Publishers, Participants All
Will Richardson
The “publish” button isn’t the end of the process. Now it’s time to talk to—and learn from—strangers.
I remember way back in high school, when we still used typewriters, writing up my résumé of experiences and hoping that college admissions officers or local employers might find them compelling enough to consider me. My résumé glowed with initiative and industriousness: newspaper deliverer when I was 12, local church locker-upper when I was 14, food runner at the hospital when I was 17, and more. I tried really hard to make myself sound impressive; dare to say, I might even have fudged a few lines here and there in the effort. I mean, who was going to check, right?
Well, today everyone checks. This is a world in which public is the new default. Thought leader Michael Schrage (2010) notes that “the traditional two-page résumé has been turned into a ‘personal productivity portal’ that empowers prospective employers to quite literally interact with their candidate’s work.” The rules for building your personal brand are changing at light speed. It’s not enough to suggest that we have those admirable skills of creativity, initiative, and entrepreneurship; now we have to show them in action online.
In short, our résumé is becoming a Google search result, one that we build with the help of others and that requires our participation. Most students are beginning to face this reality without much assistance from the schools charged with preparing them for the world beyond school. That has to change. We need to help students understand more than just the safety and ethics of participating online; we also have to give them opportunities throughout the curriculum to find and follow their passions and publish meaningful, quality work for real global audiences to interact with.
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