hello everyone welcome to my first video on this YouTube channel what I'm going to discuss is note keeping for judges more specifically what I'm going to discuss is the overall purpose of notes after which I'm going to explain the big picture and small picture notes I basically have a system of notes where either it's going to be big picture or it's going to be small picture and each set of notes is basically going to fulfill a different set of um goals that you have for your notes this is going to be you know quite abstract maybe so that's also why I'm going to discuss a specific example I'm going to analyze my notes that I have used during oxit IV last weekend so let's get into it what is the purpose of your notes largely there are two things that you are going to use them for you're going to use them for the deliberation period and the feedback period so during The Liberation period there are some specific things that can be asked of you firstly they can ask you what did teams exactly say so if there is a question to what extent a team has proven a specific claim you want to go into a bit more detail you want to be able to point to a specific place in a speech um and be able to basically quote or at least give a good gist of what a person has said about a specific point secondly you also want to be able to actually understand how different pieces of analysis compare to each other so let's consider the example where you are listening to the leader of opposition the leader of opposition most likely will bring rebuttal to the Prime Minister the first Speaker of opening government if that is the case at the moment you already have an overview of what opening government is talking about it is easier for you to understand what the case reacts to and what it doesn't react to it therefore is easy for you to understand if opening opposition is you know being tactic uh tactically about their rebuttal if they are winning opening half if they're doing a good job or not um it also means that the moment you want to compare these teams that it becomes easier right so you can solve the third question which is what do specific teams do better so at some point you're going to have an overview of what teams have said and you might already see from that that some teams have a lot of time spent on impacting but other teams might have spent more time on explaining how they get to that impact so they have more mechanization for example at that moment you're able to understand what the you know comparative advantage is you know using economic terms so at the moment you might uh be able to give yourself already a bit more weighing of what teams could win on or are winning on this is going to be important because it all trickles down to the last question is why does one team beat another team and often times you just need these previous questions to answer this questions so you know what does this team say in the first place and how does this analysis compare to what others team have said and then where do we think that one team does better than the other one um it is important to basically have notes that do all of these things because all of these things might be in contention during The Liberation and therefore it's good that you're going to have notes that are able to end all of these questions however deliberation is not the only part of being a judge it's also about giving feedback to other judges and speakers so at the moment that you have notes those notes can be used to tell them how they can use their out May meta skills these are things such as like structure these are things such as style was a person rambling in a specific point way too much where some things unclear all this kind of stuff also important thing for your notes is if it gives you the answer how they can improve specific analysis so at the moment you find something unclear in the speech and you've already highlighted that in your notes you're able to more quickly point this out during feedback and you can also give maybe more reasons why you believed something or you didn't believe something and lastly it's also going to be important that you're going to be able to answer the question how they can improve tactics wise so at the moment that you have done the first two levels which is can I just understand what you're saying and you know on the specifics what is your analysis good at um where should they maybe have spent more time on or what should they have rebutted more from the other teams or what kind of like was missing from the speech that is more a big picture thing that you need to know and maybe can see where they have or haven't spent their time uh in lastly there's also you know something that people might ask of you um they they have specific analysis that they thought might be strong or they were just wondering how this plays into debate and they can just ask you how you bought it did you buy it did you think it was good all this kind of stuff and if you're able to actually know what they're talking about and you already might have some notes on what was stated then it's going to be easy for you to give that feedback because you're now not just processing what did I actually think of this analysis rather you've already written down and then you can maybe be the consequence of this so given that I have this problem with your speech what can I advise you to do next time to actually uh be better as the slogan is of the D competitive platform so now let's go into the more detailed analysis so what kind of notes I use I use two sets of notes as I've already stated the small picture notes and the big picture notes so the small picture notes are going to be notes which are going to give a more detailed summary of a speech so often times what I specifically write down are sentences or short sentences and in this part I'm often times also going to use color so different color pens or pencils and I'm basically going to you know put in questions fill in some like put in some feedback uh but also just make some remarks these questions can be for example why is this the case or what is the alternative feedback can be this is a bit unstructured or this is a bit rambly remarks can be you know this reacts well to the case or this needs more impacting all this kind of stuff this is useful for multiple reasons not only are you able to give more direct feedback to speakers because you can just see what you bought and what you didn't buy but it also means that at the moment you're going to go to the big uh picture which I'm going to talk about later you're already going to be able to assess what you buy and what you do not buy um this is also important because at the moment you're going to have this small picture sheet it also means that you're able to during uh during deliberation go over these notes to see if you have missed some analysis in your big picture sheet so this is often times what I am going to be looking at in the first two three minutes of deliberation times where people have some time to look over their notes of times I'll just go over to make sure that I haven't missed anything on the big picture sheet and then I'm going to um go down onto the big picture sheet now what is the big picture sheet so the big picture sheet is just going to be an overview of arguments this is often times going to be in either very short sentences or even just in only words and maybe a way to give you um an example of this is let's say you have the motion this house would legalize old drugs and the