The Resume is dead? Or has is metamorphosed into something more dynamic, writing the Self

This presentation is intriguing because the presenter does have a point, despite the fact that I am usually very weary of marketing in general. The ubiquity of online media and social networking, especially its ease of use, gives employers the ability to consider possible employees in much greater detail. However, this needs to be tempered with a greater critical eye on what one reads and takes as truth online. It is all to easy to take a surface view of an applicant especially is the main way they have communicated is via visual imagery - I guess unless you are hiring a photographer or visual media developer. This presentation does bring to the fore the dramatic change in how people are using online media ; you can now put yourself out there, carve a space or niche that is you. But this takes time and is not something that can be done over night. A blog is a good place to start, then twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. But before you go nuts... social networking is something that requires careful consideration, planning, nurturing and crafting.

So what does this mean for teachers, teaching and knowledge in general?

Everyone can have a say. This increases the plurality of opinion both informed and ill-informed. Teachers can share and compare classroom practice hopefully resulting in improved approaches to teaching and learning. All this may sound trite for those of you already blogging but so many teachers are still cautious of taking the first step of creating that online space populated with who they are as teachers. This space/niche over time becomes a representation of who you are, textually constructed with meaning emerging over time, your thought become language and your language is thought  

What can you do or not do?  

Just write, but make use of the draft function. Do not write then publish straight away. Writing is a reflexive practice,

"The language one uses is designated by one's relational position in a field or social space. Different uses of language tend to reiterate the respective positions of each participant. Linguistic interactions are manifestations of the participants' respective positions in social space and categories of understanding, and thus tend to reproduce the objective structures of the social field." source

Of course the other thing to remember is the Web is open so post with care.


My recent professional development session relating to this topic

Recently I presented a professional development session to a few of my colleagues about using social networking tools to create and expand personal learning networks (PLN). The online space/niche which form your online professional persona is feed and nourished by these PLNs. So your PLN and your online presence become a dynamic presentation of YOU, this becomes your resume in a continual state of becoming, a living textual,visual and signed manifestation of yourself. Although Eric Fromm's "To Have or to Be" predates the internet and the social web the following excerpt

[Man's] human relations to the world- seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting, loving- in short all the organs of his individuality ... are in their objective action [their actions in relation to the object] the appropriation of this object, the appropriation of human reality. This is the form of appropriation in the mode of being, not the mode of having...

provides a sketch of the idea that your online persona within your space/niche when seen through the prism of the idea of a resume is you looking back at yourself - digital reflexivity perhaps.
 

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