INTRODUCTION

Besides being critical to any job search, résumé writing is a form of self-expression, a means of capturing personal history and identity on a single page. Creating their first résumés can be a revelation for students, helping them see their strengths or even focus their efforts in school. How can group collaboration help high school students, with little or no formal job experience, present their skills and experience in a résumé? How can we leverage technology to help students translate what they know about themselves into résumé form and to make their résumés available to potential employers?

PROJECT OVERVIEW

After an introduction to the form and function of résumés, students prepare to write résumés of their own by writing down basic information about themselves, including activities and interests. In small groups, they assist each other in identifying potentially valuable skills, and then in pairs they use Inspiration to create Résumé Planning Maps. Using résumés that others have written for guidance, students draft their own résumés in AppleWorks. Finally, students return to their groups for peer review of their drafts, incorporate suggestions in a revision, and then post their résumés, complete with multimedia elements, on the Internet.

Phase 1: Learning about résumés

Begin by asking your students what they know about résumés. What is a résumé? What are résumés for? Explain that by conveying your history, skills, and personality, your résumé is a way of introducing yourself to potential employers.

Look at one or more sample résumés (see Resources) with your class, noting the kinds of information included and the different ways this information can be organized. Introduce basic concepts, including targeting and chronological versus functional résumés.

Ask students to complete the Who Am I? Worksheet, which helps them prepare to write their own résumés.

Phase 2: Identifying skills and strengths

Ask students to form small groups of four. Working from their completed Who Am I? Worksheets, each student in turn summarizes his or her interests, strengths, activities, and work experience for the rest of the group. After each oral summary, the group works to identify the job skills inherent in that student's activities and experiences, brainstorming a list of at least five skills that the student can enter in his or her printed Skills Worksheet.

Individually, students complete their Skills Worksheets. Then students pair up to help each other plan their résumés. Using the Inspiration Résumé Planning Map, students create visual maps showing, for each student, all the possible components of their résumés, organized by category. Students print their Résumé Planning Maps in both diagram and outline form, and export the outline form as text for use in Phase 3.

Phase 3: Finding models and writing résumés

Groups reconvene and use EdView and other search engines to search the Web for examples of résumés that others have created. (They can also search library resources, if available.) They identify the format of each example as either chronological, functional, or combination, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each example as a model for their own résumés.

In AppleWorks, students (working individually) write first drafts of their résumés, using words and phrases from the résumé outlines they exported as text in Phase 2, and referring to one or more of the example résumés as models.

With drafts written, students come back into their groups and go through each member's résumé in turn, offering suggestions for improvement which might include wording changes, structural changes, or additions. Based on the peer review comments, students revise and print their résumés.

Phase 4: Creating multimedia résumés for the Web

Students collect and create multimedia elements they can include with their résumés when they are posted on the Internet. These may include digital images of the student, scanned images of awards or artwork, desktop movies of student activities created with a digital camcorder and iMovie, and digital samples of student work.

Returning to their groups, students cooperate in building résumé Web sites for each group member. Working in Netscape Composer (or a similar Web page editor) they paste in the text from their AppleWorks résumés, format the text, and insert the multimedia elements they have collected. Students then post their résumé Web sites on the Internet, where they can be viewed by family members, potential employers, college admissions officers, and scholarship granting organizations.