- How did it go? Itās interesting to me that I preferred the hourly tracking rather than the binary yes/no tracking options. I would have thought the simpler tracking would be more appealing, but as a competitive person, I liked the idea of honing in on things more often!
- What has changed? I transferred the data from my bracelet to the bullet journal, using a variety of ideas from the Observe, Collect, Draw book. I didnāt really enjoy the duplicative effort, even though the journal entries allowed me to see how each day/week went overall.
- What kinds of data are meaningful to your library patrons? Especially during our Summer Reading Program, patrons are tracking days of reading and activities completed.
- How might I integrate Data Gems as a layer to my existing programs? This is where I get a bit stuck! I really want to incorporate something over time with my early childhood outreach visits, but I am not sure preschoolers will remember from monthly visit to monthly visit what we tracked, even with a visual reminder. Within each outreach visit, I use bar graphs to collect data about things like favorite story, favorite X (related to the storytime theme), etc. But how to do that from visit to visit? Do we track # of books read? (too boring?) Iām still puzzling over this one and really want to figure out something!
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Did you print Data Gems in a specific font? It looks like what you would get with an old-fashioned keyed typewriter and very cool.
Hi Kary @kjh !
I loved your reflection on #1 and #2. I found the opposite for myself, that the bracelet I made was more of a reminder to do the daily evening transfer, which has slowly become a nice reflection data journal of the things that make me feel different ways.
When you think about #3 and #4, itās hard to come up with what they might remember, so I suggest asking them directly. You can start with the questions in the zine. Something that reminds them of a lived (and shared!) experience tends to be most salient for many people.
Thanks Nicole! The text here is done with interlocking letter stamps. (Though I do have a few typewriters at homeā¦) I find that setting the text and stamping is much faster when I have to do a bunch. 
Hi Ada,
Thank you!
Pegz look like so much fun! Which set(s) do you have?
@hardingn I have the large size American Typewriter set for stamping the PLIX boxes we send and the small size American Typewriter set for smaller PLIX mail and some of our cards!
Thank you!
Hi
I learned one way not to launch a Data Gems program!
I was working with seven 2nd and 3rd grade kids at a school-based camp and the topic of the week was Kindness. I modified the activity of #26 Being More Kind from the Observe, Collect, Draw book. To help the children, I came up with lists for the children to reference when completing the activity spaces. This way, they could select from the list or come up with one of their own for each section - who to be kind to - types of kindness activities - and emotions about the tasks. I made sure there were at least 3 more for each section so at minimum, the children would have to decide which to leave off. I had a large bag of short and skinny markers for the children to use to color code the sections. Because when children create wearables, they like to have one for themselves and one to give away, I allowed each child to create 2 bracelets about kindness. I spoke about the data collection about kindness, but the teacher wanted the kids to get a movement break after the bracelet activity and told the kids they would work on the charts after lunch. (I was not allowed to return to continue the activity.) The teacher promised to send me information about how the activity went and photos.
For the bracelets, most of the children did not use kindness words, nor did they want to include tracking data. 2 days after the day I visited, I had not received information from the teacher regarding the activity nor photos. So I sent a follow-up email. The teacher replied that she and the helpers tried to present the activity but none of the kids were interested in filling out the tracking chart - let alone following up with it. I think I am going to work on creating a program for first year middle school students. Perhaps a homework tracker? A project tracker? Maybe I need to solicit parent involvement? Any thoughts?
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Hi Nicole,
Thank you for sharing this experience with us. I admire that youāve already tried it out! It can be very difficult to facilitate this activity when you have limited say in what you can do.
For that age range, I would suggest checking in on what their understanding of kindness is. Here are a few questions that could help:
- What does kindness mean to them?
- What do they think kindness means to adults?
- Could they describe a time when someone was kind to them? Was it a friend, parent, teacher, family, or someone else?
- What about a time they were kind to someone else? It could be a human, plant, or animal!
- How does it make them feel to be giving kindness? Or receiving kindness?
Activity #26 in the Observe, Collect, Draw book is designed to be collected over time. I really liked that you provided options for them to choose how they want to collect data. It is very important that they have agency and control over the way they collect their own data. Even though the book provides very good way of collecting data, it can be more compelling when people come up with their own ideas of how they do it. That feeling of ownership is very important. This can be supported by providing a variety of simple, personally meaningful examples that are unique to you (or your peersā¦ have them make some examples!)
Trying to cover data and kindness can be a lot to introduce at the same time! Since the data collection in that activity is designed to be collected over a longer period of time, it adds a difficult dimension.
For the wearable data trackers, when I ran it for adults, not everyone made something that tracks data. Some people created bracelets or keychain accessories that reminded them of things that were meaningful to them. I noticed that it helps to spend time on responding to questions like the ones in the zine, before diving into the materials. A helpful facilitation technique is to āscaffold the materialsāā¦ bring the fun distracting things out after theyāve spent time thinking about the concepts!
Great points, Ada!
The camp week for the kids was all about kindness, so the teachers were already covering the understanding of kindness. My program was on the second day of camp. I was trying to weave the data collection into the weekās program theme.
My idea was to present the tracker so the kids could start collecting data during that week of camp, but the teachers said the kids werenāt interested.
I think older kids would understand the idea of personal data collection.
I will work on designing a multi-session program for older children for the school year.
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I do believe I want to try this Data Gems one. It does look like a super fun one and I know the kids will love it.