Author: Steve

  • What is Missed in Calls to Return to In-Person Teaching

    We are told continuously through the pandemic that students are demanding an “in person” experience for their education. The university is not a remote workplace, and online education is not and never will replace the in person teaching experience. This demand is often couched in the terms of market economics. Education is easily considered a…

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  • Principles of University Teaching for the post-COVID 19 Campus

    Not sure I can cover everything in one post because I haven’t really thought through it all, but here are a couple of ideas that I got after attending my first University Senate meeting and getting a taste of the University discourse there. I believe that the two I’m going to suggest here are the…

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  • Principles of University Teaching for the post-COVID 19 Campus

    Not sure I can cover everything in one post because I haven’t really thought through it all, but here are a couple of ideas that I got after attending my first University Senate meeting and getting a taste of the University discourse there. I believe that the two I’m going to suggest here are the…

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  • Abandoning Facebook, Instagram, and their Derivatives

    Blue State Coffee Pour from Professor Steve Llano, Ph.D. on Vimeo. For the greater part of a year I put a short video like this one up every morning on my social media – mostly on Snapchat, since that’s what my students used at the time. They loved it and we’d talk about the different…

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  • Classroom Podcasting or Video Lectures?

    Still struggling with this question. The arguments for podcasting are a lot more persuasive to me: Audio is small, easy to produce at a high quality, easy to transport, upload, download, playable on any device a student could possibly have around them (including ancient computers) and you can do other things while you are listening…

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  • Feeling Gratitude

    But everywhere I goI see it all, I see it all‘Cause everywhere I go I can’t even hide my loveI see it all, I see it allBut everywhere I goI see it all I see it all Everywhere I go by ALPHA 9 It’s been a couple of years since I put my debate program…

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  • Remembering Brad Smith

    Debate has been a lot of things to me, but perhaps the most (or only) valuable thing about it has been the relationships I have made with people who are also attracted to, driven by, and influence debate. Some of these people love debate and give a lot more to it than they get from…

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  • The Week Ahead

    I thought I would start making the Monday post something a bit more personal and reflective, a snapshot of where my mind is for the week, and make the other 2 to 3 posts more “publishable” posts than the Monday ones. I’m thinking blogging is far superior to social media as it forces you to…

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  • What’s in a Debate Name?

    Debate Coach makes me cringe for so many reasons. I’m not sure I can list them all here. The first concern with this term I share with William Hawley Davis, Professor of Speech at Case Western in 1916, who worried that teaching debate for competition made his role “adjunct to sport.” If there is a…

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  • We’re Hiring Someone who Does Debate, What do you Think?

    The title of this post is a note I often get. I thought I’d make my common response public. Don’t hire a debate coach to run your debate program. Don’t hire someone who has a record of tournament success. Instead, hire someone who is a radical teacher, someone who is a critical pedagogue. You want…

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