It’s been really busy at the start of term with wall-to-wall inductions and workshops. I’m afraid that CPD23 has been way down on my list of priorities. Now that the madness is over though – I’ll plough on. I really would like to complete this worthwhile project by the Christmas holidays, so I’ll make this date my new deadline.
I went on a really useful (Cymal sponsored) free course, covering Web 2.0 technologies, some time ago (on my days off, of course). The trainer, Sangeet Bhullar, introduced me to the joys of ‘Tweet Deck’ and the skills that I need to develop to set up a ‘professional’ blog. As I job-share my role as Information Librarian, I spoke to my colleague about the idea of a joint blog and finally, last weekend, I set things up and started populating it with content and links. Rob, my colleague, provided the first post – so I feel we’ve got the ball rolling, at last.
My problem was (and still is) what to do when things go wrong. I must learn to just LEAVE IT and return at a later time, with a fresh brain and new ideas. Because I’m such a fiddle-faddler I tend to twiddle about trying to get things to work and then find that hours have passed and I’ve achieved nothing. Not a good way of working . . . !
I’m thinking about RSS feeds - and although I’ve previously set these up - I feel I must be doing something wrong as the feeds come to me as e-mails, but then I still have to find time to visit them and read them . . . loads of these e-mails remain unread, so I’m obviously missing the point. . .
There is a follow up workshop tomorrow, on the Web 2.0 course that I spoke of earlier. I will ask the trainer about RSS feeds and a few other things that I haven’t managed well with my ‘professional’ blog. For instance, I’ve got a live twitter feed linked to it – but if you click on the links they don’t load up properly, i.e. they only appear in a very narrow band and don’t automatically expand – to enable the content to be easily read.
I feel that all this (new technology) presents a huge learning curve. It’s brilliant, I know, and I really do want to learn and improve my skills – but I’m also very aware that there is no real end in sight. . . .As soon as something is mastered, something new comes along and the learning continues; but at an uncomfortable, accelerated pace (or maybe it’s just me getting on a bit – 55 and paddling fast to keep my head above water, or so it sometimes seems).
My orange phone contract ends mid Dec and I can’t tell you how delighted I’ll be to get my hands on a brand new ‘smart’ phone. In the space of a contract, mobile technology has sky rocketed and I feel as though I’m being left behind – I WANT APPS AND I WANT THEM NOW!
