Blogush

I know you can re-twitter or re-plurk, but is re-blogging legal?  I bumped into post today from Melanie Holtsman.  She writes:

The next time I’m explaining why we need to allow kids to create and collaborate online, I’m going to show this video. It was made by a teenager named Judson Collier, who is applying for a job. He was obviously given the knowledge, tools and time in his education to create and innovate. The most interesting thing to me was visiting his website and seeing how he looked up some other videos for inspiration. Self-directed learning is a skill that all students need to be prepared for. Everytime I want to know something I do the same thing, look up examples of how others did the same thing…

Would you hire Judson or someone with a great paper resume’? Which one better informs you about the person applying? Check out his video:

 
Stop-Motion App-uh-lu-cat-ion from Judson on Vimeo.

I think the post is perfect and I can’t wait to share it with my kids.  I tell them every year to include their online work even on their high school applications.  The online “resume” is the new fronteir.  It seems as thought the world is full of kids who can fill out an application with Treasurer of Senior class, member of the football team, vice-president of the debate club, clarinet in the concert band, volunteer at the soup kitchen, and perfect scores on 6 AP tests.  In one way learning how to apply to colleges and for jobs is a lot like preparing kids for standardized tests.  Getting higher scores doesn’t mean better students, and those pristine perfect resumes don’t mean better employees.  Moving to using online tools to create resumes to communicate “who” you are and “what” you are capable of doing in the future is more important that handing in a paper with what you have done in the past.

I am thinking that Melanie won’t get made for me ripping off her post if you all promise to visit her blog–please do, it’s a good one.