I’ve just finished a great course ran by the members of the Western Regional Section of the Library Association of Ireland, I’d recommend anyone to do it...
I
must say, I really enjoyed doing this course. There was a nice balance of
revisiting old skills and knowledge with new material. It was a great
opportunity to marry some 25 years worth of experience with exploring new
applications and programs. The whole area of developing your online presence
and corporate identity was fascinating and could be a separate course all on
its own. Huge thanks to the whole team and all the people who wrote the
different exercises. Special thanks to Michelle Breen, my course supporter who put
up with me pestering her all the time.
For
those just starting out, there were 22 different exercises to cover, after each
one you wrote a blog post detailing your experience. For most people they have
to set up a new blog for the very first time. To some, this can seem a daunting
task but the advice I would give is just go for it, don’t worry too much about
the content and appearance of your blog, these are all things you will work on
during the course and tweak until you get to your liking. The most important
thing is to just get going. If you are just starting the course, I hope this
blog will give you an idea of what you are getting yourself into. Sometimes, if
I was stuck, I would look to see how others approached the exercise so maybe
this might help you in this way also. For me, this blog will act as a reminder
of everything covered and allow me to reflect on the whole experience.
At
intervals you do a reflective exercise on the section just complete and blog
about that also. When you’ve completed these reflective blogs you are awarded
badges which detail what you have covered.
So,
here’s how it all went down. (If you want to just browse my blog, the best way
to find the Rudai23 posts is to scroll down on the left until you come to labels.
Then click on Rudai23 and you will find all the posts about the course)
Thing
1 – Setting up a blog.
The
first exercise was to look at the different programs one can use to blog with.
I chose Blogger which is owned by Google purely because I already had a Gmail
account so it’s easier to cross-share your content. Set-up during the first
week of September 2017, I already had an idea of what I wanted to do and the
appearance of my page. I played around
with the templates and settings and went with the name of John The Captain
Ryan. My Blog website is https://johnthecaptainryan.blogspot.ie
but .COM also works.
Thing
2 - Write Your First Blog Post
Posted
on 12th September with a title of: The Girl with all the gifts, the link
is HERE. Apart from doing the course, I also wanted to
blog about the things I love so I planned on doing book, movie and TV series
reviews and Scrabble. I went with a movie review for my first blog.
Thing
3 – Image Banks
Posted
on 21st September with a title of: Copy Right or Wrong, the link is HERE. This was an interesting exercise exploring the
use of images and understanding the use and sharing of images. A lot of the
time now, I try to do my own artwork.
Thing
4 - Communicating Visually
Posted
on 2nd October with a title of: Communication Visually, the link is HERE. This was great fun and something I will use
again.
Thing
5 - Video Presentations
Posted
on 5th October with a title of: Video Presentation, the link is HERE. I did my first ever screen capture video and
learnt loads. Be well prepared before you start!
Thing
6 - Reflective Practice
Posted
on 10th October with a title of: My Journey So Far Doing the Rudai 23
Course, the link is HERE.
At
the same time you learn how to create an account with Open Badge Passport, how to use the application and get this sample
badge:
Thing
7.1 - Online Exhibitions
Posted
on 11th October with a title of: Online Exhibition (part 1), the link
is HERE. This was also interesting, with lots of options
to examine.
Thing
7.2 -
Online Exhibitions
During
blogging over the previous few months I had noticed that sometimes images were
disappearing from my blog. This was not ideal when an exhibition blog was all
about images. After asking my course tutor for advice and searching the
internet for solutions, I eventually found one so blogged about it, titled
Fixing Broken Images in Blogger - HERE
Thing
8.1 - Infographics
Thing
8.2 - Infographics
Posted
on 31st October with a title of: King is King, I redid Thing 8 and the link
is HERE. My first attempt was dreadful because I hadn’t
prepared my information and honed my message well enough. This is the reason I
redid this exercise.
Thing
9 - Reflective Practice
After
a couple of days, if successful you will get your first badge titled “Visual
Communicator” (based on your Thing 9 reflective post) which looks like this:
During
the course, I found the reflective practices difficult but they were
interesting.
Thing
10 - Networking Tools
Posted
on 16th November with a title of: Networking Tools, the link is HERE. This was the first exercise where we were
setting-up social media accounts (if you didn’t already have some).
