So what have I been up to these last few weeks. Well, I've started a blog and a twitter account (and in the process discovered some half-hearted attempts from 2009), set up some RSS Feeds on various websites, learnt that there was something called Pushnote, thought alot about my online brand and from that, discovered that I was a sumo wrestler and an actress that starred in films such as Naughty Marietta in my spare time.
The question is what have I learnt so far? Firstly that it's right what people say that learning has to be relevant to the learner. I did a Web 2.0 course back in 2009 and didn't made use of it because I didn't have a computer at home, I wasn't allowed to use Twitter and similar web 2.0 technology at work and also there are problems of lack of accessibility to our visually impaired customers.
I've discovered that blogging and tweeting is fun and something that I would continue and is not just for sad technies who have nothing better to do in their life. I plan to start other professional blogs on things such as Revalidation and book reviews along with some more leisure blogs. I enjoy writing and tend to be spontanious in my writing style - I prefer to put my thoughts directly onto the blog rather than planning things out first. A little bit of this is due to lack of time though!
On reflection, I should have thought about my online brand first before putting my blog together and looked at some guides on how to make your blog more attractive and eye-catching. This becomes more apparent as I look at other participants' blogs. I've noticed that the more established and confident bloggers tend to use wordpress so I may investigate this further. I'm hoping my blog will evolve and gain extra features as I develop it. I'm still trying to work out how to insert images!
I'm also going to spend more time in leaving comments on other blogs. They may appreciate that there is somebody out there who is actually reading their blog as there is the slight worry that nobody is reading your blog and you're writing for the sake of it.
I'm not sure how much I will tweet once this course ends. I usually try and tweet as I work on my CPD23 in the evenings and it may be that it will become second nature to tweet most days.
I'm going to make better use of RSS Feeds for work and leisure as I think this will cut alot of time spent looking at web sites for new info.
I can't really comment on Pushnote as I have Internet Explorer and there wasn't much love for Pushnote from other cpd23 participants.
The next question is how can I apply all these new skills to the workplace and what can be practically (and realistically) applied. We are reviewing the library web pages in the near future so it would be a good opportunity to incorporate these new technologies. We can now use twitter at work so it would have been useful to tweet at Sight Village last week and it might be good to tweet on a daily basis at work. It would be good to start up a team blog on the library website where someone can blog on a regular basis on what's going on in the Reader Services Team - a new book going in to the library, an interesting enquiry or a new development which may be of interest to the Reader. We could also set up a blog for our work's book club where we could post our book reviews on for everyone to view. The most obvious thing for RSS feeds is to update readers on what new books have been added to the library catalogue or the library website in general. If given the opportunity, I would be happy to volunteer to take on board at least one of these ideas but if I don't get the chance at work, I will continue to blog and tweet at home.
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