As much of this workshop is centered on introducing ‘personal’ digital archiving, the ‘personal’ is where the workshop starts.

This can be a group call and response where you put the responses on a board. These reflection activities can be done solo, in pairs, or as a small group (4 or fewer). Students shouldn’t share anything too personal or detailed to protect their privacy and maintain certain boundaries in the classroom. Over sharing risks overexposing students in the classroom setting, which can impact their comfort with the activity or even classroom participation long term. While this workshop won’t be storing any student data in school or district-wide databases, student privacy is a major concern. This primer from The Student Privacy Compass details what student data is, who wants to use it, and how we can protect it.

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Below are two options for activities that encourage students to conduct an audit of their digital materials. Guide students through the prompts and have them take some notes. The findings that occur here can be helpful throughout the workshop.

The first activity focuses on having students reflect on their digital material creation: making, storing/saving, and retrieval.

The second activity is similar, but needs the use of external files to have students reflect.

Digital Audits

Activity A:

Making

What types of digital materials do you make?

Storing

Of the materials mentioned, how are you storing these items?

Saving

When returning to a particular folder or storage location, how are you deciding what to intentionally save?

Retrieval

Does your making, storing, retrieving process work?

Activity B:

Our digital devices are a reflection of us; that’s why algorithms are so great at serving up things we want to consume or engage with.

Share some images of a desktop, the inside of a folder. Memes and GIFs of infinite scroll of pictures, looking through folders.

Based on the media shared, what patterns and observations emerge? Some questions to get the conversation going:

Turn the observation inward. Looking at their own devices, computers and iPads, what observations could be made?

After either activity

Turn the conversation over to the question of saving and remembering.

Digital materials are saved, and often that is for a functional purpose; to return to as a school or work assignment or as an ongoing personal project, but these materials also function as memory (not the literal computer space allocation).

What you save and what you don’t save are a reflection of the person you exist as in a particular time and over time. A great way to illustrate this point is to ask if anyone has found an old diary, or opened an old text document with writing from years past.

In the same way we have access to letters and photographs as primary source documents, the files you create today are a digital memory of the time you live in today.

Possible Tie In Examples

Archives of physical ephemera digitized, marginalia, digital archives

**If there is relevant multimedia from the class subject, having examples here is also good

Digital Archives

NMAAHC collection

Colored Conventions

Everyday people saving their creations intentionally or not are the foundation of our history and art.

Power Tie In

When thinking about what we save and remember in accessible institutions like archives and museums, whose memory is preserved, and who is lost or erased from the collective memory?

In thinking about our digital management and saving, can our practices affect who gets saved and remembered digitally in the future? Are there ways people are already doing this?

Transition

In thinking about your digital materials, what are some challenges that jeopardize your saving and memory?

Are the methods you currently use secure?