Thing 5 - Reflective practice

There is so much within CPD23 that I realise I am not going to keep up. For me it is more beneficial to spend time looking properly at things and getting familiar with them than to finish by a particular date. For instance “Thing 4”, actually had three things to look at and it took me a while to get used to them and to decide how I could use them and whether it is worth my time. 

Thing 4

Thing 4

I’m now catching up with CPD23 having had a busy summer.

Having signed up to Twitter and given it a try for a while I have found that many of the tweets are actually links to blogs – so although the tweets may be short there could be a lot of reading involved. It is a good way of keeping abreast with what is going on but at the moment I find that reading the e-mail lists I subscribes to occupies enough of my time and fulfils my current awareness needs. I like the idea of the live chats and am glad to have experienced Twitter, I shall certainly keep my Twitter account but for now will not use it regularly.  

RSS feeds are something I have been aware of for a long time but have never used. Following the advice on the CPD23 blog I signed up for them using my Google account. There was the choice of Google homepage or Google reader. I found the layout on Google homepage clearer (iGoogle), though I may change my mind when I have more feeds on there. Although RSS feeds mean more things to look at, it is great  having them all on one page and I am enjoying being able to glance at them and follow any links that look interesting. 

Thing 3

As I don’t have a big online presence I didn’t expect to find myself through one of the major search engines. There are lots of other people with the same name so I refined my search with Libr* and found myself on a list of signatories of an online petition against library closures. I then did another search this time with my name and the term “West Yorkshire” and in the top 10 results was reference to a different online petition I had signed (again against library closures). In both these cases it would be impossible to know that it was me, rather than someone with an identical name, who had signed the petitions. This made me understand the point of branding better; a chance to make yourself identifiable as an individual. Although of course branding would not be effective in the signing of online petitions as it is usually just a case of filling the boxes. I can see how it could be beneficial to differentiate myself from others with the same name.

The site I used to do the searches was www.zuula.com. This is a website I have only recently been introduced to (on a course led by Terry Kendrick ‘Internet Search Techniques for School Librarians’). It allows you to compare the top results from a variety of different search engines. A great tool to use in information literacy lessons with sixth-form.

Starting this blog

I am starting this blog as part of the CPD23 things course. I want to do this to improve my knowledge of ICTs.

I have just finished doing a postgraduate diploma in Library and Information Studies via distance learning from Aberystwyth University.

I work half a week (job share), as an Assistant Librarian at an independent school in West Yorkshire.

I have never blogged before and am not sure that I want to! I am not very comfortable with writing things that can be read by anyone. My natural instincts online are to give as little information as possible.