Blog: "a type of website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order." (Wikipedia)
Blogs are a great aid to professional development and a source of collective inspiration. Blogs also offer "the ability to build and strengthen a community and to interact within this community"(blogtips.org).
Have you considered blogging on a particular subject related to your profession? Would you like to get started but don't know how? Confused about which platform to use, what to blog about, how to get readers' attention? Concerned about time, maintenance, sharing your ideas "online'? Not too sure how "inspired" you are?
Check out what other New Zealand teachers do to get a feel and to top up your inspiration.
►Blogging on french.ac.nz
- Set up: get a username, a password, think of a name for your page and away you go!
- WYSIWYG editor: a couple of hours of initial training and you'll have the basics at hand, you will be publishing your first entry, and soon you will be adding pictures, links, videos, podcasts etc
- Blogging on french.ac.nz won't allow you much creativity in the "look" and "design" of your page, but it gives you plenty of freedom of content!
- Blogging on french.ac.nz is free, free of ads and uncluttered, a perfect way to start!
- french.ac.nz is the French Teachers' website, so your potential followers are already here: you know your audience, and you expect their comments and seek their feedback
- Looking for a specific point of focus for your blog?
share experience: eg. as a first year teacher, as a HoD, as a Teacher of boys only, as a Moodle fan, as a technophobe,... *reflect on your profession: eg. a favored pedagogy, your experience with gathering evidence for e-portfolios, attempts at differentiation...
give information and seek opinion: eg. publish links to online news articles, websites you refer to, podcasts or other blogs you follow... *document the stages of a particular event: eg. your planning of trip to France, your actual class trip, a virtual exchange, your Language Immersion opportunity...
share your love of eg. French cinema, or poetry, or grammar or of a particular region/French speaking country...
the idea appeals? Yet you are unclear about a purpose? Unsure about your technical ability? Let's talk!
►Time commitment
While you would need to commit some time and be prepared to participate actively in order to get readers' interest and to keep them coming back, there are no hard and fast rules on "how much" or "how often" you have to populate your blog. A brief paragraph on your chosen theme or posting a prompt and inviting comments (eg: a link to a video) keeps the blog alive, and together with more "in depth" posts every now and then, that is all you need to enter "la blogosphère"! As a blog writer you would also be managing the comments' section of your blog hence the need to "make a time" regularly to check for feedback, reply and edit if necessary. Blogs do come in all shapes and forms and so do comments. Answering comments, accepting both constructive criticism from identified individuals and potential controversy are essential parts of blogging!
Along with committing to develop this side of the website I also commit to provide detailed information, step by step "how to" and basic technical support so that you will feel confident you can maintain your blog page on french.ac.nz. You will have gained sufficient know-how to actually get started within a few hours of initial training and by doing it regularly, it will soon be second nature! The weblog module you will be using is straightforward WYSIWYG and you can soon add a few tricks to your basic repertoire to add links, pictures, videos and sound files to your page. Nearly at the "getting started stage"? Drop me an email.
►Blogging basics, etiquette and safety
You may wish to do a bit of reading on those topics before starting. There is a plethora of blogs and articles on these topics available through any search engine. Look out for the more recent ones, and don't let the jargon used in some of them put you off!
This section of the website is developed thanks to the 
►Blogging on french.ac.nz
►Time commitment
►Basic technical support 
►Blogging basics, etiquette and safety