All entries for Tuesday 03 January 2012

The End

We are now at the end of '23 Things for the Digital Professional' and I have really enjoyed doing each task. That isn't to say that everything was easy - well not difficult either just an attitude adjustment to try each 'Thing' before I passed judgement on it. It forced me to look at things that I had dismissed in the past (such as podcasts and Twitter) and showed me new ways of doing things with applications that I had never heard of (e.g. Prezi and Mendeley).

Dropbox was particularly useful as it was a solution to a problem that I was experiencing with Files.Warwick on file sharing outside the university.

I loved Prezi - it is such a simple thing to use to layout your data in any configuration then zoom and pan to the relevant information for your presentation. It blew 'PowerPoint' out of the metaphorical water so I'm now a convert to Prezi as well as Dropbox.

Other than Prezi and Dropbox, I will continue to use GoogleDocs and Mendeley:

• The most useful function (for me) in GoogleDocs, is sharing the document for review. It seems like the simplest way to get comments on and annotate a document, especially if you are sending it to more than one person for review.
• After my initial failure of using Mendeley, I have managed to download the desktop application and sort through some of my pdf documents. I really like it - I've never used anything like this before so I'm still getting used to it.

I think this programme has been of great benefit to me. I don't use everything included in the course, and I don't intend to, but I have found some really useful tools and I have been made aware of some important issues surrounding my online presence and that of my work.

I rely on email as a communication tool and I could be classed as a 'technophobe' in many respects and with the growth of social media and digital communications I think that you miss out if you don't join in. Global companies can't afford to ignore digital communication; to get yourself, your product or your company 'seen' you have to play the Twitter and Facebook game and some companies have dedicated media personnel who keep their social media pages up to date.

No matter what website or television channel you view you will see companies and products promoting themselves through social media; researchers and research establishments should be doing the same to raise the profile of their research. I think in the most part this is being done, but the importance of this will only grow as popularity of this media grows in the future.

Claire White : 03 Jan 2012 15:05 |  Tags: Rex23 Thing23 |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem