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.
No comments:
Post a Comment