About West Plains High School
Serving approximately 1200 students, West Plains High School is located in the Ozark Mountain Region of Missouri, USA. This blog site is composed of senior students from WPHS. They are not perfect writers, and surely you will find mistakes here and there. However, they are developing writers who are learning to write better, and they have some great thoughts!
About Mrs. Beard
I began my study of English and German at the University of Central Arkansas after completing a year abroad in the beautiful Black Forest region of Germany. I then completed my German studies at the University of Regensburg in Germany before beginning my teaching career at Francis Howell School District outside of St. Louis, Missouri. In 1995, I moved to the heart of the Ozarks to pioneer the German program at West Plains High School. During this time, I also became the first teacher in our area to facilitate Long Distance Learning. Meanwhile, I completed my master’s degree in Gifted, Talented, and Creative Education and now teach English IV, English 110, and Online Foreign Language at WPHS, the home of the Zizzers!
About Blogging
The main reasons why educators use blogs are:
- To share information and class news with parents, family and caregivers.
- To provide students with a way to access assignments, homework, resources and information about their class online.
- To inspire and motivate students.
- For global collaboration and authentic audience.
The benefits of class blogging include:
- Blogging opens up the possibilities of audience in new ways. When students are writing or publishing for an audience other than the teacher, it impacts how they view what they are doing and the intrinsic motivation they have.
- Students love seeing their work on the internet and adore getting comments from people. It motivates them to write as it gives them an audience that is real. The blog opens up a whole new world of people who can offer encouragement and feedback.
- The blogging experience forces the students to do more reflection on their learning and allows them to showcase products they have produced with online tools.
- Blogging provides an authentic educational experience, where what they write is not only seen and commented on by their teacher, but by their peers and the “public.” For most students, it’s a bit of extra motivation knowing their peers will see their work.
- There is an authentic audience – a global audience – one that is willing to connect, share, challenge, discuss and communicate with classes. This audience can provide further information, opinions, suggest resources, seek answers to questions and so on which pushes blogging further.
- Blogging develops a learning network. Exercise books etc need not be pushed and crumpled in school lockers only to be placed in the rubbish bins at the end of the school year, but student work is out there for their school lives.
(“Step 1: Set Up Your Class Blog.” Edublogs. Word Press, 2016. Web. 08 Aug. 2016.)
