Digital map

Digital Mapping

Image source: The regulatory review

This week I got to take a look at my digital map. A digital map is looking over your internet connections or applications and reviewing how much you use them and for what. You can use the internet for both personal reasons and professional reasons. There are two terms that are being used on the map, these are visitor and resident. According to David White and his article, these two terms describe how you are using the internet and how much. A visitor is when the user is going online for something and not having any interaction or leaving any social trace behind. A resident is when someone is using the internet to connect and communicate with other people. 

My Digital map

When I first thought about my digital map I thought that it was going to be mainly personal and fall under resident. Majority of the apps that I have on my phone are for social media. Once I'm home from work, done with coaching, and have done any homework I mainly just want to relax. I love to online shop and look for new projects to do. I am also at an age where social media is big and there are a variety of platforms that I use. I have some apps on my phone for work but I mainly keep all of that stuff on my computer or work iPad. Once I mapped everything out I was a little more surprised how spread out everything was. 

Under personal resident I have all of my social media platforms. Snapchat, Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are for my own personal entertainment. On these platforms I am interacting with other people and leaving a social trace. I put Pinterest right on the line of resident and in between personal and professional because I use Pinterest a lot to find crafts for my students, lesson plan ideas, and classroom decorations. My Gmail is right on that same line because while I have my personal email, the one that gets used the most is my school email and my email for coaching. In the personal-visitor part of my digital map, I have Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Cricut design space, Lululemon, and my banking apps. I placed these in this part of my map because these are all personal apps that I use, yet don't interact with anyone or communicate. These are mainly media (videos and music) online shopping, crafting, and banking. In the professional visitor part of my map, I have outlook, google docs, and google meets. These are the 3 apps that I probably use the least. I mainly use these apps on my computer and have them on my phone just in case. Outlook is not my primary email platform so I just have that there to see any emails that come through from school. For the last part I have my professional resident part of the map. For this part I have Seesaw and google classroom. These two apps I use for school and for communication with my students and families.

All images from Google Images

What I have gathered from my digital map is that majority of the apps I use are for personal use. I have apps for school and work on my phone, but I don't use them as often as I use the others. I feel like I have subconsciously kept school and work apps on my computer or on my iPad. This way I am keeping my work life and my home life a little separate. I am constantly working or thinking about work and that just gives me some time to unwind and take a break. I think that sometimes I also just need to completely unplug from technology and take a breather.