Thing 18: Reflective Practice (Applying for Critical Thinker Badge)

The third segment of this course explored the concept of critical thinking from various angles.  Thing 14 introduced us to personal information management.  Although it contained interesting detail, it seemed an odd fit as its focus was on organizing rather than evaluating information.  I appreciate that an orderly arrangement of facts aids critical thinking, but on balance Thing 14 may perhaps have been better suited for the Online Communicator segment, particularly as there was a certain overlap between it and Thing 12 on collaborative tools.

I was really excited about Thing 15 on evaluating information. It took a close look at Wikipedia, an information resource that I like and use a lot, and explained how Wikipedia articles are created and edited, and how they can be used as a tool for teaching critical assessment skills to students.  I had always wanted to learn more about Wikipedia, and learning how to edit and contribute to it has been the highlight of this course for me so far.  At the time I couldn't find any articles to edit but I have worked on Wikipedia since and made a couple of small edits here and there.  Wikipedia is often disregarded as an information source but I have always found it a great starting point for learning activities, and working through Thing 15 has only increased my respect for it.  If my work role involved teaching critical thinking to students, this is definitely a tool I would use.

I was a bit sorry to see however that Thing 15 was the only one in this segment that dealt with critical thinking, or, to put it in another way, that Wikipedia was the only aspect that was explored.  In this era of fake news and misinformation, the ability to evaluate facts and discern accurate information from biased or downright false is crucial, not least for those of us who work in information professions.  The internet is an invaluable source of information, but it is also a sticky spider's web that can trap you.  Tracking cookies follow you online activities, resulting in targeted advertising; YouTube remembers the videos you watched and makes recommendations based on your choices - the examples are endless.  This sort of insidious manipulation can be dangerous.  If you hold strong views on certain topics, you will find that the Internet will feed that view, and in no time you will be solely focusing on articles that strengthen it and ignoring those that offer an alternative one.  One way of protecting against this is by not using the social media as your primary source of information, and, if you read online newspapers, making sure you understand the possible political or other affiliation or bias they represent.

Fake news a la 1894

I had just finished working on Thing 16 on digital footprints when the Cambridge Analytica scandal began to make headlines, revealing that personal data of some 50 million Facebook users had been captured and improperly used to influence the 2016 presidential election in the US.  It is one thing to get into trouble over an ill-considered tweet or Facebook post, it's quite another to come to terms with the fact that personal information you have supplied in good faith to a social media site can be collected and analysed without your knowledge or consent, and then used to manipulate you.  As a consequence, people in their thousands have been deleting their Facebook pages.  Those who do not wish to take such drastic measures should carefully scrutinize their security settings.

The worst thing is that the Cambridge Analytica scandal is probably not the only instance of this sort of abuse, it is simply the one that has come into public scrutiny.  Thing 16 made some very valuable timely points about internet security.  I have always been a cautious, even reluctant, user of social media, and rarely if ever provide personal information to websites.  The revelations of the past week, coupled with reminders of Mark Zuckerberg's references to Facebook users as "dumb f***s" back in 2009 have done nothing to relax my attitude.  I was really pleased with Thing 16 and can only hope that when the next Rudai course is rolled out the issue of personal data and internet security will be given even greater emphasis.

Thing 17 provided information on hosting sites that allow you to share your professional work with a wider community.  While I rather enjoyed exploring the sites to which it introduced us, this is another element which I feel would have been better suited to the Online Networker segment.

The Critical Thinker segment was interesting and thought-provoking, and touched in a timely manner on some very serious issues which affect us all.  Never did I think I would live to see the day when presidents use Twitter to hurl abuse, when lying is presented as "alternative facts", and when politicians blatantly insist that truth doesn't matter, only their voters' perception of truth.  It has been heartening to see a gradual emergence of common sense in the midst of this chaos, and I feel increasingly reassured that truth will continue to matter.  More importantly, we as information professionals have a key role in ensuring that information based on facts, not on opinions, wins the day.

