The December Public Forum Topic asks the students to debate the value of social networks. It will be really hard to negate this resolution without a discussion about sexual predator use of social networks and regular adult use of social networks involving dating, relationships and sex.
We spoke to our PFD students today candidly about the explosion of social networks. You might be thinking of a social network being a Facebook or MySpace. While they are leading social networks, there are many, many others. We will be asking our students to do some learning about social networks. As they research they will start to run into some of the "other" social network sites names. I wanted to be sure you were aware of the topic and what it may take to negate the resolution.
We have had some dicey topics in the past and this one might be another.
For the record, resolutions come from the National Forensic League--they are not locally picked. All schools debate the topic for the month.
In our case only those students going to Mason, Okoboji and Novice Night in Indianola will face this topic. We cannot participate in the Dowling tournament and the Lincoln tournament in December will be on the January topic--whatever that will be.
I was pleased with the session today involving the subject and the maturity shown by our students. We keyed on the financial aspects of social networks--selling of memberships and advertising. We also spent some time on why social networks are being pushed by advertisers and why they work for advertisers.
As always, if you have any concerns, please email me at: harry.strong@dmps.k12.ia.us or call me at 202-4078. Thanks for your support.
