Well I have got quite a bit of catching up to do after some well earned time off. I'm well seasoned in the art of soical networking and have done it from quite a young age begining with MSN and Yahoo Chat where I chatted with freinds from school and got to know other poeple. Then at Univeristy the Facebook phenomena was taking of so I have been using it for many years as a way to stay in touch with friends and organise social events. I am also an administrator for our college facebook page - although so far I havent done anything with that yet. I did sign up with twitter but must admit I have negelcted it somewhat as I don't usually feel there is anything worth stating but I do enjoy following others and one benefit of joinging was that my husband also decided to join and its a great space for him to advertise his storytelling business.
I did join LinkedIn a while ago but have still to work on my profile and get that up to scratch and it was good to look at the examples shown on the blog to give an idea how professional it can look. I also joined LISNPN earlier this year when it was pointed out to me by a colleague and I quite like it as a fourm it is good to read some of the discussion boards and see other peoples views, I do contribute to some discussions.
As a way to meet new people I am a big fan of social networking - in fact it is how I met my husband. I realised that once I graduated from univeristy and was settled into a job I didn't meet so many new people and that social networking is a great way to conect to people that you might not ever meet. Similarly it is a great way to get your name out there and get to know others that have shared your expericences.
Monday 25 July 2011
Thursday 7 July 2011
I-pads and Institutes
Today I went to an introudction to the Pacific Institute which was supposed to de-mystesize the process somewhat. It didn't de-mistfy me that much but I have a general idea now what it is supposed to do. Basically it is training for staff to help the college achieve Investment In Excellence and from what I gather it is all about thinking about how you do things, reflecting and using that to change the way you work. Now I'm not pooh-poohing it just yet but if I get on the training (you have to be selected) I will be interested to see how it alters my way of life (especially as the 'facilitators' themselves have confessed there is a need for a refresher course as once away from the training room for a few weeks people go back to their old habits).
But more excitingly our college has borrowed 6 i-Pads from JISC to trial and 'play with' in the library. I was a little sceptical at first as from feedback I've heard i-pads aren't that great and you need a lot of apps to be able to do anything. I had a play today and I quite liked it. Its my first real 'go' on a tablet - although I do have a touch screen phone and we have touch screen computers in the library (which aren't very sensitive and take forever to do anything). I found the interface really easy to use and it was suprisingly easy to type using the on screen keyboard - it is a shame it is only in a notes facility though.
I was able to do quite a bit by accessing the wifi through safari (although I didn't know this is what safari was until I pressed the app) - I went to the college website and was able to access e-books through athens. I liked that i could do everything with my fingers - make texts bigger, cut, paste etc.
Overall I really liked the i-pad but i still think it is very expensive for what it is. You can access the internet (thorugh wifif) on an i-pod touch and dowload apps. You don't have an 'office' package availble on an i-pad unless you download a similar app, moreover there are no usb ports so you have to rely heavily on cloud style technology to save your work in an accessible way. I would like to try other tablets by different compnaies to see if they match up to the i-pad, but for useability I would stick to using a netbook as they are similarly small, have basic operating syetems and the ability to plug in a usb for 3G connectivity if wifi isn't available.
There is an interestinf project that has been run by JISC relating to using mobile devices in the learning envrionment fi you are interested read it here http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/images/c/c2/LJMM.pdf I found it quite interesting and highlighted some key uses for mobile technology.
Monday 4 July 2011
Thing 4 part 2
I got round to signing up to twitter this evening. it was a pretty quick and easy process. I took some advice from other blogs I had read about being consistent with your branding so you are easily identifiable on various social networking sites. It took a little while to get a name I wanted but was pleased to settle with @sam_phillips84.
I designed my page with a similar colour scheme to my blog with an orange background and pink text again to help build a consistency across my online presence. I still haven't uploaded a picture as I don't have an up-to-date photo.
I also didn't get round to exploring pushnote - but I will leave that for another night now.
I have resisted joining twitter for quite sometime but was quite delighted when after posting on Facebook people started following me pretty quickly. I was also quite chuffed at being able to follow Stephen Fry who I do quite admire.
I designed my page with a similar colour scheme to my blog with an orange background and pink text again to help build a consistency across my online presence. I still haven't uploaded a picture as I don't have an up-to-date photo.
I also didn't get round to exploring pushnote - but I will leave that for another night now.
I have resisted joining twitter for quite sometime but was quite delighted when after posting on Facebook people started following me pretty quickly. I was also quite chuffed at being able to follow Stephen Fry who I do quite admire.
Thing 4
So far today the only thing I have been able to do is sign up for RSS feeds with google reader as I can't access twitter on the College network. I do find this quite frustrating in an era when a lot of networking is boosted by social netwokring sites (just thing of how many things 'go - viral') colleges and schools still feel the need to block them as they are seen as a distraction. What frustrates me more is students can actually access these sites using the wifi facilities on thier mohile phones or thier own devices, so actually we are only hindering ourselves by not being able to update our facebok page or post twitter updates unless we do it on our own devices (again using the wifi).
