Slideshare of the Day: Advice for Graduates

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn has written one of my new favorite books and produced two decks that have absolutely inspired me as we move into the second half of the new year. The Start Up of You explains how an entrepreneurial spirit and approach can help all professionals (even us teachers) grow and develop.

His second deck, “The Three Secrets of Highly Successful Graduates”, is a must share (and view) from teachers to students. It’s also inspired me to add a few bits of Hoffman insight to my latest deck, “Tweak Your Resume”. Check out the deck below:

Tweak Your Resume Preview

I felt Hoffman’s discussion of what competitive advantage means fit right in with why a visual resume is so useful.

What are your assets, aspirations, and how do those fit in with what your industry wants and needs?

Finally, here is draft two of my unemployment slide. What do you think, Margaret?

Superteaching: A decade in review, a decade in progress

As part of professional development for the English department, my colleagues and I have been tasked with revamping our CVs, creating a teaching portfolio, or developing a professional online presence. As I’ve worked on creating a portfolio and have a website, I, of course, began revamping the CV right away and am currently working on ways to maintain the traditional purpose and format but still make the document more rich than just 11 pages of fluff. The process of creating an extensive body of work has led to a bit of retrospection.

A Superteacher in reflective mode…where am I going? Where have I been? (Source: JD Hancock)

January marks the end of my tenth year of teaching at the college level. I began as a green composition instructor at the University of Central Florida. My first and only UCF class was overwhelming, nerve-wracking, exciting and ultimately rewarding, but I still wasn’t sold on this as my career. I resisted the common “Oh, are you going to teach with that?” question that often came after I stated my major was English. In my mind, there had to be something else I could do with this degree. I was both right and completely wrong.

Source: gumuz via Flickr

I entered the world of editing, copywriting, and marketing eager to prove myself, to dive into my favorite activities: consulting, editing, revising, and proofing others’ work. I applied for every job I saw on Monster and Career Builder; I bought a suit, a red pen, and waited…and waited….finally, I realized no one would hire me! Why not? Not awesome enough at English? No. No experience with professional writing outside of academia? Yup. That was it. So, to gain some experience, I worked as marketing writer and editor for my step-father’s A/V rental company and did freelance work for a local design firm, Lapiz Design.

To make ends meet, I also picked up an instructional assistant/writing center consultant position with Valencia College (Valencia Community College at the time). A short time later, I was offered the opportunity to teach English composition. Being the completely broke and desperate post-grad, I took the class, thinking it would serve as a good source of income until my editing ship came in. What I didn’t realize right away (but learned by the end of that summer semester) was that this would be my calling, that the hours I spent creating transparencies of poems, hunting down vinyl recordings of Dylan Thomas, and coming up with ways to engage beyond the assigned textbook for my course, would lay down roots that are now so ingrained in who and what I am that I cannot imagine my life without teaching.

Source: Mr. T in DC via Flickr

I was offered a full-time contract at a smaller campus of Valencia College. My acceptance would mean five wonderful years at the Winter Park Campus of VC. It was here that I really found my way, a mentor in my department chair, and learned important lessons about classroom teaching, curriculum development, and community and college involvement. It was here that I also began a love affair with the community college (RIP) model. I absolutely thrived in an environment committed to learner-based methodologies and initiatives. I also learned the impact faculty, staff, and students can have on the quality of education the entire community receives.

After five years and a poor judgment call, I was adjuncting, teaching 7 classes per semester with little room for growth at a small campus, so I accepted a position at Full Sail University, where I’ve had the pleasure of further expanding my skills as teacher, presenter, course developer, and now presentation designer. Regardless of challenges (teaching for a for-profit university is at times a sharper learning curve than at a community college), I would not trade the most amazing opportunity of my professional career so far, teaching Professional Communication and Presentation. I have developed a love for new subjects, public speaking and presentation design, that infuse every aspect of my professional and personal life. I have become a crusader for beautiful slides and dynamic delivery.

The last ten years have yielded a body of work I am proud of, and a constantly re-stoked fire for learning and responsible, sustainable education that I cannot wait to share with others. In the past decade, I’ve:

• Taught 5,500 students
• Taught 20 different courses or versions of courses
• Developed 11 different courses either independently or in collaboration with amazing teachers
• Have attended 30 final project presentations
• Authored and delivered 17 presentations
• Sponsored three student organizations
• Have been inspired by amazing teachers, among them, Christin Upshaw, Sophia Buggs, and Alex Rister
• Have been mentored by two incredible humans, Kim Murray and Chris Borglum
• Immersed myself in three new subjects, the most current being my absolute bliss and joy

The first ten years have been fruitful and productive, but I have a few more goals to accomplish in the coming decade. Among them:

• Truly bring my blog up to speed
• Work on the balance between mastery and failure in the online environment
• Continue to seek out opportunities that are learner-centered
• Earn an Ed.D. in teaching and curriculum or educational leadership
• Move into instructional design and administration

So, final words/thoughts on my first ten years: I’ve only just found my groove. I am stoked for more!

Source: pwbaker via Flickr

Visualizing Resumes 2.0

In between writing irate blog posts about the nature of inspiration vs. imitation in visual design, grading, attending workshops, attending final project, and attempting a few hours of exercise and life, I’ve found the time to update my deck on Visual Resumes. I am very proud of this new draft, having added stronger typefaces, cleaner overall unity, and integration of quoted material. This deck also features examples from two former superstudents, Crysta Timmerman and Spencer House. Give them a bit of love and check out their awesome takes on the visual resume approach.

