Tools for Promoting Your CV in the Digital Age
As I work with scholars interested in advancing their careers in academe through the Academii service (www.academii.net), we seek out tools that help provide doctoral students and scholars with the horsepower to ensure their name can become known by colleagues in their respective academic field.
In this two part series, a total of 10 Digital Tools for Promoting One's Curriculum Vitae (CV) are explored and highlighted by Academii Mentor, Dr. Freddy Cardoza.
Digital Tools for Enhancing and
Distributing Your CV
Freddy Cardoza
SLIDEROCKET
This is my current favorite, even though it lacks some of
the resources that LeadYou and GoogleSites has.
I would suggest using it WITH one of those two for a strong online
presence. I opened a full professional
membership with them which isn't cheap, but I wanted what I think is the best.
Check out Peter Richter's “Presume”
at http://www.sliderocket.com/blog/2011/11/presentation-resume/. That shows you the quality of this
tool. It's one of the ones I will
suggest we all check into when we get to that point of our process. You'll love it.
LEADYOU
LeadYou has a little ways to go, but has many of the
e-portfolio enhancements that are needed for a strong digital presence. It allows for different templates, includes
CV like content, but also allows for audio (podcast-like clips), video embeds
of speaking samples, etc., document linking (like teaching philosophy
statements, etc.) and a host of other resources that make it has some
value. Examples are here: http://www.leadyou.com/main.php?action=plan_samples. I need to work with it more and it can be a
little overpowering with some of its colors, but it may be one that can be
really useful. www.leadyou.com
VISUAL CV
The Visual CV uses technology to deploy a digital version of
one's CV, so in that sense it's "like" the Media Kit idea. Most media kits include items that the Visual
CV (VCV) platform may or may not be able to handle-- I haven't learned all of
its capabilities yet. I think I'd rank
it as #3 or 4?? among the tools I've either used or am aware of. That doesn't
mean not to have one-- it just means that there are limitations to it. I think it's good to have it. Here are some examples of it: http://www.visualcv.com/www/examples/#exec
GIGTIDE
Gigtide is similar to VCV only it has some additional
analytical tools that I "don't think" VCV has-- though, again, I've
not fully researched VCV yet. You can take a look at it here:
http://www.gigtide.com/tour/
GOOGLE SITES
Google Sites is a web-page based concept that allows you to
essentially build a Table of Contents and different pages for various elements
of a portfolio. I think it has some
advantages over some of these, because it is more diverse. It's not perfect though and we would need to
explore some of the pros and cons about it.
Though I'm not yet completely SOLD on it, I have used it some and think
it has promise for media rich content. Simply go to www.google.com, log in, and go to "sites"
For more information on our organization, see www.academii.net or check out our free training videos at www.youtube.com/theacademii
I think a lot of these tools look interesting. However, I still think the best approach is to use something like a free wordpress site to build an online presence and to present a "portfolio" of work.
ReplyDeleteNow, it's true that some of the templates specific to some of these tools are pretty slick. Yet, wordpress has tons of free templates that can be used/modified to accomplish everything you would ever need to present yourself in a digital format. Using a blog (or a web page) for a digital presence may not look exactly the same, but I think it would be more than adequate to showcase work and personal abilities.
Also, I just don't trust that all (if even many) of these companies will be around in a few years. So, I'd hate to invest much time with these items when the same thing can be accomplished by building a wordpress blog (or by using some other free blogging tool).
One other interesting tool you might want to check out is RCampus . RCampus is a pretty robust LMS that allows individuals (and organizations) to create and manage online classes, and ePortfolios of academic work. RCampus also gives each teacher a free website and acts as a means for networking with other faculty and students. RCampus is "scalable," in the sense that you can pay for the modules you think you (as an individual or organization) might need (i.e., iRubrics, Outcomes and Standards management, etc), but I think the free version is good enough to act as a way to present "samples" of courses.
That's what I'm using it for; I'm in the process of building out a few classes I already teach online through other platforms (Moodle, Blackboard) so that I can have a place to showcase some of my classes to prospective employers/schools.
BTW: RCampus can be found at www(dot)rcampus(dot)com
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