Thing 6

I have had some experience with online networking - I have heard of LinkedIn and my husband uses it however I do not have an account of my own. I'm not sure I'd really use it, I guess if I was jobhunting then it could be useful as I could put my CV on there but for now I'm happy to just know what the site is and will use it if I need to in the future.

I already use Facebook, mostly as a social tool, it started for me when I got engaged several years ago and my penpal wanted to see photos and generally communicate more online with me as it is so easy to share photos and videos and post comments about how your day is going! I quite like Facebook but I think it can become addictive and make you check each day what other people are talking about. I think if you have friends on there (like I do) that comment a lot then it becomes harder to not look each day as next time you meet up they are talking about something that they assume I know about as they posted it on their wall on Facebook! So I like Facebook but also find it annoying occasionally on a social level. I do sometimes look at organisation's pages and they can be interesting but mostly I don't use it as a professional tool. We have it blocked for the students where I work so I feel I shouldn't use it at work either which also makes me less likely to use it for job related information.

I have used CILIP communities previously, it was a good reminder about them though as I haven't looked at them for a long time so will have to logon and see whether there is anything of interest being discussed.

I have looked at Pinterest before - I like looking at it and nearly got an account set up but then I got a bit worried about copyright of the pictures that are being pinned as they are mostly from other people's websites. I like the idea of the site though!

Thing 5

Reflection on what I've learnt so far...I have been having a few issues with using this blog and the course blog as it seems quite slow to load! I have now swapped to Firefox which has made things slightly quicker so that is good. I am enjoying using a blog and if I had used a blog to track my chartership I think that would have been quite useful at the time as it's a useful way of recording analysis about different topics. Storify has been a new tool to me that I hadn't seen before, I haven't used it since finding it yet but hope to have another look when I have some more time to dedicate to it as it looked interesting.

Thing 4

Finally got around to looking at this again! I'm not sure if anyone else is having problems with the speed at which the main CPD blog site is loading but I seem to have had a few problems when logging onto it recently. Anyway onto Thing 4 - Twitter, RSS, and Storify - I had used Twitter and RSS briefly before but it was a while ago! I haven't been a huge fan of Twitter when I've used it before but I might try and use it a bit more - I tend not to write a lot of tweets but reading them is more interesting! I follow Phil Bradley which is good as he is constantly updating it seems and I always enjoy reading his column in the CILIP magazine. RSS can be useful, something I might have to have another look at in the future. Storify was something I had heard of but didn't know what it was so that was great to explore. I created a storify page about childrens books and reading, I have a young son so am becoming interested in that particular area, plus I love looking at children's books myself, looking forward to when hopefully my son will enjoy reading, at the moment he loves to just turn the pages! Overall, having a look at storify has been the most interesting for me as I hadn't used it before, it is one I hopefully will go back to and spend a bit more time on both at home and at work!

Thing 3

This will be an interesting Thing to see what other people have found out about themselves online - I have quite a common surname so I chose to add the town where I work to the search. I found some things relating to a JISC course where I was a speaker for an event and also about winning a book token in December from the  Heritage LMS website, plus an newspaper article from a few years ago where I took part in a trip to Italy! So quite a bit I guess, though not as much as some people I imagine! The things I found were all work related so that isn't too bad. I do have a Facebook account but I keep the security quite tight (I think!) on it and haven't disclosed information such as my workplace so that's why that didn't come up I assume.  I got married a few years ago so I thought I'd also google my old name which was a bit more obscure! On the first page I had nothing which actually related to me so again I put in my place of work and quite a lot appeared - strangely a link appeared relating to when I got my BA as my name was listed in the newspaper at the time but I had nothing to do with the town where I currently work at that time! Anyway, it was interesting to see the results!