may i congratulate you first?
I am now a certified mathematics teacher in the state of Georgia! I passed both tests for certification – on the first try! Without much studying! I’m sooo pumped.
I have to keep reminding myself, so I stay cheerful. I am struggling in Calculus 3. It’s a constant struggle it seems. I am not a fan of the professor at all. I think I am starting to understand but the worst part is I haven’t been able to really focus on the class because I have a Modern Algebra Exam today – which i feel very confident about! Once Modern is done, I’ll have to turn to my attention to Calc. I’m planning on waking up early tomorrow and really settling down in Calc.
I would say no computer – but our textbook is online… talk about distractions. Not to mention, the GFCA site opens July 15 – eh.. so I have to finish working on that. I think I’ll wake up at 9:30 tomorrow.. sounds good.
Anyway, anticipate a post about my new favorite album coming soon. Probably tomorrow night.
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Tags: debate, gace, gfca, math, regina
planet debate can suck it
So I need to blog and complain about something realllllly bothering me. Planet Debate, Inc. Several things bother me about this website. I’m not going to link you to this worthless piece of crap because that would help them, and they don’t need help.
- All about money: They are all about money. In a summer where all the camps have been publishing video lectures for free – Planet Debate makes you pay $ 10 to watch their lectures. How does that help the community? How does it help a dying activity which economics have hurt so incredibly much. Oh but don’t worry their tournaments are free! You want to know why the tournaments are free and not their lectures? The lectures money directly goes to their wallets. The tournament money would just go to the school’s budget. But guess where the money for both of these come from? The debate community. I don’t see how you can justify a free tournament (which can only attract a few amount of people in the community) and then charge people for lectures (which affects the whole community).
- Rip off camps: Camps publish their files for a couple reasons. Some of these reasons are to get feedback from their evidence production. How do camps find out people get the files – probably by some tracking device on their websites to see how many times a page was visited. Guess what Planet Debate does? They download the files and host them on their own server. Then, they use that to make their numbers better. Don’t believe me – here’s a direct quote on their site – ON EVERY PAGE:
But Who’s Counting?
71 Video Lectures
1,009 Photos
84,911 Database Cards
2,348 Downloadable Files
1,567 Free Files
781 Pay Files
61,056 Files Downloaded
49 Audio Lectures
13,200 Web Research Links
3,509 Bibliographic EntriesWho’s counting? They are. They are downright using institutes across the country to make themselves look better.
- Georgia Forensics Creates a Solution: I saw this problem, so I created a solution. A page to aggregate all camp lectures & files. We didn’t take them onto our server – even though we easily could have. Instead, we linked the viewers DIRECTLY to institute’s pages. This way the institute still gets a record of the downloads. We also host the ENDI lectures. We could charge Emory for this. We could charge the community for these. Do we? Nope. Do I need money? Yes. Does my debate team need money? Desparatley. But yet I still don’t charge. This solution was actually asked for by the community on Cross-X.com, so we answered by giving the community what they wanted. A person from Planet Debate confronted me about it. He mentioned, why put evidence in three locations – GFD, Planet Debate, and NDCA’s open evidence. I wanted to ask him, why does CNN, Fox News, MSNBC exist? I’m sorry that different news outlets exist. I’m sorry that our news site is more effective than theirs. I’m sorry ours is more organized. I’m sorry we address community issues and try to solve them. I’m sorry we don’t put our numbers & stats above the community.
- Stealing Coverage: This first happened at NFL Nationals. Brandon had put together a ton of stuff on the Public Forum debate field and full elimination coverage. Well, Planet Debate “sponsors” Public Forum at Nationals. So yes, they should have been providing top coverage – well they failed. They had a person there NOT DOING ANYTHING but promoting their site… but again, promoting their site is more important than assisting the Public Forum community. They took all of our work without crediting us with at all. They didn’t change formatting at all. Any misspellings were still there. That’s low.
- Stealing Ideas: Recall the aggregator idea. Guess what Planet Debate published the next day? An aggregator of their own. I called them out on this via twitter – no response. They once again used the same headings as us – except they changed all the links to the planet debate files. Way to go! Steal an idea, make yourselves look better.. but wait, nothing has really changed with your motive.
- New Politics Research Tool: WOW, Way to insult the community. James Herndon gave a FANTASTIC lecture on how to research politics – seriously I’ve been involved in the community for almost 8 years – and I learned stuff from it. Stuff that will help me research politcs hopefully better than most. This lecture is available for free from georgia forensics & ENDI. They’ve created a tool to have articles on politics automatically on their page. Sure this could be useful, but research shouldn’t be handed to people. The one thing about the politics DA that makes it unique is that the research can be tough – especially to find good politics cards. Not only are they trying to dumb down the community – but they are just using it to market all of their politics files. Why do I say this? To reach the news aggregators, you must first scroll past their politics files of the last four or more years. Way to go and trick the community into thinking you’re doing something helpful – you’re just using it as a ploy to garner more cash for yourself.
- Doesn’t care about advertising content: Check the ads on this page out – it’s the only link I’ll post. What goes around comes back around.
Okay I feel a little better. I may make this a reoccuring topic in the blog – as per the war between gfd & pd has just begun. Operation Call Them Out is underway.
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Tags: planet debate, skeezballs
feel the heal
i have to remind myself the name of the blog… teach me. this time in my life is a vital time for learning. my body yearns to be taught, but sometimes i feel i’m avoiding the teaching. i think the avoiding is just a part of being human.
my dad isn’t doing that great – today was pretty bad actually. he spent a lot of the day just hacking. every time he’d intake something, it’d make it’s way back up. he’s dry heaving more than usual.
his spirits are down. which doesn’t help. i pray he starts to feels the healing You are doing in his throat and body. i pray that he starts to feel strong. remind him though he may be weak, you are always strong.
For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection.
1 Corinthians 13:8-9
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Tags: cancer, dad, healing, learning, prayer, teaching, verses
love is a victory march
Yes, again with Kina. I think I may like it better than Phil Wickham’s version. This post is getting back to the roots of my blog.
Tomorrow is the last day of radiation. Hallelujah!
We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.
2 Corinthians 4:7-10
our love is a victory march
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Tags: verses, music, cancer, radiation, victory
I remembered my love for Kina Grannis. Something about her voice is just soothing and amazing.
Today’s Modern Algebra class was exhilarating – classes like tonight remind me why I’m a math major – but classes like tonight make me want to teach college & not high school.
My miss for someone is growing… but there are some things we don’t talk about
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Tags: africa, math, miss, music
