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!