Thing 13 - Reflections

Well I am a little behind with the Things as a wedding and honeymoon got in the way, but am now trying to catch up! 23 Things takes more time than I expected, but it is a useful feature of the programme that you can take things as far as you want to/have time to. The instructions and hints on the Cam23 Things blog have always been extremely helpful for guiding my learning so that I feel there is a purpose to exploring the Things.

I am glad that I am doing 23 Things as it has introduced me to some things that I hadn't previously used. My skills and knowledge in certain areas has definately improved and I feel like I am developing and learning, even if it is not always necessarily in areas needed for my current role. I think it's important for librarians and information professionals to try to keep up with technology and social media as it may bring opportunities for new services or ways of interacting with users. My confidence in blogging has improved, although there is still a way to go before I become an expert blogger!

The activities so far have suited my learning style (which is strongly visual with a bit of everything else thrown in, according to the VARK questionnaire). I know I find screen shots or images/diagrams helpful when learning things and following instructions so I'm surprised actually at how few I have put into my blog. Time to put into practice what I learnt from Things 9 and 10! To start off, here's a nice image:

Image by Anders B. on Flickr

I am still using iGoogle and have Google Calendar on my startpage, which I am finding very helpful. These two would probably be the ones I would recommend to colleagues as they are the ones I keep coming back to almost every day. I would also recommend Flickr, particulary with the creative commons licences for anyone wanting to include images in a presentation.

I am finding that after blogging about Thing 7 I keep forgetting to log in to Twitter, despite having the TwitterGadget on my startpage. Although I may not be tweeting regularly, I did find it useful for the week I tried it out, especially for keeping up to date with other Cam23 tweets, and at least I am no longer completely clueless about it!

Looking forward to the next Things!