Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Professional Portfolio and Resume Ideas

This semester for my “Computers in the Classroom” undergraduate course at the University of North Texas, I’ve asked my students to create a professional portfolio using a wiki of their choice. One my students recently asked suggestions of things to add to her wiki which go beyond the basic requirements of our assignment. I posted my reply to her on our course FAQ blog, and am cross-posting the answer here as well. Please comment with your additional suggestions, as well as links to other “professional portfolio exemplars” by other educators worldwide.

Question: What else can I add to my professional wiki, in addition to the minimal requirements for our assignment?

Answer:

I recommend looking at some of the professional portfolio examples on our classroom wiki / professional portfolio resource page to get ideas for what else you might include in your professional portfolio.

Andrea Smith’s professional portfolio is well organized and can give you some ideas. Under her “Administrative and Supplemental” category at the top of her wiki, she has pages for her summer school teaching experiences, her background, experiences and philosophy surrounding curriculum development, her experiences with WEB (Where Eveyone Belongs,) and other supplemental positions she’s held at schools where she’s taught.  Andrea has done a good job of “chunking” the information she wants to share into six main categories, which are listed as navigational links at the top of the page:

  1. Introduction
  2. Documents and Videos
  3. Administrative and Supplemental
  4. Meeting the Standards
  5. Gallery
  6. Contact Me

As a pre-service education student, I recommend you draw on some of the projects and things you’ve learned in your other classes to date and considering sharing some of those on your professional wiki. Also consider sharing other experiences you’ve had working with children and developing your teaching skills on your site. In your career as you advance, you will make changes to this of course – but overall I’d think of your professional wiki as a space where you “tell your story” about who you are, what you’ve done, what matters to you, and gives others a clear picture of the kind of school and classroom in which you WANT to work.

Rachel Boyd’s professional wiki is another exemplar to consider and study. In addition to including links to other sites where she shares links and information, and builds her “professional learning community, she maintains an updated bio page as well as a page where she lists past presentations she’s shared about education, learning, leadership, educational technology, and other topics.

I don’t think I have a professional wiki which is as high quality as either Andrea or Rachel, but I use several sites to represent my “professional digital footprint.” I use my professional wiki now (wiki.wesfryer.com) to primarily share links to my presentation and workshop resources. I also use that site to share information about past grant projects I’ve worked on (like TxTIP) and other resources. I have a more “traditional” website (created with an HTML editor, not a wiki tool – Kompozer) where I maintain my biovitae, a contact page, and other personal information. (www.wesfryer.com) I do think it’s important to include a way for others to contact you. I use ClaimID (claimid.com/wfryer) to share the different websites I use and update. Until recently I didn’t list my resume on a public website, but I do now using the free service Emurse. (wfryer.emurse.com) I like the way Emurse takes care of all the formatting, and provides multiple options to download and share a current resume copy. I’ve added the embedded “badge” for my Emurse-powered resume to my public vitae page. You might consider building a resume (for free) on Emurse and including / embedding it on your professional wiki.

Dr. Helen Barrett is a “guru” of ePortfolios for teaching and learning. Her website, electronicportfolios.com, has links to a variety of other resources related to ePortfolios that may be of interest.

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2 responses to “Professional Portfolio and Resume Ideas”

  1. Andrea Hernandez Avatar

    I have started working on my own professional portfolio, which I hope will serve as a hub for my digital footprint. It is at http://andreahernandez.org
    For your students I would suggest adding either a personal mission statement or their teaching philosophy or both. I have just finished my mission statement (it is very simple to read, but was hard for me to write. I also had my 8th grade students write personal mission statements for their portfolios.) I plan on adding my teaching philosophy, too. If your students have one, it seems that a resume or some listing of experience and education is pretty standard on a professional portfolio. The other thing I might add is to have your students write a brief reflection on each “artifact” where it would be relevant. For example, on the video they choose to share- why are they sharing that particular video. What was the context of its creation? What does it represent? ….that kind of thing…although I see you have the artifacts as linked blog posts, so maybe they have already done that.
    I have been collecting samples of portfolios on my delicious. http://www.delicious.com/edtechworkshop/portfolios+examples

  2. […] with Wes Fryer last semester, and we were constantly bouncing ideas off each other. He addressed digital portfolios in one of his posts, which helped me develop my latest iteration of my digital portfolio project.  […]