government talks about drugs are going to be safer because transporting them isn't illegal so people don't make the drugs very strong because they need to hide it now that analysis can even have five more sentes or half a minute of more analysis but in the the big picture VI I can just put in drugar saver arguments and there's reason for it smuggling um is galm or just even just like smuggling with a cross so you know you can use symbols here if you're more of a picture thinking thinker or that just is a bit quicker for you and you find it important so what else do I have on the sheet because not just only going to be a summary of the cases often times I also have weighing and interaction between teams and sometimes even clashes this is often times done in a different color so let's say again you have the argument about smuggling and somebody rebuts that and somebody has a direct rep to it in the overview sheet I then have a red uh color pen that I write the rebuttal on this specific point and then I basically um keep track of rebuttal this way because at the moment you're going to um use this analysis in the big picture sheet and sometimes isn't clear what is reacting and what is just defending something so this is a way for me to distinguish if something is a reason why something is true on their side or it is not true on their side and the same kind of like goes for weighing so if the weighing is like this is more important than that side it is something that I have to do in a different color because then it can immediately gravitate towards it if somebody asks me um why I think one team might take it over another team uh the same just goes for clashes sometimes I just put clashes in between in the sense that I just think these are the clashes and then I can just highlight them and I can you know highlight the material that falls under these clashes so then when do I use this big picture uh view often times is just to compare teams so at the moment you have the question why do you fake that closing government takes it over opening government I'm able to see this what opening government brings this is what I think closing government brings new and this is why I think closing governments analysis is better than opening governments or the weighing is better or the impacting is just better all these kind of stuff but also just gives me a really good good overset of the arguments so often times when I'm giving an O as a chair I'm only using this big picture sheet to talk about the teams and why one team wins over another team so this might be a bit abstract and I've tried to use already a couple of examples but that might not be clear how this actually translates into paper so let me get an example of at least the small picture notes so the small picture notes are for me organized this way on let me put on the laser pointer yeah on the left toop you see a Roman numeral with a one that is because this is the first Speaker the left side basically denotes the Prime Minister and the right hand side is the leader of opposition now the blue is what people have stated and the red is basically my comments as I already stated before so let's just maybe look look a bit more into what people have said because there are a bit more nuances to the way I keep notes firstly I have different numbering systems so if you look here for example on the left side I have one two and then here I also have one two three and those are Roman numerals maybe you can read it just trust me those are Roman numerals what does that tell me I don't even exactly know what this debate was about but what I do know based on just these Roman numerals is that these are mechanizations this is this is the reason why it's true on the other side here I have also Roman numerals and then under that I have a b and c and then I have circled them around what does that tell me this tells me this is rebuttal because I thought this was going to be a reason why something is true then I started with r numeral one and then instead of actually using what I normally use which is just a normal one um I had to make it a nor Ral that was just encircled and then ABC are just the kind of like responses to this now why do I do this I do this because it gives me an oversight of how a speech is structured so here I immediately know this is rebuttal this is constructive I use ABC also often times for weighing more impacting so later on I can be like oh I need to know what impacting is I see ABC on the small sheet and I'm like oh this is what they said uh weighing wise that is how I'm able to use this sheet but I also want to note that if you look more specifically and you look more closely you're going to see that there's some words which are um have a line under it often times this is where people put emphasis on words so this can either be this is the main point so this is talking about settlements um and then they put the emphasis on that word and I put a line under it which means at the moment I'm looking off my notes I immediately look at that word because that is highlighted this is going to be good because I know now the overall structure I know what this is about this is something about you know settlements being bad and then here our responses to that but also sometimes means that I do this um on Words which are more linking so for example you can have a but or you can hear have uh you here stands comp which is short for comparative and then I mean oh the comparative is what this is so then it is the previous analysis and then compared to what the alternative world would look like so it also immediately highlights for me what different parts you know how different parts of the speech structure and link to each other so now let's get on to the questions that I have which are denoted in R here I have the questions like why which basically means you know I need some explanation of why this is true and here there's just also a general note of no pii which is bad because I'm just going to detu speaker points uh because of it and also here um I have in in red I don't know if you're able to read it most likely you can't but it basically states that um it doesn't um engage with OG so it doesn't really talk about what OG talks about so this is rebuttal but it's not rebuttal what OG actually refers to this important because again for feedback I could basically give this feedback immediately I like you bring this point of rebuttal but you need to be a bit more careful about how you go around framing opening government because this is not what they're saying but also at the moment I go into the big picture sheet I'm able to see that this is indeed rebuttal to opening government but I don't credit it so therefore I might put a cross on it or I might not even write it down on the big picture sheet because I just don't buy it now let's get on to the big picture sheet this is the big picture sheet and on the top left you will find opening government top right opening opposition then you know left below you're going to have closing government and then right below closing opposition the col rings are going to be slightly different than what was in the small modes so in the small small noes you have blue is what people stated that's the same but red here refers to rutle because if you just put here some lines you know I have here some lines as well why do I have these lines here it basically means they have something here about you know reciprocity and then they have two different reasons why rity is the case and therefore