This week, due to various circumstances, was my first week off work since October. For some alone time, I booked an apartment here in Switzerland and fully indulged in four days of self-care before taking up any studying or working again!
It completely allowed me to explore my interests further and simply watch, listen, and read whatever I want because I had so much time on my hands. Of course I went on walks and cooked, but below you only find my media-consumption visualised. The apartments’ wallpaper inspired my data visualisations, which is a combination of photography and digital drawing this week. Here is my original picture:
I used this picture as a template to illustrate three different aspects of these days of self-care. I visualised it in three pictures because I wanted to keep it clearly represented.
You can spot everything I listened to, watched and read in chronological order in the ‘rays’:
I avoided social media, and it truly helped me to switch off. I read a lot more because I couldn’t tell myself that I don’t have the time for it!
The second visualisation shows you the connections between the books, shows, movies, videos and podcasts. It was actually fun to discover the connections:
The dots in the third picture show you what these programmes provoked and how I felt. Please don’t be confused; there are no negative emotions, simply because I chose deliberately what I want to engage with during these four days:
Reflecting on the process of this visualisation, I absolutely enjoyed working more digitally. Surprisingly it took more time, but the possibilities are endless, and you can experiment with layers and colours.
By dealing with what I consumed through media, I developed a richer understanding of what I am genuinely interested in and what I could integrate into daily routines even during stressful workweeks.
This week will help me reflect on the past weeks because it broadens and fosters my understanding of what information and data I need to focus on, both as a student and as a teacher. More on this in the reflection of this block, coming in two days.
Beautiful visualisation(s) … the wallpaper and the information are vivid. Have you done a combined one with all the data in one visualisation ! My topic was reading material and level of engagement at a more basic level and definitely less artistic… you do gain more insights
Really enjoyed your wallpaper visualizations. I wonder whether you could find way to reflect from this on the role of data in teaching? The visualization of “the connections between the books, shows, movies, videos and podcasts” seemed to me to open up some possible reflections on the ways educational data is often generated from connecting various datasets (so-called linked data). Indeed, as we turn towards questions of “governing with data” then linked data becomes even more important, as large-scale systems comprising multiple connected databases and datasets are used to generate information for policy purposes (ie to measure compliance or to inform policy development).