One thing that I find very frustrating is when technology, instead of enabling learning, just gets in the way. A very good example is my Trust’s use of e-learning. Every employee has to be up-to-date with mandatory training – moving and handling, fire, infection control, equality and diversity etc. Arranging for thousands of people to leave their wards, offices and departments to attend face-to-face training was an enormous task both organisationally and financially, so someone had the bright idea of covering a lot of this stuff with e-learning. The Trust potentially saves lots of money and meets all the targets. However, using the e-learning system is so complicated, that is completely beyond the IT skills of many employees and the technical specifications of the software are so exacting, that hardly any of the PCs can even run the modules! I tried to do my information governance e-learning, but the version of Flash on the PC I was using was too new, so I had to phone IT and ask them to reinstall the old version and by the time they had finished, it was time to go home and I still hadn’t completed the training. This is being repeated throughout the Trust, wasting an astronomical amount of time, driving everyone mad and not ticking those boxes that the Trust needs to tick. I have some experience of designing e-learning (and an NVQ Level 4!), so I know that one of the most important starting points is to make it accessible for everyone. If you have to do three tutorials about how to use the e-learning before you can even start learning anything, it has failed.
This might not seem relevant to Thing 6, but it provides a bit of background to why I am so far behind with CPD23. I looked at the online networks and considered which ones I should join. We are not allowed to say who we work for on any social media site – possibly on any website at all – so Linkedin didn’t look viable. I initially rejected Facebook because of the privacy policy and my perception of how people use Facebook. However, I discussed this with my colleagues and reminded myself why I’m doing CPD23. It’s not primarily about what I want to do; it’s to explore the different options for our library service to have an internet – not just intranet – presence and to enable us to communicate with our users in the way that they communicate with each other. My aim was to join up as an individual in order to investigate what we could do as a library. So, I decided I would join Facebook after all……only to find that it is completely banned by the Trust. I can look at Twitter “for work purposes” and for a limited period, I can access my own blog for 60 minutes a day in 10 minute chunks, but Facebook is totally banned.
I have signed up for LISNPN and intend to join Librarians as Teachers too. Oh, and I have a Twitter account @JennyR23, so I am slowly progressing. However, to go back to my rant at the start, I don’t think I have learned much so far apart from how many barriers there are.
