Red Hawk keeps learning!

The Red Hawk Institute spent yesterday listening to speaker position lectures. In true multi-media fashion, Paul Strait and Brett Wallace gave exciting power point lectures on the 1a and 2a that incorporated movie clips from the CSTV documentaries on college debate. 1A's learned such important lessons as building a 1AC to be clear and persuasive, to include well warranted cards, and to build 1ar's around fundamentals like embedded clash, selecting key arguments, time allocation, and efficency.
2A's learned that they are the captain of the aff ship, the core answers to make to every off case position,and how to effectively prepare before a tournament.

Later in the day, Sarah Spring gave her power point lecture on "The 1N: or how I learned to love the 2N." 1N's learned how to effectively prep for 1NC's by assembling the core parts of the speech before the 1ac even begins, and then how to write case "pimps."
Finally, I gave my lecture on the 2N where I discussed how to create comprehensive negative strategies, how to effectively use the 1AC cross-x to win the debate, and the principal of vertical depth.

All four lectures had a few common themes - "readers beat speakers," or the idea that preparing speeches in advance will make you a better debate; speed is your ability to communicate arguments successfully to a judge, or the idea that you can only go the speed that still allows you to be clear, persuasive, and flowable to the judge; "the 2 is captain of the ship," or the idea that 2a/2n control the direction of the debate, although the 1 should not be brushed off or belittled; funny jokes! (although, I am apparently the least funny since I had to ASK people to laugh at this - http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30931)

This morning we had an amazing lecture from Dan Fitzmier on the functions of fiat and kritiks. Afterwards, students got to discuss specific kritiks, as well as generically winning on and beating kritiks, in their 6-8 person seminar groups.

Red Hawk Aff Deadline approaching

With less than 24 hours to go until our aff files are due, the hard working Red Hawk students have decided to take on major negative assignment research as well. The kids have already started to work on such negative assignments as Foucault, politics, States CP, Inflation, and Topicality. Research coordination has been a breeze since kids can turn in files via the Miami Debate provide flash drives. These flash drives practically write the files themselves!(As evident my Chips work habits with his laptop) Here are some pictures of the kids working hard at the library and the dorm.

Scholars Fitzmier Lecture

Dan Fitzmier gave a incredibly helpful lecture today on critique on the topic. I learned alot and I think everyone who was there gained alot of knowledge about critical debating.

The lecture was followed by speaking clinics in which we worked individually on a very hard K, Derrida. I think the success of the lecture was displayed in how well everyone did in giving a practice 2NC on the K.

A few lucky students got to give demonstrations of the 2NC to the whole group.

Miami Speaking Skills Starts Tomorrow - Thursday

Dan Fitzmier and Steve Mancuso will be hosting the first "Miami Speaking Skills" session - held for an hour at 9:00 PM in the basement of Dodds Hall. There will be opportunities for signing up for individualized work, as well as the group projects for developing speaking skills.

Through the course of the workshop these sessions will be offered 10 times, with rotation of all faculty members so students can work with every one.

The Skills sessions are optional, for students who are seeking an edge at developing their speaking skills.

A few of the college debaters, like Brett Wallace, may actually make an appearance and participate in the Skills sessions as well.

Red Hawk Bee Announced!

In order to establish a program substantially increasing the number of persons paying attention in lectures, we would like to offer a positive incentive based program.

Rules: There will be regular quizzes of about 10 questions that test your knowledge of the content of large group lectures and events. You may use any notes that you have taken.
On a regular basis, results will be posted on the blog that include
• The top point leaders
• The overall status of each lab
• The “DFL”
The DFL will then be required to do menial labor as designated by their lab leaders, for example, clean the lab room at the end of a lab meeting.

At the end of the institute, there will be prizes for the top point leaders.

Quiz 1 was based on Steve Mancuso's and Michael Risen's topic lectures and some name games. Below are the questions followed by the correct answers.

Quiz 1
Each question is worth 1 point. To receive credit, the answer must be 100% complete and accurate, as based on the information given in the lectures

1. Write out the high school 06-07 resolution
Resolved: The United States federal government should establish a policy substantially increasing the number of persons serving in one or more of the following national service programs: AmeriCorps, Citizen Corps, Senior Corps, Peace Corps, Learn and Serve America, Armed Forces.
2. What are the 5 parts of the Armed Forces?
Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force, Coast Guard
3. True or False – Non-US citizens, who are American residents, are allowed to enlist and have full access to all positions in the Armed Forces.
FALSE (non US citizens may not be officers or have national security clearance)
4. True or False – the Air Force was founded after the Navy
TRUE
5. Which member of Congress recently introduced a bill to reinstate the draft again?
REP. RANGEL
6. What is the youngest someone may be in order to participate in any program of the Senior Corps?
55
7. What is the top reason that Americans do not volunteer?
LACK OF TIME
8. True or False – the Peace Corps does family planning and HIV/AIDs awareness programs that include, education, prevention, and birth control
FALSE (Peace Corps is not allowed to provide birth control)
9. What national service program has suffered such budget cuts that many speculate it may not exist in 2007?
AmeriCorps
10. What animal discussed during the name game was attributed with the unfortunate characteristic of exploding when dropped?
Tarantula (see http://www.zoo.org/mow/facts.html)

Only two students in the three week institute successfully got the resolution correct, including capitalization, spelling, and order of programs. Alexandria Fox-Mack deserves some applause for being one of those.

Scott Marchi has given himself the lead by being the only perfect score in the institute! However, there are half a dozen nipping at his feet with 9 points so far.

The Lee/Serrano lab is slightly ahead of the Strait/Wallace lab in points.

The DFL was Jeffrey Boxer, but he still has time to catch up, so don't count him out yet!

More quizzes and results after our second quiz, which will be based on the thorough Topicality lecture Ed Lee gave this morning, as well as the research lectures and the institute-wide Research Project.

Camp Starts!

Phew, we're still getting started but the first days of camp have been a whirlwind. Registration and the first night are under our belts and things are just about to get interesting.

Steve and Mike gave fantastic topic lectures this morning. Post if you have any questions for them. And I gave a lecture on how to research this afternoon.

At registration I took pictures of everyone. I'll post a few as a sampling of the picture fantasticness to come!