Image by Frederick Burr Opper on Wikimedia Commons

Thing 17: Sharing Your Work

Whenever I finish cataloguing a particularly interesting collection I tend to create a PowerPoint slide show and use it to give a presentation of the collection highlights to interested staff members in the library.  These presentations consist solely of images which I use as cues to remind me of what to say and when.  Because of this, they wouldn't really work on a shared platform as they wouldn't make sense to anybody other than me!  I did however create one PowerPoint presentation with sound for an assignment when I was studying for my archive administration degree.  The presentation deals with the value of estate papers as primary source research material, and my colleagues liked it so much it ended up on our Special Collections LibGuide.  That's my only claim to fame in terms of sharing stuff with a wider audience.

Working on this Thing, I decided to take a closer look at the listed hosting sites.  Slideshare is well laid out and really user friendly as you can either browse slideshows alphabetically or by topic.  Because it's connected with LinkedIn, the slideshows it contains tend to be very business and management orientated, but there's also good content on food, health, sports, art, and personal development.

Authorstream can be searched by category or by keyword, or by clicking on various options such as 'most liked' or 'most viewed'.  The one thing that struck me however is that most of the presentations on this website seem to have been created to promote a service or a product.  So if you happen to be looking for cleaning services in Toronto, or the best bridal make-up services in Dubai, Authorstream is the site for you!  It's also worth noting that the presentations won't work on Internet Explorer.

While Slideshare and Authorstream allow you to view slide shows without having to log in, with ResearchGate you have to create an account or sign in with LinkedIn or Facebook before you can access any content.  If you choose the latter option, ResearchGate wants permission to use your name, photo, headline, current positions, and email, and if you say no - you've guessed it, you cannot access the service.  So long, ResearchGate.

Sandbox gives free access to content, which differs considerably from the previous three.  This hosting site acts as a repository for something called Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and contains lesson plans for that Framework, or ideas and examples to teachers for incorporating the Framework.  You cannot really browse the content, instead, you search it by selecting options from a fairly complex set of drop-down menus.  The resources are all in PDFs which you can download for free.

The Jisc Store website has a nice clean design.  It contains a mix of free and fee-based resources and these can be videos, photographs, PDF-files, word documents, slide shows, or a combination of all or any of these.  However, except for the presentations highlighted on the homepage, you can only explore content by a keyword search, which I found a bit difficult since I didn't quite know what type of material the website contained.  I tried a few random keywords, and 'archives' brought up among other things a PDF-guide to the National Archives in the UK, a video guide to sharing, archiving or re-using sensitive data, and photographs from the official archives of the United Nations.  You will need to download the files you want to your PC or mobile device before you can view them.  As an educational resource, this seems to be the best and the most useful of the sites listed in Thing 17.

I found this Thing quite interesting.  I had no idea there were so many hosting services available for presentations, and I enjoyed exploring their content.  However, my overall impression is that many of them are either very generic or very specialised, and before sharing your work it's worth ensuring that you pick the right hosting site for the purpose.  For example, if I wanted to share my presentation on estate collections with a wider audience, of the sites that I explored only Jisc Store seemed like a reasonably good fit.

Image credits:

Image 1: Pixabay under Creative Commons Licence CC0
Image 2: Wikimedia Commons

Thing 16: Your Digital Footprint

This Thing raised an important issue which frankly I think deserves more attention.  In fact, the curious dichotomy of this entire course is that on the one hand we are taken through all sorts of online tools and taught how tweet and bleat and whatnot, and then on the other hand we are warned how dangerous all of that is!  I think integrating the two rather than treating them as separate issues would drive the point home more effectively. For example, when doing a Thing on Facebook and Twitter, it would be helpful to get pointers not only on how they can be harnessed to work for you professionally, but on the potential pitfalls and not so smart ways of engaging with them.  That would give participants a more informed idea of the tools at their disposal.

Now to the list of diagnostic points.  I never, ever give personal information to unfamiliar websites.  I rarely shop online and when I do, I only use tried and trusted websites such as Amazon.  I have on occasion purchased stuff from less-known website but only on recommendation of friends who have used the same service, or after having googled around and satisfied myself of its safety and reliability.

I never respond to any phishing emails or click on links attached to dodgy looking emails.  Having said that, phishing emails can sometimes be tricky to identify but a good rule of thumb is if it's from someone you don't know, don't touch it.

I don't download software unless I am a hundred per cent satisfied that it comes from a reliable source and is fully above board.  I have invested in good antivirus software which among other things scans all downloads and prevents me from downloading anything stupid, should I experience a moment of madness.

