Welcome, debaters! This page contains some potentially useful links to help you hone your skills, improve your research abilities, learn about debate theory, or organize your files.
If you've found an interesting site that you want to share with the DUDE community, send me an email (kyle.deming7@gmail.com) with a link and I'll be sure to add it as soon as possible!
Learning and Teaching Debate
Emory's Policy Debate Manual: As far as debate introductions go, this is the gold standard. Even current DUDE members learned how to debate with this same book. It's concise, well-organized, and clearly-written. If you're still learning the ropes, it's a great tool for review or exploration. If you're teaching younger debaters, you should flip through - even if you're using a different guide or writing your own lectures.
SDI Encyclopedia: This is a comprehensive glossary of common debate terms, organized by the Michigan State Debate Institutes and edited over the years by debaters and coaches. As an open source project, it's constantly improving and updating, often with topic-relevant terms.
Debate Central: This is an instructional video site created by the University of Vermont, whose college debate team is renowned for its ability to attract interest from new debaters. The site hosts recorded lectures from previous debate institutes, including advanced theory and skills discussions for older debaters. No matter what your background or interests, you'll find something cool to watch here.
NCPA: The National Center for Policy Analysis provides this central repository for debate PDFs and links, targeted at those just joining the activity. They have their own set of introduction texts, as well as a diverse base of expert advice on (among other subjects) team-building, maximizing improvement from debate experience, and flowing.
Downloads
Debate In the Classroom: This excellent manual by former Detroit Urban Debate Education Director Edmund Zagorin provides a number of drills and exercises as well as lesson plans for aspiring speech and debate teachers. The book focuses on integrating public speaking and effective argumentation, while including essential debate elements and skills like cross-examination, thinking on your feet, and taking useful notes.
Debate Synergy: This page allows you to download any version of Debate Synergy, the popular software suite for debating on a laptop and organizing research. It contains a Microsoft Word template (with macros, shortcuts, and a new toolbar), an Excel flowing template, a timer, and more. It has since been updated by the Georgetown Debate Team. A manual is, fortunately, included.
The Open Evidence Project: Updated near the end of August, this site contains almost every file researched by debate institutes over the summer. With hundreds of files and thousands of cards available, you can find the basis for your own research or locate a couple cards to complement a strategy. Now that camp files are commonly available, just looking around the contents is a good way to predict what other teams will be reading. If you're planning on using the files from the site, don't forget to update them - some of the best evidence is written during the season or just gets missed by camp researchers.
The Georgia Debate Union Research Guide: This page includes Naveen Ramachandrappa's incredibly helpful manual to electronic research. If you're interested in making your own template, it's the best place to learn.
Blogs and Forums:
The 3NR: A collaboration between Georgia-based high school debate coaches Bill Batterman, Scott Phillips, and Roy Levkovitz, the 3NR blog provides perhaps the best source of frequently updated advice for aspiring high school debaters.
Putting the K in Debate: Scott Odekirk (Idaho State University) runs this blog, which covers both college and high school debate. It includes podcast discussions with coaches and debaters from around the country, videotapes of particularly interesting and impressive rounds, and insightful articles about the Kritik and its role in debate.
Cross-x.com: A forum that includes sections for inquiring about arguments, downloading books and articles, and checking out debate camps for the summer.
The CEDA Forums: Primarily aimed at discussing college debate topics, the site does contain some universally helpful discussions like a guide for transitioning from novice to varsity debate.
Debate Videos
Debate Vision: A relatively new site that gives users the ability to upload their own debates (like YouTube), this includes some top-level high school and college rounds.
YouTube: This usually requires some precise searching or hunting through "related videos", but some speeches and full-length debates are kicking around YouTube. You can find the historic final round of the 2009 National Debate Tournament (the college debate championship), as well as model speeches like this second affirmative rebuttal by Missouri State debater Martin Osborn.
Speaking Drill Help
Tongue Twisters: I use this site to warm up for my drills, given its sheer size and variance in exercises. If you have another compilation, feel free to submit!
3NR Practice Archive: This is a subsection of the 3NR dedicated to skills work, especially targeted toward speaking practice. It has some cool downloads (like hip-hop lyrics to particularly difficult songs), as well as lengthy articles about maximizing the benefits from speaking drills.
Wikispaces and Citations
The NDCA Caselist: This is an awesome source and starting point for research. Many high schools post their arguments and a list of citations after tournaments, allowing you to reverse-engineer or just learn more about different topic positions.
The Opencaselist: College debate's version of the NDCA Caselist, this holds lots of high-quality evidence and links to useful sites. This archive of old caselists can also provide useful cites.
Wake Forest Deaconsource: Wake Forest has decided to open-source their debate evidence for the 2010-11 season and forward. This site provides downloadable links to evidence from every speech delivered by a Wake Forest debater over the last two years.
Must-See Speeches
"The Speech" by Scott Deatherage: A famous piece of debate history written and delivered by former Northwestern University coach Scott Deatherage, "The Speech" mixes storytelling with powerful lessons on teamwork and the keys to debate success. Scott retired from coaching to work with the Chicago UDL in 2008. In a great loss to the debate community, he passed on last year, but his words are preserved for future generations of high school and college debaters.
Research Tips by Dylan Keenan: Dylan is a former University of Michigan debater and assistant coach at Emory University. He currently uses his formidable research skills at Yale Law School. Watching and learning from this video might be the most valuable hour you spend on debate.