The Librain

I have been having great fun over the last couple of days getting to know Facebook. For ages, I just had a page with nothing on it, but the other night I was feeling a bit low and decided to play about with it. But then I got really into it, trying to find people that I know. At first I just looked for people that I work with, then I tried to find some friends from the past. However, the trouble is that maybe my old friends, as they are my age, are not really into all of this kind of stuff. But I did find some younger members of my family – which was great!

So… what to make of this interesting phenomenon? It poses quite a dilemma for a professional kind of person.

On the one hand, I could just have fun and put all kinds of silly apps on my page. And I have started doing this a bit.

But… I have read a lot about how employers are looking up people. They are not going to be impressed by some of the very silly things on some people’s pages.

So… I read in Cilip Update magazine today about Judi Sohn’s “12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally“. I plan to read this and think some more about how I want to use Facebook.

I will post some more on here when I have thought some more.

I gave a presentation on the future of school libraries to two conferences in Reading and Leeds. This was my first attempt to put together some thoughts about where we might be going and how we can use Web 2.0 in our work. It took a lot of thinking and research (using the blogs listed on this site), to create the presentation. It will be interesting to see what kind of feedback I might get.

I have spent days building Pathfinders on LRC Online for Art students in our college to help them with exams. The pages cover various art movements and have links to appropriate artists. This is the link: LRC Online: Art Pathfinders

SO…

Some students used them as directed…

BUT…

Others just “Googled” as normal. They wanted to find images and by-passed all of the informative sites that I had tried to find.

SO…

What is the best way to support students and make the best use of my time? I gather the links first on Del.icio.us, then build pages around the themes that the teachers have asked for. Does anyone have any better suggestions for the best way to use limited time – after all, this was “just” Art. What about all of the other curricular areas that we are trying to support?