Thing 6 – reflective practice

Wow I have just finished reading the linked article by the “Daring Librarian” and she is quite a role model.  I  think I have a very different style, but there were definitely some ideas and comments that I can definitely take on board.  I tend to talk about book reviews and events, but I could also think a bit more about what I feel I have learnt from a conference.  Of course the sensible thing is to ask what I want to achieve before I go off on one of these events – and then make sure that I don’t get totally overawed by the authors etc.

I also looked at several of the other blogs for this course and really found it interesting that some people love LinkedIn and Twitter, whilst others could not see any purpose for them.   I must admit that I enjoy using both, but I do so on my own terms.  Twitter in particular is great for learning about new books, events, activities and research and I tend to follow people and companies that are book, literacy and education based. LinkedIn has become a way of keeping track of my professional development and balances with my portfolio on the Cilip VLE, which I use for my re-validation.

What I do find with blogs is that they can be whatever you want.  I have two that I am using at the moment and they fulfill different purposes; the one related to this course is the one I am writing on at this moment, the other one is my children’s book review blog.  Some people are very articulate and also include a lot of pictures, links and additional information for the reader, whilst others have much shorter and more concise entries that just give you the basic details of the subject.  I suspect that these differences relate to how comfortable people are in using the technology and as this grows, so will the complexity of their blog.