This morning I decided to have a look at my CV and give it a tune-up. I did not expect to be shocked at how boring it looked. It made me wondering when these CV designs came into place, and when their final hour of death would arrive… So I decided that tonight I’m going to do something about the way I advertise myself.
I debated between creating an interactive image (a FDF, perhaps?!), and working on Photoshop and inserting images and graphs. I started with thinking about what my professional history would look like in numbers and images. 13 years of teaching experience, 3 degrees (AA, BA, and MA), 6 countries I taught in, my personal information, activities I took part in since 1999, and so on. I began working with Google Sheets to create some graphs and charts, started a new Photoshopcanvas, turned to PsPrint to create an interesting-looking business card for my personal information, looked for transparent and free to use images of flags, and imported images of my credentials. That’s about when I realized things are going quite slowly, which made me think about the 21st century and all the available tools we have in place to do things…
The word Infographic suddenly popped into mind. A quick Google Search revealed many different tools to create infographics. Since I already had an account with Canva, and have been quite impressed with their articles about design and simple yet powerful tutorials, I decided to give it a try.
The interface was simple and intuitive, and I very quickly found a template I found appropriate for my educational technology “Infographical CV” (I coined the term!) I replaced the original images and numbers with some of my own and some free-to-use ones off the Web, made sure there’s some variety in the way I represented my professional experience, and voila! A new way to look at, and share my teaching journey with friends, colleagues, and potential employers. Is it perfect? By no means, but it’s a great place to start thinking about the need to break away from the traditional way we’ve been doing things.
The results are below. If you have any comments or suggestions, please share them!
My infographic CV:
