Helping to promote cpd23

A few people have asked if they can use the cpd23 logo to help promote the 23 Things for Professional Development in staff newsletters and similar. The answer is yes! You can copy the logo from here:

If you want a higher resolution version, then you can download that from Picasa.

If you want some text to use, please feel to copy this, and amend it (or not) as suitable:

Free CPD coming up!
23 Things for Professional Development is a free online programme open to information professionals at all stages of their career, in all types of role, and anywhere across the world.

Inspired by the 23 Things programmes for social media, this new programme will consist of a mixture of social media "Things" and "Things" to do with professional development. The programme starts on 20 June and will run until early October 2011.

Each week the CPD23 blog will be updated with details of the next thing to be explored. Catch up weeks and reflection weeks are built into the programme, so it's not a problem if you’re going to be away for a week or two!

Please do spread the word to any friends, colleagues, or groups that might be interested: please pass on this message and link to http://cpd23.blogspot.com. If you’re on Twitter follow @cpd23 and tweet with the hashtag #cpd23.

How do I sign up?

If you would like to sign up for the 2012 version of the course, please visit the 2012 registration page.

To sign up to participate, all you need to do is to register your blog with this website. Most people will do this as part of Thing 2, but I hear there are some people eagerly asking to register already (great!)

If you already have a blog and would like to register now, please fill out the form below.

If you don't already have a blog, that's ok too - the very first thing we'll look at is how to set up your own blog, and we'll take it from there.

All about 23 Things

So what is '23 Things' anyway?
23 Things is a self-directed course aimed at introducing you to a range of tools that could help your personal and professional development as a librarian, information professional or something else.  Each week, we'll write about one or more tool from our list of 23 things and invite you to try it out and/or reflect on how it could help your professional development.  Some of the tasks will be practical Things for you to try out straight away, and some of them will be less immediate: ideas to try in the future, or things you can start working towards now and realise in due course or when opportunity arises!

Who's it for?
23 Things for Professional Development is for anyone who thinks they might benefit from it. You don't have to be a qualified anything, you don't have to work in a particular sector or location, you don't have to be in work, you don't have to be at library school... If you think you can learn from this then please take part!

How do I take part?
To take part, you'll need to set up your own blog (don't panic - that'll be explained in the first Thing!), register it with us (we'll explain that too) and use it to reflect on each Thing that we cover.  If you already have a blog, you can used that to participate cpd23: no need to start a new one (unless you want to).  

What if I need help?
Then please ask us!  We'll be trying to give very clear instructions on the technical aspects of each Thing, but if anything's unclear then please comment on the blog or tweet @cpd23 and we'll try and help out. We're hoping that a wide spectrum of people will be taking part, so you can also ask fellow participants for assistance and make the most of their knowledge too.  This programme is all about learning from each other, so don't be afraid to ask people questions or to answer them!

Acknowledgements
23 Things for Professional Development was inspired by 23 Things Cambridge, and is based on the original 23 Things programme that ran at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in the USA in 2006.

The Launch

Now that we know what the 23 Things will be, we're moving on to planning the launch!

The plan is to launch the programme online, because it will be open to information professionals at all levels, potentially based anywhere. We're now looking for suggestions - what do you think an online launch should look like?  So far we've got:

• Hit the mailing lists
• Have a live #cpd23 chat on Twitter
• Possibly local real life meet-ups, feeding into the Twitter discussion
• Guest posts on blogs (so far SLA Europe, CILIP, LISNPN - thanks!)

Anything else?  We'll keep updating this main blog post with ideas as they come in, either in the comments here or on Twitter using #cpd23.

The cpd23 Things

Here are the Things that we will be exploring during the 23 Things for Professional Development course this summer.  There is real a mixture of stuff: some web 2.0 and/or social media gadgets and gizmos, and some  ways of developing your career by more 'traditional', less technology-focussed, means.  Throughout the programme will be emphasising how these Things can help your professional development, although you're likely to find lots of tools useful in other ways, too!

The Plan

Week 1 (20th June) - Blogging

• Thing 1: Create your own blog, write about what you hope to get out of the programme. (If you already have a blog, then you're welcome to use that.)
• Thing 2: Explore other blogs and get to know some of the other cpd23-ers.

Week 2 (27th June) - Online presence

• Thing 3: Consider your personal brand

Week 3 (4th July) - Current awareness

• Thing 4: RSS feeds, Twitter, Pushnote

Week 4 (11th July) - Reflection week
A bit of a breather to think about what we've covered so far.

• Thing 5: Reflective practice

Week 5 - (18th July) Online Networks / Real Life Networks

• Thing 6: Online networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, LISNPN, LATNetwork, CILIP Communities)
• Thing 7: National/Regional groups, Special interest groups and looking outside the library sphere

Week 6 - (25th July) Organising yourself

• Thing 8: Google Calendar
• Thing 9: Evernote

Week 7 - (1st August) Librarianship training options

• Thing 10: Graduate traineeships, Masters degrees, Chartership, Accreditation
• Thing 11: Mentoring

Week 8 - (8th August) Catch-up week / reflections

• Thing 12: Putting the social into social media 

Week 9 - (15th August) Filesharing/Collaboration

• Thing 13: Google Docs, Wikis & Dropbox

Week 10 - (22nd August) Organising your references

• Thing 14: Zotero / Mendeley / citeulike

Week 11 - (29th August) Getting involved

• Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events
• Thing 16: Advocacy, speaking up for the profession and getting published.

Week 12 - (5th September) Presenting information

• Thing 17: Prezi / data visualisation / slideshare [postponed until Monday 19th September]
• Thing 18: Jing / screen capture / podcasts (making and following them)

Week 13 - (12th September) Catch-up week / reflection

• Thing 19: Some time to think about how you might integrate the Things so far into your workflow and routines.

Week 14 - (19th September) Extra catch-up week and Thing 17

Week 15 - (26th September) Careers 

• Thing 20: Library Day in the Life and Library Routes/Roots 

Week 16 - (3rd October) Promoting yourself in job applications and at interview 

• Thing 21: How to identify your strengths, how to capitalise on your interests, how to write something eyecatching that meets job specs. 
• Thing 22: Volunteering to get experience 

Week 17 - (10th October) Final reflection 

• Thing 23: What have you learnt and where do you want to go from here?

Once you've finished

• Feedback and certificates (certificate sign up ends on 30 November 2011!)
  

There are some great guest bloggers lined up to contribute to the programme - details of those to follow soon!