Debate Time

I did my first formal debate with the high school students today.

It was their first debate too, since the class only formed together at the beginning of the year.

I like to time the students to give them motivation to speak freely instead of reading from notes so much. Then we just do regular tips for public speaking, like eye contact and pacing. It's a bit of a stretch to call this public speaking since there are only three students in the class.

My record for the younger grades is over 6 minutes. Today we had scores ranging from 53 seconds to 2 minutes.

It was a good topic too! "Video games do more harm than good"

The proposition team (one student, actually) claimed video games can make people lazy and they will exercise less.

The opposition team (the other two students) brought up how Pokemon Go -recently released in Korea- gets people outside walking and Wii games also require movement.

The proposition responded with how GPS spoofing hacks can be used, no one plays Wii anymore, and Pokemon Go is actually harmful because people get hit by cars.

It was actually really well done for the first debate. Especially for that one student on the proposition team because he did not want to be on the pro team -he loves video games. Still, sign of a good debater that he could argue outside of his own opinion.