OSAA State Championships

Congratulations and good luck to all of the students that worked with ODEF qualifying to the state tournament!

Qualified to State Championships in policy debate –

Bandon BC – Alexis Busso and Wlnsvey Campos

Coquille LS – Alexis Ladig and Mariyam Suleiman

Thurston DS – Austin Dillon and Aaron Smart

Thurston PK – Edie Powell and Andrew Kronser

And of course good luck to all the ODEF alums who qualified in IEs and Student Congress! We’ll see you this weekend.

ODEF Tournament #2 – Coquille HS

Big thanks to Coquille for letting us use their school for the second ODEF tournament. This was our first independent debate-only gathering and it did not disappoint.

First time competitors Alexis Busso and Wlnsvey Campos of Bandon HS came out on top this time! Using a case they researched about deflection of asteroids, they were undefeated on the day. Good work girls, and best of luck at the rest of the tournaments this year!

Top three speakers received ODEF expandos – congratulations to: 3rd speaker Alexis Ladig of Coquille; 2nd speaker Mariyam Suleiman of Coquille; and 1st speaker Wlnsvey Campos of Bandon!

Bandon Busso/Campos plotting

Coquille's Kaitlyn Dixon and Mariyam Suleiman get judges' feedback

CHS' Alexis Ladig takes a question from a Bandon-Coquille hybrid team Gritzbach/Smith

ODEF - Jan 12 Coquille HS

Sign up for the Coquille HS Cross-X tournament here!

Join us for our free tournament at Coquille High School to get some practice in CX debate! Join us January 7th from 9:30 am to 6 pm. We’ll be providing lunch and three rounds of competition, plus finals and cool awards for teams and top speakers.

Anyone who would like to give debate a try is welcome to attend, even if you haven’t been to one of our workshops. A free evidence set will be available here for download on December 23rd.

Teams: Please send an email to odef.directors@gmail.com with your team info. Send us a list of entries with your school and first and last names. If you are interested in using your own researched evidence at the tournament, please let us know so we can prepare accordingly. Entries are due by January 4th, 2011.

Judges: Anyone interested in judging novice to intermediate CX debate please send your name and availability to odef.directors@gmail.com.

How to research a disadvantage: Part four – Impact

In preparation for our January tournament, here’s a brief post a series of four posts on the basics of researching and debating a disadvantage.

Part one: Intro to disadvantages

Part two: Uniqueness research

Part three: Link research

Part four: Impact research

Finally, impacts.

Now that we’ve proven that we’re driving along a cliff now, and the affirmative will swerve us off that cliff, we have to do the part that seems most unnecessary: why is driving off a cliff bad?

Seriously, though, impact research can be really tough. Not only are you trying to find evidence to support arguments that are (sometimes) totally intuitive, you also want them to quantify how bad the problem is. How fast will we drive off the cliff, how deep is the chasm, and what else will be affected by the crash?

There’s a few ways to research impacts, and you should probably use a mixture of all of them. Key steps:

How to research a disadvantage: Part three – Link

In preparation for our January tournament, here’s a brief post a series of four posts on the basics of researching and debating a disadvantage.

Part one: Intro to disadvantages

Part two: Uniqueness research

Part three: Link research

Part four: Impact research

Second, Links.

I think links are the easiest thing to research on a disadvantage. You usually know just what you’re looking for, and the evidence doesn’t change all that often. That being said, you have to know what you’re looking for and what your disadvantage needs.

To be a really good disad, you want link evidence to every possible affirmative. Given that this isn’t possible, you usually want to research a couple specific links and one good general one. For our example, I’ll try to find specific evidence against 1) ballistic missile defense, 2) solar power satellites, and 3) a general link.

How to research a disadvantage: Part two – Uniqueness

In preparation for our January tournament, here’s a brief post a series of four posts on the basics of researching and debating a disadvantage.

Part one: Intro to disadvantages

Part two: Uniqueness research

Part three: Link research

Part four: Impact research

First, uniqueness:

For a spending disadvantage, we’ll need to find an argument that the government is controlled in its spending now. Not easily done, if you’ve been reading the news lately. Good uniqueness research takes a bit of craftmanship and lots of searching for the right words.

Google is an indispensable research tool, but you have to learn to use it right. If we just google “spending uniqueness” or “spending is low” you will come up with no relevant hits. For uniqueness, I usually like to start by looking on Google News. Click on “News” on the top bar of Google.com and you’ll be able to search recent articles from all over the world. Beware of non-reputable news sources; Google news also usually displays articles from blogs and regional newspapers that might be of no help to you.