In the Mood for a Debate?
December 2, 2009 by GradingGirl
Filed under Educational Resources, Favorites, Reviews, Savvy Sites
It seems there are social networking sites for everyone these days . . . Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace pioneered the way for numerous specialized sites such as The English Companion Ning where English teachers connect, BroadwaySpace for theater enthusiasts, and CafeMom where moms exchange ideas.
Try CreateDebate!
There’s a new face on the networking block that looks quite different from its predessors - CreateDebate is a new social networking site built around “ideas, discussion and democracy.” It’s a community for creating debates that scratch your brain and existing arguments that currently rile others up.
Bryan Orme invited me to try out this site. I dabbled with it a little myself and then had my senior expository students explore it to precurse their argumentative paper research. The goal of Orme’s team is to build a useful learning tool that will help “people sort through issues, viewpoints and opinions so that consensus and understanding can be reached and better decisions can be made.” I believe the site does this.
My favorite aspect of the site is the CreateDebate communities tailored just for classroom use. This is a great technological tool easily allowing students to discuss and debate thoughts with others outside of their classroom or even possibly outside school building walls. I like that CreateDebate allows teachers to have complete control regarding public accessibility. If you choose, you can create a site that only your students can access – students can access this from home, but only their classmates will see their reactions. Pretty nifty – a tool that makes research motivating and fun. Additionally, CreateDebate makes it simple to keep track of who’s online and what sort of activity is taking place on your site. The administrative panel allows you to manage and customize your community from a central location. Complete control!
Grading Girl gives CreateDebate an A for effort in creating a manageable, motivating debate community that brings current, relevant events literally at students’ fingertips to participate in. Give it a try!