With that rant over I will endevaour to sign up to twitter later on tonight at home. I will also have alook at pushnote as I am a firefox user at home.
Other thing I need to do include - add a profile picture and include more pictures in my posts - I imagine they are rather boring being just plain text.
With that rant over I will endevaour to sign up to twitter later on tonight at home. I will also have alook at pushnote as I am a firefox user at home.
Other thing I need to do include - add a profile picture and include more pictures in my posts - I imagine they are rather boring being just plain text.
Friday 1 July 2011
Being proactive
Today is all about being proactive.
One of the things on my PPDP is a project to promote our Library and develop a good marketing strategy, more specifically our Librarian wants to give our library a brand. Having not had much marketing experience beyond sticking up posters and handing out flyers at Univbersity this is a new and exciting challenge for me.
Due to my lack of experierence I thought I would make the use of the resources available to me in the library. One such resource was this e-book Light their fire; using internal marketing to ignite employee performance and wow your customers it is a very interesting read as to how once you get your employees to believe in yor brand then your customers will too using loads of great examples. It seems there are a couple of key things to help your success - you need to win over your employees (or in our case the tutors) who will then sell your brand/product to the customers (the students) if they love it the students will love it. Another good thing is great communication and consitency if you push the message long enough and hard enough poeple will begin to take notice.
It's been an eye opener - whilst those things seem obvious when you know them when you see the examples of how they work it really makes sense. Next challenge though -getting Tutors/ Staff on board and loving the library. There is a bit of a spilt in our college- some tutors 'get' the library - they understand that we have great reosurces, the staff are helpful and its a good learning space. Other Staff don't ever come in or give student the impression that its a dull and 'quiet only' space, or they don't have clue what we stock we have and just say to students "oh the library will have it" having never made an order for the book or ever checking the catalogue - thus giving the students the impression we don't stock what they want and we are 'useless' and they never bother coming back.
Stage 1 then needs to be getting tutors on board (which also includes improving communication) any tips? we do have staff devlopment week coming up but staff never sign up to learn more about the library - I was thinking maybe bribing them with drinks and bisuits? then sell the space to them.
Stage 2 will be promotion,promotion, promotion - on moodle, on facebook, on twitter, on posters on the new screens in our new build college - students won't be able to get round the fact that we have a library and they should come and use it.
Stage 3 Inductions - a lot of students have them (and hopefully more if we get staff loving the library too), make the Inductions fun and interesting so that the students know that the library isn't a stuffy silent study area but infact a place to come and enjoy the environment.
Thats as far as I have got for now. If any one wants to pass on any tips for gettting more people to love the library as much as us please comment.
One of the things on my PPDP is a project to promote our Library and develop a good marketing strategy, more specifically our Librarian wants to give our library a brand. Having not had much marketing experience beyond sticking up posters and handing out flyers at Univbersity this is a new and exciting challenge for me.
Due to my lack of experierence I thought I would make the use of the resources available to me in the library. One such resource was this e-book Light their fire; using internal marketing to ignite employee performance and wow your customers it is a very interesting read as to how once you get your employees to believe in yor brand then your customers will too using loads of great examples. It seems there are a couple of key things to help your success - you need to win over your employees (or in our case the tutors) who will then sell your brand/product to the customers (the students) if they love it the students will love it. Another good thing is great communication and consitency if you push the message long enough and hard enough poeple will begin to take notice.
It's been an eye opener - whilst those things seem obvious when you know them when you see the examples of how they work it really makes sense. Next challenge though -getting Tutors/ Staff on board and loving the library. There is a bit of a spilt in our college- some tutors 'get' the library - they understand that we have great reosurces, the staff are helpful and its a good learning space. Other Staff don't ever come in or give student the impression that its a dull and 'quiet only' space, or they don't have clue what we stock we have and just say to students "oh the library will have it" having never made an order for the book or ever checking the catalogue - thus giving the students the impression we don't stock what they want and we are 'useless' and they never bother coming back.
Stage 1 then needs to be getting tutors on board (which also includes improving communication) any tips? we do have staff devlopment week coming up but staff never sign up to learn more about the library - I was thinking maybe bribing them with drinks and bisuits? then sell the space to them.
Stage 2 will be promotion,promotion, promotion - on moodle, on facebook, on twitter, on posters on the new screens in our new build college - students won't be able to get round the fact that we have a library and they should come and use it.
Stage 3 Inductions - a lot of students have them (and hopefully more if we get staff loving the library too), make the Inductions fun and interesting so that the students know that the library isn't a stuffy silent study area but infact a place to come and enjoy the environment.
Thats as far as I have got for now. If any one wants to pass on any tips for gettting more people to love the library as much as us please comment.
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