Reputation and Professional Practice for NEW and Continuing

This entry is the start of a longer consideration of an important topic for us all, and one that also is linked in with considering professional identity.

While Sheika Edwards and I were discussing current job and career opportunities that might be used for what we are doing in BAPP course on the 21/9/10 orientation day, it dawned on me that Sheika must have a good reputation among her peers in order to be getting on with things.

So the idea about reputation has really taken hold on my thinking because I do think it is an important one. People 'vet' other people through their reputation, it is important that your peers know that they can count on you. When I talking about the blogs at orientation, I tried to use 'good examples' of current and interesting entries, and I

I went first to the blog entry Laura Davitt blog entry because she had a recent entry (more please Laura)... there are of course others who have updated entries like Rosina Andrews and Abbi Williams, who is a distant learner with a good reputation among the network for her blog work.  Joe Pegram has also noted recent work as has Sophie Gilbert.

Procrastination and perfectionism put aside - it's about being there and preparing so that people can see you and respond to you. For example check out Mark Iles blog. Is that you in the dance pose Nicholas Norman? good brief accounts of skills and future direction and Natalie Less and Ross Dunning were also quick off the mark.

I think I will come back to reputation after more study, but it is one that relates firmly back to the goals of the course - it people know who you are and respect what you do - that is the start of a great reputation.
I came across this entry about this issue for establishing designers after a quick google. I would like to work on my reputation as a good blogger this term.

One other point that Alan has made before, and came up in our orientation discussions, the blog is one way for you to exert some control over something cohesive about yourself going up on the web. When, not if, people google you, a learning blog with some interesting evidence of personality and intellect, everyone can see some of it is for a degree course, is more interesting than random entries.