Mapping in my mind

 

A Mind Map

Image Source:

Cool Infographics. [Image]. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/tag/mind-map

Room 132 has been Group six’s tutorial room for three weeks and each week before taking my self-allocated seat in the room, I rearrange the desks.

Why do I do this? why do I care what arrangement the desks are in?

Subconsciously, this simple layout of desks and chairs along with the seating arrangement had formed a map in my mind and it allowed me to feel secure and a sense of power within one’s self, within this space. An interesting TED Talk by Aris Venitikidis called Adventures in Mapping talks about the maps we draw in our minds and their importance. 

My personal map of room 132 had been created in week two during the first tutorial where the desks were laid out in the shape of a “U”. This allowed each person to see each other and the reality of the other. Sometimes we can be oblivious to the way the other sees something and miss it completely. (Wood, Kaiser & Abramms, 2006, pp.1) 

Each week, I re-arrange the desks back to this position. Along with ease of access in and out of the room, the desk arrangement allows the conversation to flow. The conversation can be clearly mapped from the facilitator who speaks first, to one person who regularly speaks and to two others who contribute regularly after that. For the most part, these are the only contributors to the tutorial conversation. 

But that’s not to say that the others aren’t learning or participating in their own way. 

For the others, their seat is just a place where they can blend into the space, they have the best view of the nature of the space (Barnes, 1997) but they don’t need to interact with it. They come and go as if in a virtual world, they can enter the room and watch, listen and learn without commenting. They’re an observant Flâneur, they don’t announce their arrival or bring attention to themselves. 

Maps are how we see the world, or see “our” world (Kuttainen, 2016) and the flâneur that may seem to lurk within the shadows, may see the map of room 132 in an entirely different way.

After all, maps are selections from everything that is known, bent to the mapmaker’s purpose. (Wood et al., 2006, pp. 8)

References:

Barnes, G. (1997). Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html

Cool Infographics. [Image]. (2013) Retrieved from http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/tag/mind-map

Flaneur. (2016) In Oxford dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/flaneur

Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 4. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Ventikidis, Aris. [TEDxTalks]. (2012, September). Aris Venetikidis: Making sense of maps [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/playlists/138/adventures_in_mapping

Wood, D., Kaiser, W.L. & Abramms, B. (2006) Seeing Through Maps: Many Ways to See the World. Oxford, UK. New Internationalist Publications Ltd.