What Makes a Good Teacher: Does Losing my Cool Make Me Cooler?

I hope this can be a brief post, but I'm not so sure.

I've written before about my mixed feelings when working with both Illinois workNet Resume Builder tool, and when using Google Doc's inconsistent formatting. Well, the other day, when working with a "super-motivated-early-arriving-totally-prepared guy" BOTH tools momentarily failed on us.

(Let's just call him Mr. Doe) arrived thirty minutes early so we could decide the best way to get his paper resume into an online format. Since we don't have Microsoft Word, our two best options were, if you have been reading this blog at all, Illinois workNet Resume builder, and Google docs. Since Mr. Doe already had a job lined up in contracting, all he needed to do was email his resume to the potential employer. He had a paper resume, but there were items he needed to correct. I showed him the Illinois workNet resume builder and he was really excited.

We got to work straight away. Mr. Doe clicked on drop-downs like a madman, and got in the groove of it quickly. That was, until the resume builder received a pageful of error messages of doom. After logging on and off a few times, it didn't seem like the problem was going away anytime soon. I didn't know what to do, so we both quickly tried to make the most of his remaining 45 minutes with me.

We changed tactics brilliantly and created a Google account for him. But as poor Mr. Doe began to type, Google Docs fought him at every turn! As soon as we changed the font size, the spacing changed, and as soon as we changed from bold-faced type, we had met our match. For some reason, G-docs began to skip around, and change spacing and font size at random, and I nor Mr. Doe could counteract his possessed document.

At this point, I began to lose my cool. The thing is, I see myself as sort of a shield--I want to be the one to assist people in their first experience with new technology. I want the experience to be a calm, meaningful one, and I want the resources I choose to be easy to use and dependable. So when things don't always go as planned, I feel like I have not quite done my job, or perhaps I have chosen resources that are not as easy to use as I wish they were.

The conclusion of this story is actually much happier than I thought it would be. After a short period of frustration, Mr. Doe and I decided to try to log into Illinois workNet again. Ah-ha! This time it worked, and speedy Mr. Doe again clicked through the resume builder to wind up with a product that he was satisfied with.

We all know that even the most well-intentioned teacher can struggle with technology. However, I know that in a retail situation, I get slightly embarrassed for employees who are struggling with a cash register, or another tool they work with. So was it OK to show my frustration? Probably not. And that's something that I can work on a bit--because we all know that error messages are part of my world.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Google Docs

I know I've been recommending it a lot lately, but I might have to take back what I've been saying about Google Docs being the end-all-be-all of online resumeland.

The reason that I am suggesting this is because I've been struggling lately with helping people actually FORMAT their resumes. (This has been especially awful when I try to use a Google template, but more about that later).

To start this adventurous post, I'd like to mention that I learned something the other day:

I was talking to my programmer husband, Sam--well, actually venting a bit about my poor attempts to set tabs inside a Google Doc. He looked at me and said, "Google Docs doesn't use set tabs like a Word doc. Pressing the tab key in a gdoc is just like hitting the space bar." That's when I realized that he was completely correct. In fact, that's why, when someone is trying to format the sections of their resume (pay attention to the cursor below the word "Objective"), it can be very frustrating:

It is actually very difficult to line up the second line because the words "Employment History" which might be typed under the word "Objective," take up more space, and if the user is attempting to tab to an alligned position, it just isn't possible. Tabs don't work for this as they would in a Word doc. It is all about using the space bar and eyeballing the formatting, which makes it really hard for the beginning user to format a clean resume.

After playing around with this a bit more, I wondered, hey, maybe it WOULD be easier for my patrons to use one of the Google resume templates.

As you can begin to see, there is quite a variety of different templates to choice from. I decided to try the Classic Resume:

At first it seemed easy. I selected the text that I wanted to change and then, OH NO! What happened?!!

If you look under Jane's name, I was attempting to highlight the incorrect address and replace it with the proper one. This didn't go very smoothly for me as immediately, the spacing began to change. Things only got worse as I tried to type in text in the bullet-pointed areas. The text and formatting started jumping around, and I started to panic!

It quickly turned to this (check out the missing letters as I tried to replace the name of the company Jane had worked for):

Unfortunately, I don't know what to say or do at this point. If I can't figure out the formatting, I certainly do not think that a new user will be able to be successful (without perhaps throwing the mouse against the wall). So where does that leave us? Back to the resume builders?

Right now, I'm not sure. I think that for now, I'll stick with the imperfection of a plain Google Doc, but like a child who has finally realized that her father is not infallible, neither is Google. As hard as it is for me to admit, resumes are difficult no matter what kind of tools we attempt to use.