Genres that precede our topic of educational blogging are of two realms: academic texts and entertainment pieces. The academic category includes any reliable works of information, such as textbooks, scientific articles, instruction manuals, lecture notes, and historical documentation. The latter category includes any method of entertainment, such as narratives, comics, and games.
The academic sources serve as the key subject of our genre while the entertainment sources serve as the format of our genre. However, we see throughout various pieces that the academic sources also play an important role in the structure of the text. For example, typically in an educational blog, the author introduces basic relative scientific concepts, such as laws or formulas, first before deeply examining the main subject. This is structured like a course in which students need to fulfill prerequisites before they can fully grasp what is being taught.
Our genre’s desire is to be commonly dispersed. Thus, other works that follow it may be similar works that give a unique spin on teaching different subjects. They also may be responsive genres, such as scientific studies on its use and effectiveness, student essays on their novelty, or social shares (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.). Emails are another genre that it may prompt. For example, Ben and Oliver emailed a couple of educational bloggers to question them on their writing methods. Oliver received a brief response, which itself was another prompted genre (informal instructive reply to a response to his blog), still centering on the original topic.
We account for the uptakes of the genres in our schema by including two main sections, background and answer, along with additional free-floating categories of headings, visuals, and analogies. The background covers the base area to be taught, misconceptions, and other important ideas needed to introduce the topic. The answer section is where we place the bulk of our response to the question with supports. The two main sections have similarities content-wise to account for the diversity in the presentation of blogs. Our image and analogy categories serve as “break-ins” where we can insert pictures or side comics that clarify concepts and entertain. At the end, we have a conclusion in which we review and sum up the main points of the post. Our schema also includes a sources section reflecting the academic parent genre by mirroring scholarly formats (APA, MLA, etc.) rather than informal ones (linking).
Initially, we included a community-interact section, representing user comments or an ask box, following the sources. The community-interact section is another genre integrated with and directly caused by our own. We decided to take this portion out to focus on the content of a post, but it’s still important to note since it prompts further questions and answers that are integral in the responsive community educational blogging promotes.
