Hello Minnesota Speech Coaches,

 

Speechwire and the NSDA have given us the wonderful opportunity to do a large test run of the online platforms before our speech season gets underway. This is an opportunity to get students and judges into the platform to make sure everything works for them. It is a great chance to make sure devices and wifi work. Some school district wifi or devices have things that are blocked for security reasons - this will allow you to try those things out before your first online tournament. Both Ben Stewart of Speechwire and the NSDA have gifted their platforms and we are very thankful for their support of Minnesota Speech. I encourage you to try out this opportunity.

 

The "tournament" will take place over three evenings. You can register your team for the tournament and have people try out the platform. It will get too massive if every team has every student and judge try this. It might be best to have a few team leaders (who could then help out during tournaments) registered in this test tournament. If your students are lucky enough to have a district device, I recommend you have one of your testers try it with that typical setup (maybe even try it on school wifi if you are going to be competing from your high school this season). You can register as many judges as you would like, but there will be limited tech support to try and troubleshoot judges during the event. 

 

Registering Students:

You will register a student in a category that is the time slot. This will be the time that they can go into Speechwire and test out their system. In order to register, you will need to go to your team roster and enter an email for the student. The student will then receive an email asking them to activate their live.speechwire.com account. DO NOT have your students create accounts on their own. The activation link is key. The system will not let you register the student until they have activated their account. 

 

During your timeslot:

Your student will go to live.speechwire.com, login, and find their room. Then they can test out the technology. Judges will do the same thing (and they can even submit a fake ballot). We will not be actually performing speeches and students can stay for as much of the timeslot as they need. No ranks will be given. 

 

Registration Timeline:

December 22nd - Register if your team is attending or not.

January 6th - Have students and judges registered (keep in mind that the email linking can take some time to complete)

January 11th-13th - The tournament itself

 

Cost:

FREE!!!!!!! Thank you Ben Stewart and the NSDA!!

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to me. I am currently planning the Chanhassen Snowvitational on December 19th and 20th (along with this tournament and another meet in January), so I will get back to you as quickly as I can. 

 

Thank you,

Travis Rother

CTAM President

Chanhassen Speech Coach 

 

(vr)