Wi-fi is not an issue for me as I don't possess a smartphone, and the antique mobile that I have can only be used for making and receiving phone calls and sending and receiving texts.  I have a laptop which I occasionally take with me but only as a note-making tool, I have never connected to the internet with it outside of my home.

Terms and Conditions - ah, there's the rub.  The trouble with these is that if you want something that comes with Terms and Conditions, unless you click that you agree with them you won't be able to get what you want!  It has always bugged me that people using services are at the mercy of those offering them and have no say in anything.  And do I diligently read through Terms and Conditions every time they are slapped in front of me?  Heck no!!

I avoid using Facebook and Twitter and never post any text or images about myself unless it is something completely neutral or work-related, nor would I dream of making comment about anybody or anything else on social media.  Years ago, my best friend became the object of a vicious smear campaign by a colleague who took a dislike to her, and she went through eighteen months of hell in a struggle to get all the offensive material removed from the internet.  It made both of us very, very social media shy and for a good reason.  Thankfully it also made us aware of how the internet works and how to go about tackling a problem of this nature should it ever happen again.

I am reasonably good about passwords, using random alphanumeric combinations and completely different ones for each website.  The massive downside of this is of course that I cannot remember a single one of them so have to keep a file on my computer on which they are listed.  I know there are various software packages available for storing and using passwords but I don't trust them sufficiently to use them.  I do try and change my passwords once every couple of years, at least for sites like Amazon and PayPal, but I admit I could be a lot more diligent in this regard.

Image: 'We ALL Leave a Digital Footprint' on Flickr by OllieBray, Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0

Thing 15: Evaluating Information

I have never understood the negative press surrounding Wikipedia as an information source, or the sniffy attitude of educational establishments towards it.  I do a lot of work of academic nature and use Wikipedia incessantly.  As Rebecca O'Neill mentions, it is best used as an encyclopedia - not for citing in a publication but as a useful first port of call when you want to get your head round a new topic or to refresh your memory of an old one.  Wikipedia's greatest strengths are the bibliography and external links at the end of each article which open the doors to exploring the subject in greater detail.  For example, if you are interested in Charles Dickens, the relevant Wikipedia page gives you a whopping list of 90 books and articles cited or recommended for further reading, and 22 links to works by Charles Dickens and to museums, organizations and portals dedicated to him.  Even if you don't trust the article itself, what better place to start your own exploration of Dickens than this?

While Wikipedia may not appeal to the learned academics, it is an ideal resource for young scholars to get started on.  Wikipedia also serves as ideal teaching material.  Rebecca O'Neill mentions how students can be asked to evaluate the contents and references of individual articles.  Another way would be to get them to compare a well researched and well cited Wikipedia article with a poorly compiled one and note the difference.  I can't think of a better way to enhance critical thinking.

One of the fears that people have is that because of the open nature of Wikipedia, individuals can edit and manipulate text at will and by doing so mislead readers.  Well, my colleagues and I learnt the hard way that that's not the way it works, when we wanted to add our Long Way to Tipperary online exhibition as a reference source to one or two articles.  Within hours of inserting the information, it was edited out.  We tried it several times and every time we were caught out and removed.  I can't remember what the final outcome was but we actually had to make direct contact with Wikipedia to plead our case.  This experience further strengthened my respect for the reliability of Wikipedia as an information source.

I have also learnt that information published in prominent academic sources is no guarantee of its accuracy.  I recently had occasion to consult an academic paper in a peer reviewed journal and was shocked by the quantity of errors it contained.  Sources were quoted out of context, or referenced to articles from which they clearly did not come, and bibliographical entries were riddled with errors, from misspelled titles to wrong volume or issue numbers.  It really drives home the need for critical thinking and for keeping your eyes wide open when searching for factual information, particularly in the  jungle of "alternative facts" in which we currently exist.

I was keen to try out the Wikipedia editing exercise but to my disappointment couldn't find anything that I felt competent enough to fix, or anything that could be fixed quickly.  In spite of that, I really enjoyed this Thing.  Critical evaluation is a topic close to my heart and I really appreciated the opportunity to dwell in it in greater detail.

