Thing 5 - Reflective practice part 2

(Firstly, apologies to anyone reading. This turned into quite a long post in the end and I won’t blame you if you give up before you get all the way through!)

On the whole, I think the CPD23 experience has been a good one. I’d seen it mentioned on one of the Jisc Mailing lists, took it to my manager and suggested it as a summer activity, and am very glad that I did. It’s been really interesting doing a bit of professional networking, seeing how others are carrying out the tasks and learning from their experiences and opinions. I’ve never blogged before this, and felt that I wouldn’t have anything to say, but have actually enjoyed the process of writing the posts. Ok, so none of it is groundbreaking, but it has made me think about the activities I have carried out and put my thoughts down in a rational order. As I said in part 1 of this post, I tend to think I’m not very good at reflective practice. On reflection though (pun intended!) I think that this isn’t the case and I’m feeling quite encouraged. Reviewing my posts so far I can see that I’m capable of putting my thoughts down in a logical and reasoned manner and maybe all it takes is a bit of practice. Also, I need to get over the whole procrastination thing and write these things down whilst they’re still fresh in my mind. No point in doing a training course or activity and then waiting a week before thinking about it. A lot of it is gone from my mind by then, pushed out by all the other important things I have to think about, like ‘what shall I have for tea’ etc. I think that part of the problem was that I never had a defined place to keep any reflective practice notes before. Now that I have taken the plunge and set up a blog, I hope I’ll keep doing it. Reading some of the other blogs, where CPD23 things is just a part of it and they also blog about other professional issues, has been something of a revelation. I guess I always knew this kind of stuff was out there, I just didn’t really see how it applied to me. I’m beginning to get it now. It makes me feel ancient to say it, but perhaps it’s a generational thing. I qualified and got my first Library job in 1996 and my first professional post in 2001. When I was at University internet use was only just beginning to take off. I have to admit that I barely used it, and saw it more as a tool for time wasting. All my research, on databases like Library and Information Science Abstracts, was carried out on CD-Rom, because that’s all that was available at the time. I can remember having a set time to go and use Dialog Online but we had to have our search string composed beforehand. This was because it was just too expensive for the department to dial-in to a US database without us having constructed the search we wanted beforehand. Oh that makes me feel old! In my first job we had our Issue Desk terminals and a shared PC for the Information Assistants. Not exactly high-tech. Since then I have of course embraced the internet and how it enhances my role and makes life easier. But I just never got to grips with the professional networking side. Jisc mailing lists is about as far as I’ve gone. The tools I’ve looked at with CPD23 such as Twitter and RSS feeds have been interesting and might be useful (although the jury is still out on Twitter at the moment. There’s such a lot of rubbish on there to wade through) I definitely think that the most important thing for me has been reading other blogs and finally understanding why having one myself might be useful. Blogging had always scared me a bit. After all, who would possibly be interested in anything I have to say. I hope I’m reasonably intelligent and articulate, but I know that none of my posts would ever be brilliant or groundbreaking. It’s not about that though. If anyone cares to read my musings then that’s great, but for me blogging is about helping me get my thoughts in order, reflecting on my professional activities and having an easy and convenient place to do that.

Well, what do you know, this reflective thing isn’t so hard after all!

Thing 5 - Reflective practice part 1

Thing 5 – Reflective practice part 1.

Oh dear. This is the one I haven’t been looking forward to. I’m rubbish at reflective practice and I know it (which, in itself, is perhaps reflective so maybe I shouldn’t be too downhearted). I suspect that many people are probably in the same boat though. I’ve enjoyed the CPD23 things so far but, when it comes to actually thinking about the activities, how they’ve gone and what I can do to expand on them, I get the strangest urge to do some cataloguing, and I really dislike cataloguing! It reminds me on how, when I was a teenager studying for Highers, I’d do anything rather than actually get my head down and study. Even tidying my bedroom was preferable. I’m just way too much of a procrastinator. Does it sound bad that I even have a ‘procrastinaton shelf’ at work? Things that I don’t really know what to do with go there in the vague hope that maybe they might just go away. I tend to clear it off every now and again with the assumption that if I haven’t had to deal with it by now, I can just get rid of it.

But look at this, I’m procrastinating. This is a habit I really need to get out of. So, time to bite the bullet and get down to some reflective practice. I promise that part 2 will be more relevant. (probably, hopefully…..)

Thing 4 - current awareness

I know I'm a bit behind the times with this, and playing catch-up to everyone else, but I've just got started on thing 4. Library 'housekeeping' summer tasks got in the way for a bit and I've had a few days off. It is the summer after all (not that you'd know it from the amount of rain that landed on me at Edinburgh Castle on Monday!). Anyway, I have today set up a Twitter account and RSS reader on Google. Although, like everyone else I imagine, I have been aware of Twitter for some time, I haven't signed up. This takes us back a little to Thing 3, where I spoke about my reluctance to use social networking tools so maybe it is time I dipped my toe in the water. My partner is already on Twitter and seems to use it mostly to keep up with his favourite comedians and the football so I've never really seen the appeal of using it for CPD. Signing up was really easy, but it did take me a while to find a username that hadn't been taken. Later on I will probably go and change it as I'd like it and my blog to have a similar theme. I also need to get a picture sorted out that I'm happy to have on both Twitter and my blog. Again, this goes back to thing 3 where I need to think about my personal brand and how I want to be percieved in the online world. So, having signed up for Twitter and set up a few accounts to follow - some authors, some library related and some news sites, I just have to remember now to go and check it from time to time. I don't have an iphone and, although my phone does connect to the web, the screen is a bit small and it's not an android one, so I won't have the convenience of being able to check it at the touch of a button any time any where. (and I'm not spending £200 upwards on a new phone just to make checking Twitter easier. Might just have to steal my parters iphone occasionally!)

RSS feeds were the next thing I looked at. I did this once, years ago, for a 'Beyond Google' course I did, but never kept it up. Google Reader was also very easy to set up, especially as it imported all the blogs I am following for CPD23 things automatically. It was also pretty straightforward to sign up for a few different blogs. The only thing now will be, as with Twitter, remembering to check it. I suppose it will evenually become automatic. Just like checking my e-mail really. I'll hopefully soon get into the habit of looking at Reader and Twitter regularly and find out lots of interesting things.

I'm going to leave this here and might do another post on this topic later. I'm interested to see how I get on with RSS and Twitter. Will I check them regularly? Will it be information overload? I'm not going to do anything with Pushnote though, mainly because it doesn't work with IE and that's the browser I use at work and home. I can get firefox at work but I'm not sure it's worth the extra effort. I'll stick with Twitter and Reader for the moment and see how it goes.