NotD: The network of the day

Mapping real-world systems to abstract representations is a fundamental skill in network science, yet many students struggle with this abstraction, especially when it is introduced via formal mathematics. Networks are used in many different fields; however, students often learn network terminology without building an intuition about what these terms mean and represent. We describe Network of the Day (NotD), a simple interactive activity that teaches students to see networks in the world around them. The activity itself requires little to no technical knowledge, allowing students with diverse mathematical backgrounds to engage in critical thinking and abstraction as they consistently think about real systems as networks, not only by mapping physical systems to networks, but also by identifying network structure. We present NotD as an accessible activity for introducing students to networks, one easily implemented in many different classroom settings.