A Point of View Bias

Image from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 4.0

Thing 14: Personal Information Management

I like task lists and workflows and organizing my work, and have spent years looking for the perfect personal information management system.  I have experimented with dozens of different ones but without success.  The ones I tried out didn't fit the type of work that I was doing, or the way I preferred to organize my stuff, or the kind of stuff I was trying to organize.  Then there were those that were so complicated to use that I would waste hours trying to get a handle on what I was supposed to do - hardly a recipe for saving time.  I also found that many of these tools are quite addictive.  You spend ages organizing, filing, planning and making notes, and come back from it thinking you have made huge progress when in fact all you've managed to do is procrastinate.  When I looked at Evernote, I felt that - for me at least - this was one of those tools.   It's actually quite similar in its general concept to OneNote which comes with Microsoft Office and which (needless to say!) I have tried and failed to feel comfortable with.  There is in fact only one tool that has worked for me without fail, and that is the good old one-day-to-a-page appointment diary coupled with a pen.  It's portable, reliable, simple to use, easy to navigate and doesn't require a battery.

I am also an awful hoarder of information.  I save press cuttings and recipes, and copy things from books for reading later on.  I have umpteen folders in my filing cabinet for all these different items and the only time I open any of them is when I shove in more stuff.  Not once have I opened them to take out something to read.  Once it goes into the filing cabinet, I forget all about it and never, ever look at it again.  Nowadays, if something interests me I read it there and then, and then discard it, unless I find it so useful that it merits keeping.  If it's an online thing, I save it under Favourites or bookmark it, depending on the browser I'm using.  I had a look at Feedly but I'm afraid I would have no use for this tool.  The same thing would happen as with the folders in my filing cabinet.  I would keep storing things for later reading and never read a thing.  And anyway, I don't obsessively follow news feeds - in fact the only RSS feed I have on my PC is for BBC World News.  We live in an age of information overload and I have enough going on in my life without taxing my brain with a million other things happening around me.  If it is sufficiently important, it will eventually find me, whether I go looking for it or not.

Remember the Milk is like a digital task list and seems like a fun application, but unless you actually act on the reminder it won't get you far.  And there's the rub.  Having read through this Thing and experimented with various tools it dawned on me why they don't work for me.  My life isn't all that complicated.  I don't need half a dozen tools to set tasks and store information and remind me of what I need to do when and where and why.  I can handle all that.  My problem is with getting up and actually doing it.  Instead of taking action on all my notes and task lists and reminders I waste time waiting for inspiration, motivation, the right moment, or the right frame of mind.  Now, if someone invented a tool for generating that, I'd be the first in the queue to use it!  In the  meantime, I think I'll just stick with my appointment diary.

Ah, the good old days of simple technology...

Image sources:

Image 1: Pixabay, Creative Commons License CC0.
Image 2: GTDrawings Blog, 25 January 2006.
Image 3: Busyman's Magazine, July-December 1906, p. i.

Thing 13: Reflective Practice (Applying for Online Networker Badge)

For the Online Networker badge, we had three Things to do before the reflective practice.  For Thing 10, we were asked to choose either Facebook or Twitter, find a group, page or list that interests us, and join or follow them; or, send a hashtag on Twitter.  For Thing 11, we were asked to create a bio for an online profile; or to set up a LinkedIn or ORCID account and highlight aspects of our personal brand.  In Thing 12, we were introduced to a number of collaborative tools and asked to consider the usefulness of these in our own professional lives.

I was in two minds about applying for this badge as I know all too well that I cannot be called an online networker by any stretch of the imagination.  I set up a Facebook page years ago and cannot even remember the last time I visited it - I think it was back in 2012 or so - and the same goes for the Twitter account which I set up two years ago and have used to send a tweet precisely once.  I am somewhat more active on my LinkedIn page which I keep up to date as regards my professional development.  I have even gone as far as liking a post or two (living on the edge, man!) but as for posting on it myself, forget it.  It's not that I don't know how, it's just that I don't quite see the point.

Having said that, I am glad I went ahead with these tasks as they gave me much food for thought.  Thing 10 has made me rethink my views on Twitter and Facebook and appreciate their value as institutional networking tools.  It has also made me see the benefits these tools can give to individuals who want to raise their career profile and are prepared to work hard towards that goal.  Even though at this stage of my own career I would be slow to use them personally, I would not dismiss the prospect of resorting to them at a later stage to promote my work, and Thing 10 has given me the know-how to do that.

