It can be hard to share how you’ve laid out your materials so here’s a place to share your photos and other explorations!
I organized my materials:
Things that cut
Wire
Coloring - ink pad and crayons
Sticky - glue, washi tape and foam stickers
Markers
Rubbery things - Balloon and rubber band
Eyes
Jingly things - Bells
Soft and Squishy - pom poms
Die Cuts/ Ephemera
Notebooks
Cards
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during today’s meeting – was thinking about how as the value increases (more data/information gathered//), the more chaos / higher levels of thinking / entropy arise? like the idea of quantum data collection building thinking systems / conscious AI / etc. (the more precise the measuring the tool, the longer the measurement [[[or more data collected]]]) – you can dive endlessly into data so at what point does it create great systems vs too much data that overwhelms?
how might data reflection push community work? how to encourage a check in and visualization of the self for community members that often do not have time or space for this? what tools for data sorting are viable to community members? (and how might sorting the data help us with the increasing entropy of our systems at the library/in our lives?)
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I originally sorted by function
Edibles - things that cut - things that mark - things that attach - (random no-sew fabric flowers that were on my table) - paper things
Then I decided to rearrange everything by shape(ish)
square-ish rectangles - skinny rectangles - scissors - sticks - round things - odd shapes
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I had just done left side carpal/cubital tunnel surgery so I put anything with utility to my right, with things I expected to use (like markers and scissors) closer to me. My tea is to the left in rainbow order because that’s pleasing!
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Here is @azratahirovic Azra’s arrangement!
Hello! I haven’t posted on this forum yet, but over the past few months I’ve been working with Ada on revamping the DataBasic activity (new name TBD!) and I’ve learned a lot during the process, so I wanted to share some of my reflections and thoughts.
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I wanted to join the PLIX project to get more involved in education and, more specifically, creative learning. Teaching in engaging and fun ways, and ways that matter personally to people, is important to me and I wanted to learn how to do that
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Tested out the Paper Circuits and (In)visible Self activities to see what an activity that facilitates creative learning looked like, and also to practice facilitating with friends. I felt unsure how to facilitate the activities (maybe it being with my friends also made it feel weird), but it was good practice and fun. I also liked how the activity examples were simple, nothing too complicated, but I was able to come up with my own ideas from them! (low floor, high ceiling)
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Overall goal for the revamped DataBasic activity was to have people collect data that was meaningful to them and let them learn something new or reflect on themselves (or people in their lives). We took a lot of inspiration from the Dear Data project and book and their creative data collection.
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Once it got to brainstorming data activities, it was a bit hard coming up with something that would work. I think I kept thinking about written reflections, once again taking inspiration from bullet journals and the Dear Data prompts, but it wasn’t including an artistic or hands-on aspect to it. Dear Data had creative drawing representations of data, but we wanted to make something 3D. Maybe we could do data sculptures? But I wanted the activity to be something easy for people to add to throughout their day, to continue tracking data.
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Came up with a data bracelet idea! With beads and charms that represent what you’re tracking and how you’re tracking it. For example, could be making a water tracker with numbered beads to keep count, or you could make a bracelet that tracked how many times you hung out with one of your friends the past month.
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Also came up with a woven data activity, where people could tie knots or weave beads and charms in to track something (for example, tie a knot whenever you feel stressed). Over time, with more data collected, it would turn into a larger physical representation that you can look back on. Sort of similar to a temperature blanket, which people knit to track the weather over the year by assigning colors
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The big questions we wanted people to think about were, “What are you collecting data on?” “Why are you collecting it this way?” and “What does this mean to you?”
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Reflecting on yourself, your habits and interests, or on those who are meaningful to you!
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Ada and I tested out the data bracelet activity, and the examples I made were just simple beaded bracelets that you could move the beads over to track data. However, when we got to making the bracelets, I found myself coming up with lots of ideas on what to track and things that were meaningful for me! For example, I made a bracelet that tracked how often I called to catch up with my older siblings and mom. Ada made similar bracelets for her friends, with charms that reminded her of the activities they did together, and the numbered beads tracked how many times they hung out that month.
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For me, I have been using that bracelet tracker since and it’s made me more aware of how long it’s been since I talked to my family. It made me make more time for them, something that is important to me, and think more about if I’ve been spending as much time with the people I want to spend time with! The activity made me stay connected to what matters to me and collecting the data taught me more about my habits.
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Next steps will be including more details on the weaving activity as another option besides the data bracelet and working on the Zine, but I really like how I was thinking of those questions (what I want to collect data on, why, how?) while creating the bracelets and I was reminded of other things that mattered to me that I wanted to track
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