My history with digitalization
I was born in 1991, so I am of the generation, that remembers the analog world but was raised to the drums of the digital one. I remember having computer classes at school to learn different programs, but used pencil and notebooks and actual books to learn in class. I think that learning the technology can rather naturally and with minimal effort to my age group. I know many did have homes where the parents were more sceptical of technology and those kids usually needed to teach their parents’ to use everything. Luckily my mum was rather tech savvy, so she did not need us children to teach her computer skills, and we had a few computers at home rather early on. She worked remotely from home, so she did have to have a grip on the tech stuff for that. The only this she has a distaste off is social media, though she has realised the value of apps like Linkedin, Facebooks, Instagram and WhatsApp.
I remember that while i was in high school, we still did all the exams and essays on paper, which i hated. I was so happy to take a creative writing class, where we were allowed to write our portfolio and essays with computers. From there to this point, step by step digitalization has taken more of a grip on my life. Like mother like daughter i suppose. Doing my bachelor’s degree between 2013-2016 we did do a lot by hand, but for example all the essays we wrote were done digitally and my thesis was (and still is) in Theseus’ digital archive. Now I’m doin my master’s degree without ever setting foot on campus. All remotely, all digital. Fancy that. I started my work life after my bachelor degree as a kindergarten teacher and that was still Noways I work as a digital tutor for early childhood education and care in city of Imatra.
Digitalization in my work
I started my work life after my bachelor degree as a kindergarten teacher and at that time, it was still common for parents to give their child’s care time reservations on a sheet of paper. We was some iPads and a video projector in the day care centre but no one seems to know how to use them other than playing videos on them. That point onward we’ve started to rapidly digitalize everything: parents report their care times and child’s absences on apps, we sent parents pictures and videos of their child through a digital folder and tablets are used more as a pedagogical tool. After some odd years as a teacher, I switched cities and jobs. Nowadays I work as a digital tutor for early childhood education and care (=ECEC for shorts) in city of Imatra. I work in information management (=IM for shorts), thou my “customers” are the people working in ECEC.
In my current line of work I assist people working in ECEC to use digital tools and equipment as part of full time pedagogy. I also have more technical aspects to my work: We provide IT-support and are usually the admin on the city’s enterprise resource planning systems and case management systems.
One of the most interesting new aspects of our work is introducing an AI powered chatbot to help our educator with basic IT-problems. We feed it differents paths starting with the most common problems like how to change your password and the path guides the educator on how to solve the problem.
Another big thing that we are automating enrolling new devices. In imatra, every teacher and every student from the third grade up have has their own work computers and ECEC, pre school and 1-2. gardes have assigned number of tablets or computers for every groups/class. We use leasing contracts so the devices change every three years (not all at ones, they are divided on three years, so every year the lease is renew on one part of schools). Even though the are split into 3 renewal intervals, there are hundreds of devices to collect and distribute every autumn. So this years we are joining up with a third party organization to automate enrolling all new lease devices into our enterprise environment. In the past we have enrolled every device by hand, so this would be a massive way to safe labour hours. I am in general rather impartial to automation, since I’ve seen how too much of it can really mess up a lot, but automation this sort of redundant manual labour does make me excited!
Open digital society
So, the European data protection regulations put rather many restrictions on my work life. We in the branch of IM control all apps and sites used within the city’s education services and GDPR puts a lot of demands on it. We need to be aware how we collect children’s, parents and city’s’ own employees’ data and personal information. How do we retain pedagogical documents and other sensitive information so that it is secure? These are the things all education provides (ie. cities and municipalities) are facing.
Probably hardest part of the work is still trying to get all those who work in education to understand that we need to follow the rules and that means that we can’t use whatever apps and sites we will at schools / ECEC with children. They need to be monitored and we need to make sure using those apps and sites in education follows the demands of GDPR and our national laws and acts. We have a third part which evaluates the suitability of apps and sites, but it is up to us in distribute the ones that people can use and ban those that aren’t okay to use.
Also, data breaches are fairly common and I do think that the concept of open digital society and using SSO (single sign on) via your Google or Microsoft account does enable cyber crimes. People are frighteningly casual with their passwords as well. I do think that MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) brings some extra security, but people need to start taking the no same password on different platforms-preach seriously.
As a positive note, the practical ways data protection laws and regulations show in the field of education is one of the most important things I am advising and educating people on these days. It is a rather a new thing for educators to internalize: so I won’t be without a job anytime soon.
Self evaluation
Doing these exercises I’ve seen my own field rather more verstile than before. When showcasing or generally telling about my work I’ve traditionally been focused on telling solely about the guiding and educating I do with ECEC educator. It was eye opening to thing of my work from more of a technical perspective. Though I adore the part I do with educators as well!
It also gave me more of a spark to get more information on technical side of ioT and big data. They were interesting subjects to learn about!
Here are some blogs I checked out about digi society:
