Monday 18 July 2011

Thing 5: Reflective practice

Reflective practice is something I have been looting at with completing my Chartership, however I had not been able to find much information on how to become a reflective practitioner, so the information shared on the 23 things blog has been invaluable to me!!

The reading I have been doing has provided me with some really useful tips that I will try and incorporate into my professional working life.  The information made sense and was really interesting looking at how reflection has developed over time.  The first proper time I will use reflective practices is looking back over the things I have done so far and seeing how they have impacted on my life.  Watch out for the next update!!!


Now I said in my last blog that I would try Pushnote from Thing 4 at home, because of the difficulties I was having accessing it at work, well i have finally looked at it.  However I could not seem to get on with it, perhaps it may have been me - not that good with technology or because there is not many people on it yet I have not had the full benefit of it yet.  I will keep looking at it from time to time to see if there are any changes and it has become more useful to me.

Well that is all for now hopefully I will start to become more reflective in my work - lets wait and see!!

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Thing 4: current awareness

Before I started this cpd all my current awareness was through emails sent to me from staff, reading CILIP Update and some news items off the CILIP website.  I know that when you are doing your Chartership this is not enough but I have not had the inclination to join Twitter, this is because I never know what to write!!

However know I have had the push to do it I will try and keep up to date with it and checking it daily.  Most of the people I am following at the moment are library and information orientated, so I would mainly use this as a tool for current awareness.  I could not comment any further on this as I only have one tweet and not had much chance to see how long I can keep up looking everyday at this - more next week.

I have been using RSS and google reader for around 6 month but again I have not had many blogs I have been following, it was a tool to keep me up to date with CILIP information when I am not at work. Hopefully I will make better use of it now and be able to keep up to date with more blogs, and not just ones to do with work.

As for Pushnote I have not been able to try that as I am being allowed time at work to work through cpd23 and we only have IE not any of the others and even if we did I cannot download anything on my computer because I have not go the right permissions.  I will look at this at home and see how it work - I will keep you updated on this.

Saturday 2 July 2011

Thing 3: consider your personal brand

This week thing is to 'google yourself' to see how many results you can find.

On google I conducted the search for Rachel Garbett and I found 1 result on page four that referred to me. The link was for a website that gave details of a First Click course that I was contact for in Wellington Library. That had by this time had been run. This was put on this site by the BBC First Click team.

Due to the low numbers of results that I found I conducted another search using the term 'Rachel Garbett Bridgnorth' which is where I live. In this I found 3 results the first was on 192.com which mention my address details that referred to the electoral register up to 2009. The second and third results were concerning the church I attend one was on their facebook page where I commented on a photograph, the next time was as a member of one of the deacons family.

I then conducted a third search using the term Rachel Sarah Garbett, on this I found on result that referred to my qualification I gained at Cardiff University.

I do have a Facebook account but this did not show on any of the results, all the ones I found were for other Rachel Garbett's.

The things that I have found by googling myself are thing that I would want people to find out about me. There was nothing I found that would be embarrassing for me. 

Looking at these results it would be hard to find out about me online for both professionally and personally.

This is why doing this cpd course will help me to know about other online service I can use to promote myself.