Tag: pedagogy

  • The Reason that Debating is as Important to Education as Writing

    “We are all teachers of writing,” is not only a good principle of education, or a good mantra of focus for teachers overwhelmed my the irrelevant minutae of state requirements and Common Core, but it is also a political statement – it’s the phrase of victory of rhetoric and composition, who conquered the educational world…

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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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Why I am Looking Forward to Grading This Week

    This seems to be a good track to start the week. Roxanne Emery is one of my very favorite singers. Kind of a dark song if you really listen to the lyrics, but most dance music has pretty sad themes now that I think of it. This week is halfway full of meetings and other…

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  • Competitive Debate is not in the Hands of Educators

    The biggest issue facing the Tournament Debate Regime around the world is that they willfully exclude the educational perspective and also work to exclude educators from participating in the creation and administration of debate events. The biggest shock during the pandemic is that debate tournaments continued, unimpeded through online means. There was no discussion and…

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  • Wading into the Relationship between Professor and Teacher

    For some reason I have been reflecting on my career and work a lot lately, probably because I’m starting to feel strange about how the days are not broken up by wandering from room to room at the university. Those walks are so essential for clearing the head as you are preparing to teach, or…

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  • The Problem with My Lecture Videos

    I thought I’d start out this semester by offering students a number of 10 to 12 minute videos on different topics. It did not turn out that way. Most of the videos I’ve made have been 20 minutes or more. And for my Argumentation course, the videos are always around 40 minutes. I’m not sure…

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