Thing
11 - Your Professional Brand
Posted
on 4th December with a title of: From Aardvarks to Anoraks..., the link
is HERE. This is a fascinating exercise which gets you to
examine your online presence and create a cohesive online profile for yourself.
Thing
12 - Collaborative Tools
Posted
on 8th December with a title of: Collaborating, the link is HERE. We looked at different ways of collaborating with
colleagues but for me face-to-face is still the best way to work as long as
everyone is well prepared beforehand.
Thing
13 - Reflective Practice
Posted on 8th
December with a title of: Reflective Blog, the link is HERE. This exercise is based the experience of Things 10, 11 & 12. I
also did an overview of my blogging experience to date.
I concluded with the following: “I’m really happy with where by blogging is
going and my ever developing online presence. My blog has now over 3350
views with a massive amount of that traffic coming from Facebook. I will
need to use Twitter and Instagram a little more in the future so all my eggs
are not in the one basket and hope to help others shares their blogs too.
A great way to get a blog noticed is cross promotion between other bloggers so
I will be looking for a few other bloggers to do this with.”
This
is the next badge you get after completing Thing 13 titled Online Networker.
We
took a much needed break after this and restarted in the New Year. I was really
enjoying blogging and couldn’t wait to get going again. Over the next couple of
weeks I had a good look at my blog, wrote a couple of summary blogs, tweaked
the appearance and installed a couple of new gadgets.
Thing
14 – Personal Information Management
Posted on 16th
January with a title of: Personal Information Management, the link is HERE, this is massive and after the Cambridge
Analytic & Facebook mess even more important.
Thing
15 – Evaluation information.
Posted on 25th January with a title of: Wikipedia -
What is it all about, the link
is HERE. You explore and are given the opportunity to evaluate and correct information
in Wikipedia. Wikipedia want groups of volunteers to update and create new
content for their website. I think Wikipedia should instead pay Library
Professionals to do the job. This is the best way for Wikipedia to become a
resource of repute.
Thing
16 – Your Digital Footprint
Posted on 31st
January with a title of: Your Digital Footprint, the link is HERE, this exercise gets you to evaluate your online presence and think about your
online security.
Thing
17 – Sharing Your Work
Posted on 13th
February with a title of: Reflective Blog, the link is HERE .
I had no previous presentation to share so had to create one.
Thing
18 – Reflective Practice
Posted on 19th
February with a title of: Reflective Blog, the link is HERE. This exercise is a reflection based on Things 14, 15, 16 & 17. Following completion you get this badge for Critical Thinker:
Thing
19 - Podcasts
Posted on 22nd
February with a title of: Podcasting, the link is HERE.
This was awesome and I will be doing more podcasts.
Thing
20 – Advocacy and Engagement
Posted on 27th
February with a title of: Advocacy in the Library, the link is HERE.
This was interesting and something I have never done for the library, but I
have extensive experience advocating for the LGBT community.
Thing
21 – Professional Groups
Posted on 27th
February with a title of: Library Professional Groups, the link is HERE.
This is all about connecting with Library professional groups around the World.
Thing
22 – Reflective Practice
Posted on 6th
March with a title of: Reflective Practice, the link is HERE.
This brings together your experience of Things 19, 20 & 21.
You get the 5th badge following completion of Thing 22 titled Engaged Professional.
I thought it would have been interesting to do a reflective
post of the whole experience so that’s mine. As I move forward with blogging, I
have to look into backing-up my blog and perhaps hosting my page as I don’t want
to leave everything in the hands of Google. I’ve read some nightmare stories
of, when a blog is reported for breach of conditions Google just closes down
the page and people lose everything. Saying that, I don’t intend breaching any
conditions, but, if someone reported my page because they don’t like the
content, (e.g. an extreme right wing keyboard warrior complaining about my LGBT
content) I’d hate to lose it all.
Picking up from my mid-course conclusion, I’m still enjoying
blogging and since the 8th December when I had 3350 page views it’s
now jumped to 16,390 page views so something is working.
Huge thanks to the Rudai23 team who started me on my
blogging experience.
Blog On Peeps.
John the Captain Ryan
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