Pinch me again – I need to wake to the realisation that I am not doing a PhD after all, but preparing for my 11+ , which I am obviously doomed to fail. On account of not reading instructions thoroughly. 

OK, OK, so now I see there is a tab that gives the schedule for the 23 Things.  Schedule?  I hadn’t taken that on board.  I thought it was a question of working through at one’s own pace. I did have a look at Things 9-12, honest I did.  I just didn’t seem to have anything to blog about them. So I skipped ahead.  

Will now go back, stick to the timetable and do the course properly and thoroughly, along with everyone else out there who reads instructions. Tail is between legs. 

Podcasts, Slideshare and TED – Thing 13

Podcasts are already an important part of my life.  They make my visits to the gym bearable for a start - there’s nothing like being podcast-distracted for the miles, floors and repeats to be achieved with less angst and more speed.   I can recommend the archives of BBC’s In Our Time to come away feeling stretched in every sense.  Slideshare – I’ve explored it a couple of times in the past, just to see if there is anything there that is relevant to my research or if there are presentations by people that I know.  But I am not quite convinced it will be of huge use.  But TED  - now that is something quite new and I am excited by the whole concept and tempted by the vast list of accessible talks on - well, I can’t believe the range of topics. 

In fact, after a day of writing, perhaps a video treat awaits right now.  Possibly No.151, “Hip hop dance and a touch of magic”?  Then I can try it out myself in the gym tomorrow.

Thing 8 - Is this a Really Special Service?

So I’m still sticking with the 23Things in the hope that I’ll discover ways to enhance the researcher experience.  Today’s challenge is exploring RSS feeds (new to me).  I read through the options and decide to go for Google Reader – but find it’s no longer available (wonder why 23Things hadn’t deleted details from their recommendations? Google Reader ceased to exist four months ago).  

Ah well.  

After a bit of surfing for other web feeds, decide to try Pulse. 

I like the theory of an RSS feed – linking all favourite webpages to one site.  What a special service.  So the "Science" page on Pulse has become my “Researching" page and I've linked various blogs and PhD-helpful websites to it so that they are all there together. We’ll see how useful a tool it will be in practice…  Or could it turn out to be a distraction from what I should really be doing?  

It’s on a month’s trial.

Social media and me

So this blogging is supposedly about reflective practice in research.  I suppose I am doing that already by using a research diary to record developments, plans, actions and feedback, so I am not sure how this will be different.  Perhaps it will be more focused?  But maybe less honest because of the sharing?

I think I’ll treat it as an experiment…just to see how it feels to create a public blog.  The guidelines suggest that today we should write something about experiences with social media and expectations of 23Things for Research.

Well, experience with Facebook over the last few years does not seem to make it a useful research tool.  I get occasional updates from societies and museums which are relevant, but most newsfeeds are from friends and family.  Twitter though – that has surprised me.  I’ve only been experimenting for the last month but I am following a range of libraries, museums and organisations and it has already been surprisingly helpful. In fact, that is why I am here now.  Someone retweeted about this online programme and I would never have heard about it otherwise.  I like the brevity and the to-the-point-edness of Twitter, compared to the (sometimes) ramblings on Facebook.  And there are no distractions of photos and images, other than by choosing to access them.

Linkedin has a different feel to it.  Much more networky and work-focused.  I've found it useful in making contact with people, rather than an information-sharing provision.

If I’m honest, I am not sure yet how blogging is going to help me with research.  At the moment I’ll use it just to record how I’m getting on with 23Things and see how it develops from there...

In the film Exotic Marigold Hotel, the character played by Judi Dench takes off to India, newly widowed and escaping from her London life.  As she strides through the airport before catching the flight, her son is showing concern about how she will get on and how they will communicate.  'Don't worry, read my blog!' she replies over-confidently - and gets a laugh from the audience.  When we saw the film, my daughter said 'That would be you."  "Hardly" I thought, "I wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance of knowing how to begin to blog....".
But golly, here I am - learning.