament, but I suspect that wifi, let [...]

July 18, 2006

• Standpoint & Standpedia

  Standpoint and Standpedia are related sites that might be of interest to the debate community. For debaters, Standpedia is the more interesting site since it allows you to create a map of arguments and supporting claims.
  Standpoint (from the Standpoint FAQ)
  “Standpoint is a place where you can share your beliefs. It’s a place where you can [...]

July 16, 2006

• Open Debate Engine

  The Open Debate Engine is the same of the software project that has been developed by former debater Greg Schnippel to run Spacedebate.org. What is Spacedebate.org?
  “Spacedebate.org is an effort to expand the debate on the weaponization of space through a collaborative wiki-like tool for structured debate on a topic. The project is modeled after Wikipedia, [...]

April 9, 2006

• Videoblog Debating

  Dr. Tuna Snider has proposed an idea called videoblog debating as an alternative to his original concept of video debating. What do you think?

December 31, 2005

• A Quick Way To Get The New Topic

  PFdebate is experimenting with a new way to distribute topic announcements. Using Yahoo! Alerts, you can receive the new topic announcements via email, Yahoo! Messenger, or your cell phone. Be forewarned that this service is in beta and is not controlled by PFdebate.
  1. Get a Yahoo! account. They are free.
  2. Go to Yahoo! Alerts and [...]