Digital Maps for Tracking Those Apps

I have always felt like I am part of the first ‘social media’ generation-I can still remember going through high school, and the excitement of having a friend invite me to join Facebook (since it was still invite-only in those days, and I had been a Myspace kid until that point, for those who remember the drama of choosing who was in your ‘top 12’). My first cell phone was strictly to be used for emergencies, because text messages still cost money, and I think the most exciting thing I could do with it was add new ringtones that were basically 10-second clips of different songs I liked at the time. As I’ve gotten older, that has obviously all changed, and I actually think my social media usage has tracked like a mountain-a sharp increase as more and more apps came out, and then a slow but steady decline over the last few years.

My use of any sort of educational apps outside of school was basically limited to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint-nowadays I feel as though every year there are more and more websites or apps I’m having students sign up for to use on a weekly (and possibly even daily) basis. In order to get a better gauge on how my feelings on my personal vs. professional technology use actually compare to the truth, I created the matrix linked below. The four quadrant points are personal and professional, and then visitor and resident. In thinking about what I use as a digital visitor, I looked into the apps/services that I use for a specific purpose, where I am not trying to create any sort of connections or digital footprint. On the other hand, what I use as a digital resident are the apps/services where I am trying to make connections with others.

Author's Image (icons taken from Google Images)

In reviewing my map, I was not very surprised that my personal use skewed much more toward the visitor side, as opposed to the resident side. As I noted above, I feel that as time has gone on, I use technology much more for specific purposes, but that I have gotten away from focusing as much on finding those connections, chasing likes and followers, etc. Even the social media apps that are traditionally used for those purposes, I feel I use more as a quick check-in (hey Facebook, who should I be wishing a happy birthday to today?), or I scroll through the same handful of profiles, and log off without adding anything to my own (hello Instagram). 

On the professional side, I thought I would have much more of a balance between visitor and resident, and I would say that is roughly what happened. Again, there are a handful of apps that are specifically for the delivery of educational content or undertaking specific educational tasks (IXL, for example, is a service our students use for 10 minutes every day during study hall to get extra practice on specific math or LA skills). But, there are also a number of apps where the focus is more on making those interpersonal connections. The G-suite of apps, for example, is the backbone of what we as a school create as far as materials for students, and what students create to show what they know. Similarly with Outlook, which is what we use for our work email accounts-I feel as though my work emails are much more connections-based than my personal email (Gmail). Plus, Outlook has way, way, way fewer random emails that go directly to my trash.

Finally, there are some apps that I could potentially see moving on this map in the near future. One would be Blogger, because I hope to grow my professional presence online in general, and I think Blogger can be a great way to do that. I could also see Twitter being the one ‘traditional’ social media app that actually navigates across that line from personal to professional, because right now I do feel like my main use for Twitter is to get news, and my own activity has definitely gone down a lot compared to earlier in my career in the Twitter-verse. However, if I were to transition more to seeing Twitter as a way to get information related to my career, I would imagine I would like to take a more active role in those discussions, which would mean it would actually navigate toward both the professional quadrant and more into the resident area as well. If I would have plotted Twitter five years ago, it would have been closer to the bottom right of my diagram. It is currently almost smack dab in the middle, and I could imagine that before long it jumps up closer to the very top right. It is interesting to see how much a personal use for the same app can change over time, but I think that speaks to the changes in where I have been in life, and what connections I feel I want (or at one point in life, I might have even said need) to make out of technology-based spaces.

One interesting side note-I would be interested to see the difference between my own map, and maps created by my students. After reading this blog on the generational difference between myself and my students in terms of how we use technology, I would imagine there would be some major differences both in the apps we use, and also where we would plot the same apps. Which makes sense, considering I'm a 30-something and they're just hitting the teen years. But I would wonder how their tech use would migrate to when they were the age I am now, if they would experience different changes that I have. With how far technology has come in the short time since I got that first flip phone, and knowing the leg up my students have on that, I would have to imagine those changes could be monumental.