. Eracism Debate 1 Announcements
The pilot program of the Eracism Debate project (http://www.eracismproject.org) is proud to announce the winners and competitors in Debate Brackets 1 and 2.

First round winners include:
Corpus Christi School (CA, USA), Shorecrest Preparatory School (FL, USA), Bawlf School (Alberta, Canada), Maintou Springs Middle School (Colorado, USA), St. Paul the Apostle School (CA, USA), Longfellow Middle School (WI, USA), Eastchester Middle School (NY, USA), and Westwood Schools (GA, USA).  These eight schools are now in the semifinal bracket of Debate Bracket 1 and two of these schools will compete in the finals in a virtual world the week of December 14 as part of the K12 Online Conference 2009.

This debate has presented the judges and teachers with an enormous challenge.  The judges expressed concerns because of difficulty determining the "winners" in these competitions because of the incredibly strong abilities of both teams.  In order to facilitate further competition, fun, and learning, Debate Bracket 2 is including all of the excellent schools who did not win the first competition but who deserve an additional opportunity to compete.  Debate Bracket 2 Winners will be faciliators and participants in the final debate to be held in the virtual world for Bracket 1.

Bracket 2 Competitors Include: Choithram International School (India), Berwick Lodge Primary School (Melbourne, Australia), Nespelem Middle School (WA, USA), Qatar Academy (Doha, Qatar), ISG Dammam (Saudi Arabia), and the International School of Beijing (Beijing, China).  One of these schools will win the Competition for Debate Bracket 2.

The second series of debates will commence on Sunday, November 15- Tuesday, November 24th so that all 16 teams in the project will be debating a second time and in almost all cases will debate the opposite side as done previously with the topic "Differences Make Us Stronger."

This is a pilot program and teachers and judges of the competition will be providing feedback to improve all processes used in this debate with plans to run a second project in March 2010 implementing improvements.  Please contact organizers through the Eracism Project Website.

All winners and brackets are on the Eracism wiki at http://eracism.flatclassroomproject.org/Debate+No.2