Thing 5- Reflective Practice

Having in the past been a student member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), reflective practice is not new to me. Members were encouraged to keep reflective logs as part of their CPD and I followed their suggested template for keeping a development record and still do. The template ensures I record the following details as to my learning experiences:

• date



• what did you do?



• why?



• what did you learn?



• how will you/have you used this?



• any further action?

As well as getting me to reflect on my experiences it is a useful document when it comes to job applications for remembering what I have done and also when it comes to filling in boxes at appraisal time (colleagues tend to rely on me and my records to tell them what training they did last year!).

However, as mentioned in the cpd23 things time is always a problem and I feel I do not perhaps spend as much time and effort reflecting as I should/could. Having completed my PGDip ILS in January it is only now that I can begin to look back and reflect on this and what I have learnt and make a concerted effort to start to apply more of it to my practice even though I am not as yet in a professional post.

As far as the 23 things go it has been a bit of a race through them these past few weeks - I must admit with two part time jobs and two children for whom I provide a hotel and taxi service, I need to be selective about which tools will be of benefit. I am in awe of those who seem to have all the social media options covered and have time to manage them all. Now the college term has ended I have a little more time to explore the tools and need to put some thought into which ones will ultimately be beneficial to me professionally for my own development as well as how the tools can be put to use for the benefit of the LRC.


So, to reflect on the CPD23 things so far...

I am enjoying writing blog posts and find it useful to put my thoughts down. It is also nice to know that I am sharing the experience with a large group of like minded people and it is interesting to read the blogs of others involved. In the coming months I hope to improve upon its design - perhaps some pictures to break up this long text? and use the skills I have developed to improve our LRC blog which is currently non-interactive and perhaps make more use of the forums on the VLE to engage students and LRC users.

I already have RSS feeds set up and I feel I now need to review them and make sure they are all still relevant to my current needs and perhaps add others from suggestions I have looked at on the cpd23 course. Having feeds is a good time saver and avoids having to go to individual websites meaning the useful items can be sifted out from the not so useful at a quicker rate.

As I have said in my previous post earlier today, the jury is still out on Twitter as I am new to it so I am remaining open minded as to its usefulness/uses and will report on this later.

I found the information on branding useful and have tried to make links between my Twitter username and my blog name and I have become more aware of the professional image of myself I wish to portray. I intend to continue to work on this.

I also welcome feedback I have had and hopefully will continue to receive on my posts.