One for pondering at length

Reflective practice is the basis for Thing 5 of the

By chance, while reading around, I came across a wiki called Reflective practice that gives some definitions.  It also provides a reading list of titles and articles by people like Schon, Pollard, Bleakley, Brookfield, Hillier and Moon.

Some of the articles that I accessed via academic databases included:

Booth, S., & Anderberg, E. (2005). Academic development for knowledge capabilities: Learning,  reflecting and developing. Higher Education Research and Development, 24, 373–386.

Clegg, S., Tan, J., & Saeidi, S. (2002). Reflecting or acting? Reflective practice and continuing professional development programmes in higher education. Reflective Practice, 3, 131–146.

Edwards, R., & Nicoll, K. (2006). Expertise, competence and reflection in the rhetoric of professional development. British Educational Research Journal, 32, 115–131.

I will, however, need to go back and complete Thing 4 before delving any deeper into reflective practice…

Using Twitter, RSS Feeds and Pushnote

Moving along (swiftly!) to Thing 4. This section looks at current awareness and the various means of keeping informed about new developments. I do use Twitter and rss feeds quite regularly but

is a new tool to me, so I am looking forward to exploring that.

It was a pity that the cpd23 did not include Netvibes in Thing 4 as a convenient reader for displaying rss feeds / Tweets etc. I think it would have gelled well with the overall theme for this part.

Considering Personal Brands

Thing 3 of the cpd23 programme involves reflecting on the area of a tailored online presence. It is suggested that people look into how their online profile may be perceived by others. They are encouraged to think about how they would like to project themselves professionally.

Does your online presence reflect who you are in an accurate way? What name do you use? Do you include a photo of yourself? Are your personal and professional identities kept separate or merged? Have you created a “visual brand” , a consistent look and feel within your blog, or use of imagery that distinguishes your online presence easily from others?

Thing 3 encourages participants to carry out a bit of research into their findability via Google. People are asked to consider which of their profiles features most predominantly  – personal or professional? Are the search results linking to information that you are keen to be associated with or not?

There is some recommended reading listed at the end of Thing 3 which relates to brand management for librarians, the importance of aesthetics in putting together a blog, and how to take command of your online image.

Personally, I am taking a back seat in relation to online branding for now. It is something I will look into and follow up on over the next while. As I progress with the 23 Things, I may concentrate further on this area but for now I prefer to keep to relative anonymity !

Reading on and on

As suspected, I have viewed and thoroughly enjoyed reading a good number of blog posts related to the cpd23 Things but have yet to leave any comments for their authors.

The blogs whose cpd23 posts I have been visiting and busily squirreling into a never-ending list inlcude:

Thoughts from the number 34 bus

Librarian reflections

It’s only words

Adventures of a Welsh Librarian

All things professional

Anna’s Library Thoughts

The Tidy Librarian

Agent  Paper

Information Assistant at Work

Up to speed With

Behind the bookshelves

A librarian learning to blog

Librarians on the loose

Twinset & Purls

Palely loitering

Miss Scarlett in the Library 

Librarians—Great Britain—Correspondence.

librarydoodles

Dots & Loops

The shush! factor

Reading around

I’ve been looking at blogs made by the participants of 23 Things for Professional Development.

All very interesting. Many people mentioned on their blogs that Thing 2 of the process might need some sort of time restriction – as you could spend hours or days contentedly following the cpd23 journey of others. Sustained!

I was interested to learn what the cpd23-related blogging group felt about the creation and maintenance of an active online presence. For some, it is clearly nothing new. For a few however, it would seem to represent an area that sparks certain privacy considerations.

In terms of responding to the blogs, I found myself nodding conspiratorially at the admission across a number of posts, that many participants had trouble bridging the gap between the impulse to read on endlessly and the instruction in Thing 2 to leave comments…

Old-school searches

Student using the library catalogue, 1964. Photograph taken during the making of a BBC documentary.

New York Public Library Central Information

Map Library, c1970s, Geography Department, St Clements Building, Norman Cage (Map Librarian)

Cover art