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Visual CVs in the English Classes: Writing for the 21 Century!!


noresumeIt's no question that the notion of literacy has transcended beyond the written word to include the combination of visuals and words. Writing skills has also evolved into the art of combining the written word with visuals such as images and videos. Our students themselves are disengaged from the writing and are more tuned in to the “Visual Word”.
For the past two years, I have turned the common CV assignments, part of the writing sessions with my grade 11 students, into Visual CV assignments. The results were remarkable, and I am writing this post to share it with you.
I was first fascinated by the visual CVs when I came across some. Professionals using PowerPoint + images + words to produce stunning visual CVs and resumes that stand out. I first did my own visual resume and decided that my students should also do it, besides their traditional paper CVs.

Students first wrote their traditional paper CVs which would serve as the basis for their Visual CVs. As high school students, they didn’t have enough experience or skills to make their CVs. So, I encouraged them to pretend they are now working in the profession they envision themselves doing and write down the experiences, education and skills that they would have gained along the way.
After they were done with the first part of their assignment, the paper CVs, I modeled some great visual Resumes. This gave the class enough material to discuss. They had to deconstruct those visual resumes, and we discussed what made them so communicative. By the end of the discussion, students came to realize that images mean more than words and that’s what they did.
Guided by their paper CVs each student chose keywords and turned them into images on their CVs. Each students started a Google presentation and shared it with me. This enabled me to give each one of them timely comments and suggestions. After they were done, each presented before the class and each shared his Visual CV on the internet. Below are some example of visual CV’s produced by my students.















Students were completely engaged. Their attitude towards writing has shifted to pleasure writing. Their motivation was heightened. But what was really remarkable is how low-achievers have improved in their writings. This is due to strengthening their willingness to communicate through not only text but also images using PowerPoint as a tool and the Google platform as a medium for communication and collaboration.
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Comments

  1. Kip BoahnJuly 13, 2011 at 8:09 AM

    http://www.visualcv.com ^^

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ammar A. MerhbiJuly 13, 2011 at 11:18 AM

    Hello Kip, yes that are many visual CV platforms out there, visualcv.com is one of them. One can think of many tools to build his visual cvs, from linkedin to facebook pages to eportfolio software such as rcampus, Mahara and much more. What my students have done is that they build their CVs from scratch with no pre-fornatted desing to guide them. And this gave them a sense of authority of their visual cvs....
    They are currently building thier eportfolios using Google sites :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dina KirilovaJuly 16, 2011 at 9:01 AM

    I'm a teacher from Bulgaria. Your experience is a great!!! I will do this with my students in the new school year. Thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ammar A. MerhbiJuly 18, 2011 at 10:17 AM

    Hey Дина, I am glad viual CVs resonated with your. You have to be aware however that you need to consider students' prerequisites. This means, you need to ask the question, do they have prior knowledge in using this particular technology? If the answer is yes, then you can go ahead with designing your lesson. However, if the answer is not, then you need to include a step prior to this lesson in familiarizing the features the students will be using in Powerpoint, for example. This is because we do not want a learning curve where the students focus on how to operate this tool than how to use this tool to communicate.
    Note also that you can use tools other than Powerpoint such as photostory or windowe movie maker.

    ReplyDelete
  5. legal translation servicesNovember 9, 2011 at 9:57 AM

    I really appreciate your post and you explain each and every point very well.Thanks for sharing this information.And I’ll love to read your next post too.Will certainly visit your site more often now.

    liva

    ReplyDelete
  6. website translation servicesNovember 14, 2011 at 3:05 PM

    You can use positive language skills to exhibit yourself as a helpful, constructive person rather than a destructive, disinterested one. Positive body language involves the act of maintaining eye contact while speaking, using hand gestures to accentuate important points, leaning in closer while someone else is speaking, smiling, and mirroring the person you’re involved in a conversation with.

    liva

    ReplyDelete
  7. World FamousJanuary 26, 2012 at 2:26 PM

    Thanks For sharing this very useful post, I like this post.
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    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJanuary 27, 2012 at 10:22 AM

    Thanks for the sharing nice information but i have one confusion if you have new method then please share me. Please!

    TestKiller

    ReplyDelete

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