Thing 11 inspired me to customize my LinkedIn profile address and update my professional profile to bring it more in line with my current work situation.  I was also excited to learn about ORCID.  Research and academic writing is something that appeals to me a great deal and is something that I would like to explore in more detail over the coming years.  I was a bit disappointed that Thing 11 didn't go into more detail about ORCID but then again that's what Google is for!

Thing 12 provided a very useful introduction to collaborative tools and while some of these I am already familiar with, others - Trello and Slack in particular - were new to me.  I was interested to read up on these and would certainly like to learn more and experiment with both tools.

Beyond the practical skills that Things 10-12 provided, they also made me think more seriously about my own professional footprint in the digital world.  Googling myself in incognito mode was an eye-opener and made me realize that my professional online image is a bit patchy.  Some aspects of what I do are perhaps over-represented while others are almost invisible even though in real life they all carry equal weight.  Seeing this made me think more closely about my career and where I want it to take me in years to come.  I realized that there are perhaps too many strands to what I do and that now might be the time to decide which of these strands to focus on and strengthen, and which of them to let go.

I still have a degree of antipathy towards social media and online networking tools, but there is no denying that when used right they present an excellent means of branding and promoting one's skills.  I don't think I'll ever see the point of going all out and randomly operating every imaginable social media tool - Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and whatever new ones are sprouting up around us as we speak - but I do see the benefit of choosing one or two and using them systematically.  It has also struck me that different networking tools serve different purposes.  Twitter is great for networking ideas - spreading news, sharing information in real time, or finding the latest topics that are trending.  Facebook is great for networking people, building social relationships, and for ongoing topics or conversations that are not dependent on time or timing.  People who are more achievement-orientated and interested in a career change or very focused on promoting their professional skills are more likely to benefit from LinkedIn, while ORCID is the obvious choice for those interested in academic writing and research.  In today's increasingly competitive world it is hard to make oneself heard. To me it would therefore make sense to pick the tool that best meets your own career goals and run with that rather than fire haphazardly on all cylinders in the hopes that somebody somewhere will hear you.

Image: HD Wallpapers

Thing 12: Collaborative Tools

I'm not often involved in collaborative projects, and those that I participate in don't as a rule include individuals outside of the library.  This makes meetings simple as everybody is sitting face to face, and between meetings communication can be easily managed via email.

I do however have one project experience in the course of which I would have given my right arm for collaborative tools.  Two years ago, we were asked to create an exhibition based on one of our collections.  The exhibition was to be held in the Hunt Museum in Limerick City, it was designed by a Dublin-based company, and co-authored by a historian who at a critical time of the project was lecturing in America.  It was a communications nightmare.  We never managed to have a meeting with all team members present, and email chains worked poorly as nobody had real clarity on what tasks were the responsibility of which people.  We did manage a couple of conference calls but these only seemed to add to the confusion.

In the end, we managed to create a cracking exhibition but with the right tools the whole process would have been a lot easier, not to mention quicker.  Google Drive would have enabled us to scan and upload the exhibition items for the absent historian to see to make the exhibition narrative easier to write; instead, the narrative bore little relation to what was put on display and had to be extensively rewritten.  Trello would have been fantastic for keeping tabs on who was doing what and how the project was progressing.  Slack would have made communication a lot easier and ensured that nobody was mistakenly left out of the loop.  For conference calls, Skype would have been perfect as it would have enabled us to create virtual meetings with everybody present at the same time.  These are certainly tools I shall keep in mind if ever I am involved in a large-scale project involving a lot of people in different geographical locations.

I am a bit more weary of sharing documents online, particularly if these are of personal or sensitive nature.  I also find it a bit difficult to imagine a scenario in which a number of people would need to be working on the same document simultaneously.  The only example that comes to mind is a book in which every chapter is written by a different contributor, but even then one contributor would surely not start meddling with chapters written by others.  Anyway, that's just me being thick!  On the whole, I think collaborative tools are brilliant and increasingly relevant in a world where remote working and long distance travel have become a daily reality to many.

Image: Pixabay