Friday, March 20, 2020

How To Choose The Perfect Blog Categories

How To Choose The Perfect Blog Categories Perhaps you stumbled upon the long list of the top blog categories according to Google, and realized with horror that you were using all of them on your blog. You have too many categories. You ended up with a lot of blog categories because you didnt put much thought into them before you started, or you created them on the fly as you wrote. You ended up with category bloat, and your  niche blog  went off track. You  turned to tags  as a way to bring order to a runaway blog. Readers use categories to find more of your writing on the same topic. Plus, some WordPress themes use categories to determine the placement of posts and the layout of your blog. If youre going to use categories, you should use them well. Choosing And Naming Blog Categories How many blog categories should you have? The number of categories you ought to have varies, but the fewer the better both for you and the reader. I like to keep it under eight, and though that is merely a preference of mine, once you start heading past ten categories, your blog will get unwieldy for readers and writers. How do you choose categories for your blog? 1. Ask Questions About Your Blog The best way to understand your blog is to ask questions about it. What does your theme allow? Some themes, as we pointed out, use categories to organize your content visually. Some themes have limited space should you want to include a list of your categories. What will your theme allow? Do you have to choose a category to fit the rotating banner on the home page? Do you need a subset of what you talk about the most? Lets say your answer to that question is writing. If you have a writing blog, a category of writing is a terrible idea. Youd want to break it down into, maybe, blogging and fiction, subsets of writing. But if you have a blog about marketing techniques, perhaps writing isnt too broad in the scheme of things. Is your blog a niche blog? If so, you will have very specific categories, tightly clustered around your niche topic. If your niche blog is on shoes, you will not have a category called shoes. You might have a category of stilettos. The goal? Understand what your blog is about, in as few words as possible. In a way, your blog categories are like your blogs elevator speech. There is no time for excess.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

The Value of Academic Debate

The Value of Academic Debate Decision-making (i.e parliamentary, presidential, etc.) and competitive debate (i.e. academic) are two major types of debate. In the United States, the major forms of competitive debate in high school include Policy Debate, Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Public Forum Debate. The outcome of Policy Debate according to literature is either a resolution of fact (ex. â€Å"Resolved: O.J. Simpson murdered his wife Nicole†), value (ex. â€Å"Resolved: Civil disobedience is justified in a democracy†), or policy (â€Å"Resolved: The United States should change its foreign policy toward China†) while the Lincoln-Douglas Debate yield resolution of value. The outcome of the Public Forum Debate, on the other hand, is mostly resolution of policy. High school competitive debates appear addressing social issues, reuniting its division, and establishing a moral order within the particular academic level. This type of debate is exclusive to high school and college and mainly participated by gifted adolescents engaging in brutal arguments, making claims, and depending conflicting ideas for social good. Moreover, competitive debate in this academic level is a reflection of American values, politics, and law. The long tradition of Academic Debate started in about 481 to 411 B.C. and persisted in American schools as an educational method in college and characterized by the debate tournament. A form of informal debate, academic debate merely allows students to systematically express their opinion and support their arguments with facts or evidence. They are designed to facilitate the development of advanced  speaking skills, improve critical thinking, and increase students’ confidence about participating in academic community discussions and dialogue. Get more information here: Unacceptable Words in Academic World The Importance of the Transitional Words and Phrases Service-Profit Value Chain Learning Moral Values in College Movies Human Dignity: How Is It Valued? The Value of Academic Debate Academic debate is simply defined as a debate conducted under the auspices of an educational institution aimed at providing educational opportunities for its students. The purpose of an academic debate is to allow evenly matched opponents to present balanced arguments and evidence about critical issues. Some of the benefits students gained from their debate experience include awareness and knowledge of social issues,  development of critical thinking and communication ability, appreciation of change, and respect for academic research. The philosophy of college debate, for example, is â€Å" to learn not to win† because the most important thing is to be able to present both sides of the issue and make a critical decision on matters concerning public interest. The debate in a college environment provides students opportunities to apply their knowledge of debate principles, develop proper attitudes and skills, and experience almost real-life debates. More importantly, debating is to keep political and public issues alive in the hearts and minds of the academic community. The value of academic debate for some critics is limited to discussing social issues and developing students’ attitudes and abilities. Others see it as a structured academic game with self-actualization and enjoyment as goals. In practice, however, academic debate influenced some of the most critical issues in society. For example, the goals and rationales of criminal punishment according to literature were not the only outcome of evolving criminal procedures and customs but painstaking academic debate. Another is a  strong influence of academic debate on public attitude and government policy towards the harmful effect of some media content such portrayal of sex and violence, food consumption and eating disorders, and direct behavioral effect of television advertising on children.