Speech & Debate Workshop – September 6th
August 30, 2008
**Copied from the Yahoo! Group**
The Austin Rhetoric Club would like to invite you to come learn how to deliver excellent speeches, and get started in NCFCA debate. This workshop is designed for beginners but experienced students have a lot to learn as well. These hands on classes will be taught by experienced homeschool debaters. This is a great chance to learn the basics of speech and debate and see if it will work for you and your family.
Where:
Hope Chapel
6701 Arroyo Seco
Austin, TX 78757
When
Saturday September
6th 8am – 5:30pm.
Cost
- $10 per student
- $25 per family
- Parents & under 10 free
Speech Classes
- Intro to individual events.
- How to cut an interpretive speech.
- Benefits of speech and debate.
- Speech games
Debate Classes:
- How to research for debate.
- Stock issues and logic
- Intro to a debate round.
- Intro to this years topics.
Parent Classes
- But wait, I don’t know what I’m doing!: How to coach your student even with no experience.
- Beyond Debate: Individual Events
- Judges Orientation
The classes are subject to change.
Contact
For more info or to signup contact:
- Thomas Umstattd
- ThomasUmstattd.com
- AustinRhetoricClub.org
-Thomas
P.S. Don’t forget to reserve your spot by letting me you can come.
NCFCA Affilitate Application
August 29, 2008
Everyone should register to become an affiliate of NCFCA soon. If you already know what this is about, then just skip straight to the affiliate form link.
Being an affiliate of NCFCA (the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association) simply means that you are part of the third largest speech and debate league. You can vote on some measures and compete at official NCFCA tournaments.
Since ARC competes as part of NCFCA, one requirement of membership is that all families become an affiliate of NCFCA. The early bird deadline is approaching, so register soon!
Links
ARC technology
August 27, 2008
ARC currently sports four articles of web technology:
- This website
- The Yahoo! Group for students
- The Yahoo! Group for parents
- The NEW Wiki (in beta)
The first is intended to be for general information for all. The next three are ARC-only. I highly recommend that you subscribe to the RSS feed of this site. RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds are instant updates to keep you informed, and are great for debate research! You can use software like Google Reader to manage all your feeds.
What I really want to explain, though, is the next three websites we use. The purpose of the Yahoo! Groups are to make it easy to contact everyone safely. There are two Yahoo! groups: one for mostly students and coaches, and the other for parents. The parent’s group was created so that parents could get the information they need without being overwhelmed by chatter that only the students needed to hear. If you are not a member of either, you should let me know so we can get you in the loop. Email me at arconstitutionist [att] gmail [d0t] com (replacing [at] and [dot] with “@” and “.”, of course) and we’ll see what we can work out.
The Wiki is a really new thing. The whole purpose of a Wiki is 1) to put all our information in one place where it’s hard to loose and destroy (you know how Word documents just seem to disappear, right?) and 2) to make it easier to share information. The idea is to streamline evidence, apologetics, and other collaboration. We need to see if this is right for the club, and, most importantly, to see what software to use. There is literally TONS of wiki software out there. Right now, we’re testing wetpaint. Come check it out with us. Membership on this wiki is by invitation only, so be sure to send me an email if you want to join.
Links to old ARC sites
August 21, 2008
If you can’t find what you are looking for on the new ARC site here are some links to the old site and the even older site.
Meeting Friday August 22
August 21, 2008
We will be meeting this Friday August 22.
Location:
Hope Chapel
6701 Arroyo Seco
Austin, TX 78757
**Update:**
Thomas has produced an agenda for this meeting:
5:45-6:30 Potluck Dinner
6:30-8:30 Debate
- Introduction
- New weekly format.
- Keeping the building clean.
- Need for Involved Parents
- Expectations
- Our new websites.
- Debate
- Topic Discussion
- How to Pick a Partner
- Event Commercials
- Judges Orientation
5 Keys to Choosing a Debate Partner
August 21, 2008
Debate and duo partners are not picked or arranged by any debate or speech coach or the head coach. We encourage our families to take the active part in helping their children pick their partners. Furthermore, we feel that parents are the best experts in educating and raising their own children. As you are considering partner choices for you or your children, please consider these criteria:
- Parental Requirements. First and foremost, how do your parents feel about your perspective partner choices? Do they want you to only consider only girl-girl or boy-boy partnerships, or prefer someone from your church, denomination, etc. Perhaps they already have a prospective partner(s) picked out for you. So, talk to your parents.
- Club Commitment. Do you want to only be active in the club a few months, go to only 1 or 2 practice tournaments, or qualify for the Region IV Tournament and hopefully onto Nationals? But realize, after your first tournament, you may change your mind and go all the way! It is amazing how often this happens. Also, your parents are likely to more accurately estimate how you will respond to speech and debate in the upcoming months, than you are.
- Geography. Does your perspective partner live near you? How about in the same house! Remember, your brother or sister will have this relationship with you for the rest of your life. You might as well learn to do great things with them now, while you are living in the same home. Learning how to work with each other can help make you a dangerous team to the evil one.
- Opposites. Opposites can make good teams. Are you more technical and detail oriented or more artistic and talkative? Are you like to solve puzzles and fix problems or are you more humorous and dramatic? Again, your parents are experts and your best counselors.
- Duo Partners? Duo Interpretation partners do not have to be the same as Team Policy Debate partners, in fact they rarely are the same.
New ARC Site Launches
August 21, 2008
Leave us feedback and let us know how we can make this site better.
New Features
- RSS Feed – Get updates delivered immediately to your RSS Reader.
- Newsletter – You can now get updates delivered to your email inbox the day after they are posted here.
- Easier to Update – The old site needed expensive software to update. This site only needs a browser and a password.
- Extensible – This site can be upgraded to do even cooler stuff than it does right now.