Speech Duration The Educational Speech Contest has the goal of finding excellent science communicators who can enlighten, inspire, and teach people. Speeches entering the Educational Speech Contest must have a maximum duration of 10 minutes. Speech Topics The Educational Speech Contest's speech topics must be on topics from the formal, natural or social sciences. The contestant must explicitly indicate the root and specific branch of science to which their subject belongs (for example, "Natural Sciences / Astrophysics") Educational speeches should be purely informational and present the current state of the peer-reviewed science. For example, a speech explaining how Gravity works, or how antibiotics work, or how climate models work, or which educational approach in primary school is better, and why as per the established consensus. Too many times contestants get confused and present a speech that tries to persuade about something, or presents the contestant's opinion on a subject. Those are not good educational speeches. Unless the contestant is an actual top-of-the-line well-known researcher, probably nobody in the real world cares about their opinions on a particular scientific subject, and they will be probably wrong anyway. Continuing with the previous example, a speech about climate change could explain a small portion of the field, maybe how a climate model is constructed, how CO2 concentration is measured, how we dig into the ice to probe the past atmospheric composition, what the effects of global warming are, etc., and not talk about what the contestant thinks about those models and whether he believes they're accurate or not or right or wrong. A similar error happens when the contestant has a social problem in mind and tries to do a persuasive speech instead of an educational one. For example, someone might start explaining the effects of a particular monetary policy or educational approach and then subtly switch to trying to persuade why this approach should be applied in order to achieve goal X ( less inflation, better learning, whatever). Again, that crosses the line of providing information into a realm that's the personal opinion/agenda of the speaker. These could be good social awareness speeches but are not good educational speeches. The speech content should be aligned with the agreed state of science as understood by the community of active scientific researchers publishing in recognized peer-reviewed journals. Note: Speeches that enter the Educational Speech Contest may not be on the subject of Public Speaking. Contestants that present speeches that do not meet the above criteria will be disqualified. Any reference or usage of pseudo-science subjects or arguments will result in the disqualification of the contestant, regardless of whether the pseudoscientific subject is the core of the speech (eg. "How Astrology works") or it was merely part of its supporting argumentation (eg. claiming that "part of the reason for the global warming is that Saturn is in Taurus") The only valid situation in which pseudosciences may appear in an Educational speech is in a historic or social context, as a way to explain the behavior of third parties that happened to believe in those pseudosciences (e.g.: Explaining how Edward VII used astrology to decide his coronation day) Selection of Judges For contests at the Country and above levels, judges will be non-Agora members from the following professions: Media professionals - presenters, show hosts, actors, producers, etc., from the TV, radio, press, or movie industries. School or university professors. Journalists Executives of middle and large companies. Speakers from the professional (for-pay) public speaking circuits. Speakers from other public speaking events such as TEDx., Munk Debates, etc. Scoring of Speeches Judges will score speeches according to the following criteria. Each criterion is scored from 0 to 10: Educational Speech Scoring Criteria Explanation Weight Focus Will consider whether the speech had a clear, single educational goal. 1 Clarity Will consider how clear the treatment of the subject was. 1 Originality Will consider how original the approach to the subject was. 1 Use of props or visual aids Will consider the props' appropriateness and originality of the props/visual aids used. 2 Naturalness and flow Will consider how natural the speech felt - whether the speaker showed full command of the subject with a fluent speech that wasn't memorized or read. 2 Aha! Factor Will consider whether the speech contained any surprising facts or revelations, whether it addressed common misconceptions about the subject, or in general whether it contained memorable moments that helped retain at least some of the information presented. 3 Delivery Will consider whether the delivery was entertaining and compelling, whether the presenter came out as charismatic vs a distant academic professor. 3 Scientific Accuracy Will consider how close the speech was to the current scientific understanding of the subject that was being presented. 5 Adequacy for the General Public Will consider how understandable the speech is for the general (layman) population, whether it used language that could be understood by everyone or instead used inscrutable jargon. 3 Interest Will consider whether the speech captured the interest of the audience 2 For each speech, the weighted average of the above scores will be computed, and that will be the final score assigned to that contestant. Titles The winner of any level except the World Final will have the title of “Best Educational Speaker of (region)”