To get this debater-centric perspective on paperless debating, we turned to Ellis Allen and Daniel Taylor, rising seniors at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta and winners of the 2010 Tournament of Champions. Ellis and Daniel were one of the first high school teams in the nation to transition to paperless debating and their insights into the process can provide a helpful blueprint for students now beginning the transition themselves. Joining Ellis and Daniel is Alex Gulakov, a debater at the University of Texas and the creator of the Synergy system of paperless software. Alex has been one of the biggest advocates of paperless debating and is currently working with several summer institutes and debate programs across the country to aid them in the transition.

The discussion—clocking in at just over an hour—covers a wide range of paperless topics that debaters will find helpful. After beginning with a discussion of the transition from paper to paperless, we delve into the specific mechanics of preparing each speech including pitfalls to avoid and tips to improve your debating. There’s something for everyone—including coaches—but our primary goal was to provide debaters with the information they need to confidently make the paperless transition.

As usual, you can download this special edition podcast directly or access it through iTunes. Special thanks to Ellis, Daniel, and Alex for making this podcast possible.

Why should you listen to this podcast? It gives you the chance to get tangible, timely advice from two incredibly successful coaches whose track records speak for themselves. The coach of the 2010 National Debate Tournament Champions, Repko has now coached three NDT Champions in the last seven years and is widely regarded as one of the nation’s best debate educators. Paul—an NDT Champion himself in 2002 for Northwestern University—coached two TOC Champions while at The Greenhill School in the span of only three years and is now rebuilding a top-level national college program at Georgetown.

Not going to the TOC? Worried that the discussion will go over your head? Fear not: the advice that Repko and Paul provide is applicable to every debate team who puts it all on the line at their most important tournament of the season. Regardless of whether your focus is on winning the TOC or on winning your NFL District Tournament or your City Championship, the discussion of preparation and strategy for “The Big One” is sure to be helpful.

Worried that you don’t have what it takes to debate in college? Convinced that your lack of experience and competitive success in high school renders unreachable your dreams of becoming a champion college debater? Both Repko and Paul ease your fears and explain what they look for in a young student joining their program; learn from the best what it takes to achieve your goals as a college debater.

Clocking in at an un-3NR-like 55 minutes, you can download this special edition podcast directly or access it through iTunes.

• Woodward Tournament Review: Disclosure Award, Division Eligibility, Scott’s Absence
• Announcement: Will Repko Podcast at the NDCA
• Next Year’s Topic: What generic counterplans will be popular? What generic critiques will be popular?
• Roy’s Topic Idea: Forcible regime change in Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba
• More Tabulation Discussion: Should undefeated teams that are due the same side debate each other in round 6? Should the Woodward Tournament adopt the Challenge format for elimination rounds? Other tweaks: high-high rounds, MBA system (opponent wins + high-low points)
• Return To The Game: What would Scott/Roy do differently if they came back and debated again?
• Today’s Debaters: What do they do better and worse than previous generations?
• Preparation For The TOC: Risk Aversion, Strategies, Flexibility, etc.
• K Preparation For Dummies: Preparing to go for a K if you’re a “policy” debater (and vice versa)
• Judge Adaptation: Do people judge differently at the TOC? Should they?

As always, you can download this episode directly or access it through iTunes.

Topics covered** include:

• How to impact turn a kritik effectively- dos and don’ts
• The key to impact turn strategies like de-development
• Why is the Obama good DA so dominant and the Obama bad disad almost non-existent?
• How you should do impact analysis for K affs
• How Malcolm doesn’t really understand the point of ethics arguments
• Scholarship opportunities at UMKC

As always, you can download this episode directly or access it through iTunes.

* on this podcast
** topics not actually covered

Malgor Warming up for the Podcast

Topics discussed in this podcast include

-how we are in fact real Americans who fight for the rights of everyone

-How debating the K like a DA is brilliant… only the exact opposite

-Why is everyone else not as smart as us?

- Your big words (like “link”) would work in front of me, except i’m way smarter than you

-When is Framework a necessary argument? Answer- When we tell you it is!

Roy was also along for this podcast- we told him to speak up anytime he had something insightful to add.

You can mainline this mother right into your veins here.

The episode—officially the tenth, since our previous attempt was never released to the public—features a wide-ranging discussion of topics including:

• The Spirit of Disclosure Award: Should analytical arguments be disclosed? What level of disclosure should be expected? What makes for an effective wiki page? Woodward PP: worst wiki page in the country?
• Flowing: A lost art?
• Should The 3NR create other awards recognizing effective research, innovative strategies, etc.?
• Speaker Points: Are they too high? Were the debaters “back in the day” better than those of today? Is Roy a hopeless curmudgeon or does he have a point? Should we transition to a 100-point or 30/.1 scale?
• Why do 2N/1A’s receive higher points than 1N/2A’s? Should they?
• Low Point Wins: Should they be banned? Scott says yes. Is he right, or are there situations where low point wins make sense?
• Double Losses: Should they be allowed? Scott says yes—we discuss this idea and some alternatives.
• Pairing Criteria: Is the current system (high-low within brackets using high-low adjusted points) effective? Should opponent wins be used to pair debates? Should high-high rounds be more common? Should side constraints be ignored for undefeated teams when pairing the last prelim?
• The Politics Disad: sweet or not so sweet? Should the aff be losing debates to the politics disad? Should negs be relying on it to construct their post-season strategies?
• “The DA Turns The Case”: the last refuge of scoundrels? What can the aff do to protect themselves from “the low risk DA turns the case, I voted neg” decisions?
• Conditionality Gone Wild: is each plank of a multi-plank counterplan conditional? Is it okay to kick independent planks? Whose burden is it to establish the meaning of “conditionality” (or, more generally, the disposition of the counterplan)?
• “A2:” or “AT:” (or “They Say:”) as a label for blocks: which one is best? (Yes, we actually got into an argument about this.)

And several other things that listeners probably don’t care about but might still find entertaining, like openness in Public Forum and the disturbing content of most Dramatic Interpretation pieces.

As always, you can download this episode directly or access it through iTunes.

• A Judging Hypothetical (from Rajesh Jegadeesh)
• Do Dropped Advantages Need To Be Explicitly Extended in the 2AC/1AR?
• Rounds We Judged Together At The Glenbrooks
• Non-Sensical Plan Writing and Plan-Inclusive Counterplans
• Disclosure Norms Regarding New Plan Texts
• Research Techniques (in regard to the Crowd-Sourcing Threads)
• Specific vs. General Critique Responses
• Impact Turns Alongside Critiques As A Negative Strategy
• Switch-Side Debate and the Hicks and Greene Evidence

As always, you can download this episode directly or access it (soon) through iTunes.

As always, you can download this episode directly or access it (soon) through iTunes. We have also submitted our feed to the Zune Marketplace—hopefully it will show up there soon, too.

• Small School Success (link)
• Poverty/Means Testing PIC
• Word PICs
• Debating Extra-Topicality/Theory
• Collaborative Research Project/Open Source

If you’d like to suggest a topic for our next episode, please do so in the comments.

This week’s podcast features a discussion of several issues including the 100-point scale, critiques of disadvantages (and how to answer them), politics theory arguments, the use of technology in debate (including the Synergy software), and a few other topics. We are planning on discussing negative strategies against critique affirmatives next week but we would love to hear from our listeners: if there’s something you’d like us to discuss, please let us know!