 

Love the Visual Resume–Seriously!

Today’s deck comes from my favorite superteacher, Alex Rister. The visual resume began as a fun side project for me and then became a mission–help my students create a more dynamic picture of their qualities as professionals online. In teaching the visual resume, I draw inspiration from the success of others, namely David Crandall and Alex Rister. Both of these individuals have successful visual resumes.

1. She uses story to convey her unique perspective

Alex tells audiences the story of how she found her calling as communications guru and public speaking teacher. Instead of just starting with “I was born…” she begins with a bigger idea–innovation, and then illustrates how she is part of this new age of innovation.

2. She designs unified visuals

Alex uses color, type, shape, and alignment to create something that is uniquely hers. Alex’s use of pink against the vintage images is classy yet whimsical. Her choice of Komika Axis speaks to her personality–this is Alex’s signature typeface.

3. Her visual resume does more than what any traditional resume can do

Alex uses this medium to highlight not only her extensive leadership and teaching experience and professional work as an educator, but also as a means of sharing her ideas on communication, work, and the world at large.

Check out Alex Rister’s visual resume, as well as her other amazing deck (which is a required reading in our Professional Communication and Presentation course), Seven Deadly Sins of Visual Design.

Be the Signal, Not the Noise: Develop a Visual Resume

Recently, I presented a workshop on visual resumes for faculty and staff at my school. Visual resumes have been a standard in the on campus Professional Communication and Presentation course. My students create amazing supplements to their traditional resumes. I shared a bit of information with faculty and staff about what a visual resume is, why it matters, and why a paper resume is just not enough. Check out my latest slideshare upload here:

Design Envy: Rebooting my Curriculum Vitae

So, I admit it, I suffer from design envy or slide envy, one of Alex Rister’s 7 Deadly Sins of Design. I can’t help it. I see something, I want it. I want to be able to make it and do it. So, when my friend Christin sent me her amazing new resume, I had to find a way to adapt her style to my traditional CV. I’ve agonized over colors, fonts, layouts, content, phrasing, and punctuation. After a week and a half of gut-wrenching work, I give you the first working draft of my new CV. Phew!

Chiara Ojeda, Curriculum Vitae

…

Tweak your Image: The Visual Resume Final Project

Yesterday was the last day of an awesome class. I always love teaching–let me repeat that, I love it, even when the class is kicking my ass, giving me tons of resistance, and making me work work work to find ways to get them engaged. But, sometimes, I just love them a little more…I am human after all.

I cannot express how much I will miss Charlie, Matt, and the rest of their amazing class! P.S. I am not flipping the bird here, just trying to keep my beard on!

The last two days of class are slotted for the visual resume project. Now, you may think I am being trendy for moving in the direction of the flashy, supplemental visual resume, or maybe my choice is redundant. Who needs a visual resume if they have a solid conventional resume or cv? Truth be told, I started doing this for two reasons.

One is purely selfish–I wanted to create my own visual resume; I generally can find no better excuse for doing something myself than asking my students to do it. The second reason stems from my previous final project, a self-reflective creative exploration of the student’s learning journey. While amazingly successful (I loved grading iMovie renditions of “Santeria,” original songs, video games, and gorgeously designed Keynotes), it failed to fill an important void in my students’ education. I never understood how to write a resume, nor how to make myself attractive to employers except by painful trial and error. My students currently do not get valuable instruction on building a professional persona. As other courses in their programs discuss resumes, I am prevented from doing so (to avoid redundancy). So, how could I integrate a bit of self-reflection, practical practice with that professional image, and one last challenge to BE CREATIVE into one assignment?

The answer was the visual resume. I am often amused by the way this project unfolds in class. Oftentimes, the results are completely polarized. I get either amazing, impeccably designed, well-developed visual resumes that would wow even the most doubtful of employers; well-developed, designed, but still somewhat formulaic  attempts (incredible! Could the visual resume already be formulaic?); or quickly and haphazardly designed attempts at squeaking by with a passing grade. People either love or hate this assignment. Those who love it are eager for a chance to express a small bit of their vision; those who hate it say they just can’t do it or they aren’t creative or they don’t want to talk about themselves). One student spent the majority of yesterday’s class yelling at his laptop, muttering not quite so softly (I have teacher ears; I hear all) about how torturous this project was.

At the time, it annoyed me, but then I considered how much I gripe about how dissatisfied with my own visual resume I am, how torturous it is for me to make revisions to it that I am satisfied with, and how completely horrendous my latest cover letter was before deep slash and burn by the one and only Alex Rister.

What Alex and I did after the "Beards Rule" Presentation.

All of this has led to a deeper empathy (maybe) for the task I put before my students. It’s not easy for me to be satisfied with a project I’ve worked on for 8 months now. Can I really expect them to fall in love with the idea over the course of, at best, two days, and at worst as in today’s class, one day? In an effort to answer these questions, I am going to chill for a moment, let go, and accept my visual resume as it is. There are aspects of it I quite like, despite feeling entirely unsure of what picture it paints of me. It is a representation of my versatile talents, interests, and those completely bizzarre aspects of my personality I can’t squeeze into the spaces between my education and my memberships on a CV. And that is something to be proud of. Truly.