Thing 6: online networks

Linked In

I have had a Linked In profile for a while now. The recommended reading by Sharlyn Lauby was very good. I went back and reviewed my profile. It is basically pretty good: professional photo, fairly explicit introduction to my work experience and interests, I have 3 referee statements and around 100 connections, none of whom I am embarrassed of :) I have never bothered with groups before but after looking at the examples I see they do add weight to a profile. Reminds me of Mum saying: "you are judged by who you associate with". I have my Slideshare account linked to my Linkedin which means that several of my slides from presentations can be viewed. I am careful what presentations I have saved online as I am aware they show on both sites. I never update my profile which I will have to address. I don't feed my Twitter comments here because I am pretty lighthearted and irreverent on Twitter sometimes ... and I like that tweets can't be found after 3 weeks or so - not so with LinkedIn.

Facebook

I have had a facebook account in the past; I was a reasonably early adopter well ahead of my kids who were still using bebo. However I cancelled it about a year ago for a number of reasons:

• I got sick to death of the way facebook kept changing their approach to privacy,
• I used facebook for my family only - and I explicitly stated that on my profile but still received dozens of requests from colleagues and vague associates wanting to be my friend (I hated saying no),
• I allowed myself to get bullied into friending my kids and their mates and accepting their invitations to Mafia Wars, Farmtown etc and then ...
• I got hooked into stupid online games (farming)
• sick of stupid updates from friends about game, quizzes etc.

I actually find Twitter my best professional networking tool - and I chat daily with colleagues all around the world.

I don't regret closing facebook at all except for relinquishing my account means I can never get jransom back again if I ever regret not having an account.

Thing 5 : Reflective Practice

The post on the cpd23 website for this Thing is very, very good. I need to do reflective writing more often for two reasons:

• I know it is a useful way to 'unpack' recent events that have not gone so well and figure out what happened and how to avoid repeating mistakes,
• I need to write my professional development journal for reregistration.

I am not going to reflect on this project yet. I have been away for weeks and weeks doing a big piece of writing for work and I need to catch up to Thing 11! BUt I know I have to start work on my journal in the next month.

Thing 4: Current awareness

Twitter

I am a Twitter addict ... just love it. Here are some of the reasons why:

• It is not time consuming - I can pop in and catch up very quickly through a quick scan back to where I last read, or I can just search on @me and reply to any I need to,
• or It can be a great time waster: I can 'chat' with people, join conversations, follow links and check out trending hashtags,
• some TV programmes are great fun with a twitter hashtag open - the commentary can be as amusing as the tv show (eg My big fat gypsy wedding is hilarious with commentary),
• Extremely useful and informative during natural disasters: Christchurch earthquakes #eqnz, snow storms last week #snowmageddon etc,
• professional development: I get so many fabulous links from Twitter; its like having my personal reading list 'weeding' who filter out the best links for me.

RSS Feeds

Before Twitter there was Bloglines and I absolutely loved it. Every evening I would park up the couch with a kid each side watching tv and catch up on a bunch of posts from my favourite websites. Then Twitter came along and I fell out of the habit of reading Bloglines so religiously ... and then the announcement that Bloglines was closing. I sulkily transferred all my feeds to Google Reader and sadly it is just not the same. I have found it hard to get used to but I think I have just fallen into a new groove with Twitter.

http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com

http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/

http://envirohistorynz.wordpress.com/

http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/

I have grouped my feeds into lists and while I read my 'favourites' every day some lists back up for a week or two. My favourite blogs at the moment are:

Pushnote

This is a completely new tool for me. It doesn't like me to be honest though I have signed up and rated 1 or 2 sites to see how it works. I didn't post it to my twitter account because i hate it when people flood my stream with updates like this ie runkeeper, foursquare etc. I can't envisage a way that I can use this to add value to my life. If I find a good site I mark it in delicious,