Recently, a young trio were hauled up for posting some racist comments on facebook. Some people said they were too young and silly to understand the implications of what they were saying. Others said that racism is too dangerous a problem to ignore and that they must be taught a hard lesson. What’s the right answer? How harsh should we be on youngsters who post material on the internet that may get them in trouble with the law? Should age matter? Or should we adopt a strong stand against such kids, to enhance the deterrent effect?
Well my fellow debaters, what do you think?
[Best Comment of the month stands to win an exclusive DA(S) 5-VCD debate set with accompanying guide booklets]
These are the slides and other materials used at the Teacher Training Workshop held on 6 Feb 2010 in conjunction with Wits & Words 2010. This material is designed for primary school teachers who wish to understand the GEB-HCI-DA(S) Inter-Primary School Debates “Wits & Words” and who wish to learn the basics of coaching a team and adjudicating a debate.
Wits & Words 2010: Teachers’ Resource Sheet
Wits & Words 2010: Slides Used For Adjudicator Training for Teachers
Wits & Words 2010: Slides Used for Coaches’ Workshop
If you have further queries on any aspect of Wits & Words 2010, feel free to get in touch with us!
Dear SSDC 2010 Adjudicators,
Firstly, thanks to everybody who came down and spent their Friday evening with us last week, judging the various debates. Although the round went quite well, the debates ended very late because some of the rooms started late, and (more commonly) because the second and third debates were delayed due to extensive debriefs by the adjudicators. As an adjudicator myself, I understand the desire for us to be as thorough as possible with both teams, so that they learn from their mistakes (and work on their strengths). This unfortunately causes the young student volunteers from the host schools have to stay back very late to re-arrange and clean up the classrooms. Thus, we would like to reiterate a few points (the ones in red) for all adjudicators, to help us keep things running on time for the next round.
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DA(S) conducted a full-day teacher training workshop on Saturday Feb 6th 2010 at MOE-GEB, for all primary school teachers involved in the competition. The course introduced teachers to the basics of adjudication, and covered some coaching techniques.
Photo collage from the workshop:

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Google’s Street View application was launched in Singapore in Dec 2009, providing free virtual-tour/photo-mapping for all of Singapore using their special camera-mounted cars. Read the Singapore article here.
Internationally, this free service has caused much dismay and concern. Some privacy advocates are worried that the service is an intrusion that citizens cannot “opt out” of – even if you do not want your house to be photographed, there is nothing legally preventing Google from doing so. Security officials are even more worried – would this tool allow terrorists and criminals to plan their attacks better? This side of the argument feels that Google needs to be stopped today – because as the photography resolution gets better in a few years, Google Street View will be able to take high-resolution images of people changing in their apartments, or even clear photographs of barcodes on the ID tags of security guards for criminals to copy.
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1. Decide What You Need From Your Coach
Do you want him/her to coach the school team to win the national championships? Or do you want them to introduce all the students in your debate club to debating? How many hours a week do you want the coach to come down? Once you know what you want in the long term, it’s easier to find the right coach.
Tell Your Prospective Debate Coach:
- What your school’s goals are with respect to debating: Do you want to reach the quarterfinals of Division 1 in the SSDCs? Do you prioritise skills development over achievements in competitions?
- Who you want them to coach: just the debate team? The entire debate club?
- Whether there will be constraints on the number of hours they can coach per month, or whether there will be a limit to how much money they will be paid per month.
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