this is still part of the Constructor this however is direct to to the point about reciprocity and I'm able to differentiate that because it's a different color now it is possible that opening governments could actually react to this rutal if that's the case I would then use my blue pen to put a line here and then write some text here as rebuttal to the rebuttal and then if I believe that rebuttal is good then I would cross out this rebuttal because I don't buy it anymore after opening government this is the way how I keep in check what the reactions are so this can be rebuttal but this can also be framing this can also be weighing all this kind of stuff um I for me I just needed to have a differentiation between constructive and destructive material and I need to know what was react to and this has really helped me with that now what else do you see again you see different kinds of numbering so on the right hand side you will see one two three those are just the arguments and then you can have here in R numerals one two which are mechanisms for why the argument is true again as you will see these are just small sentences literally only even words um sometimes even just signs so what else can you see you can also see here the large and equal signs the large end equal signs denote for me which team is winning so in this specific debate opening government is losing to opening opposition because the larger equal sign is poting towards opening opposition this is something that I'm already going to be doing often times during the debate so let me go maybe a bit into detail what I do during the debate when I'm watching when I'm listening as a judge I going to firstly prioritize the small uh small picture sheet because if I have it written down there I can always add it to the big picture sheet often times at the moment they start the speech people will say this is what I'm going to talk about the are the free things I'm going to talk about I of times just put one two three or like here one two three and then I'm just going to put it up there and I at least know the overall structure and then I'm going to go for with my small notes sometimes people are going to use an example or something that I already know or they're repeating themselves and if that's the case I will write more stuff in the big picture sheet or after I have something written down in the small picture sheets and I feel like I still have time left over to do the big picture sheet I write the reason that they have just talked about in one word on the big picture sheet so these signs will often times also be written already during the debate because to be um good TimeWise you all the times already need to have a reason why one team takes it over the other and you don't want to use most of the Liberation times just thinking about this in the first case so these Crossings like this large equal sign will often times be written after the DLo when I believe that okay I now know who has won this debate or at least this part of the debate now the same kind of like can happens later on um and that is the way that I basically make sure that I'm also always comparing the teams because this forces me to think about okay yes teams have said this but who do I think is winning this debate which is a very important question to ask yourself now lastly I want to note that maybe some of you have already seen this but below here I have um things written down what does he stand for so this is basically my panelist this is is me and this Quant is OG this is oo this is CG this is co and it's basically just the numbering the score this is something I only do like when I'm in deliberation when I'm considering what teams are winning and why and I will just put down my initial call here and then I will put the initial call that my wing has given me and then this one is normally the one that we end up with in this case it is only opening opposition beats opening government as you can see by this larger sign the reason being if you already look here we both have closing opposition first closing government second we only disagreed in opening half um so therefore I only have that written down here and this can also be useful for you to kind of like keep in mind what other peop are referring to or what they are weighing when they're for example talking about opening government and closing government you know that they that you know that they are indeed trying to explain to you why closing government is beating opening government or the other way around uh but this is something I don't write down you know during the during the debate so I want to end with some footnotes because I've went into quite some detail on how I do notes however I am just a person I am just a person who judges debates and I do it in my specific way there is no one way to take notes it really depends on your needs um so how well do you remember analysis what do you find hard to track uh what do you where should you put an emphasis on all this kind of stuff so I already highlighted this is for me I need to really differentiate between rebuttal and constructive in a clear way and that is why I have these different colors on a big big shoot maybe you find it too confusing and you actually want to put that as part as part of the constructive material and use the same colors but rather your big pictures of feedback or weighing those are the things that you might want to put at different colors um that's all completely fine and legitimate because people just have different needs and I also want to note is that these needs can even differ per per debate sometimes I feel like just stating what people say is not enough because there is just maybe a lack of weighing or there's just way too much implicit material or implicit clashes that are of in this debate at that point I often write down what the clashes are in my big picture sheet and then what teams are saying and why they are winning that Clash or not winning that Clash um this is different than what I've already shown but most of the times used the big picture that I have already shown um again it might differ and I would highly highly highly recommend you to just experiment so try different colors try different structures maybe you don't want to place a bottal in the middle maybe you want to put that maybe still on different colors but still to the sides and then you want to do the weighing or the reasons why you have one team over the other only in the middle or in between teams also completely fine and also completely Fair um it is just about what helps you deliberate and give you back the most this is just so something that you can try something that you can um maybe start off as a fundament and then experiment on and find something that's Gest to your specific needs I would also recommend ask different chairs and wings how they take notes uh I have significantly improved in my notekee keeping by just asking how do you write down weighing or how do you write down the bottle all this kind of stuff people have different formats and something might suit you something might not suit you but at the moment you're at least aware of this and you're able to try that for next rounds either at a tournament or maybe when you're just you know debating in your Society you're able to better find what you like what you don't like and I hope that this has been useful I hope that this was clear if you have any questions you can always put them in the comments and then I will see you in the next video bye