I currently work as a teacher in the Ylä-Savo Joint Authority for Education in Agriculture and Forestry. My work mainly involves teaching rural entrepreneurs and animal caretakers. Nowadays, I mainly teach forestry and some technical subjects. Forestry education is quite practical. We practice the use of brushcutters and chainsaws, learn about different types of forests, and practical forest management. Forest management is quite traditional, with digitalization not strongly impacting the work. However, in forest management planning, we use various digital applications to some extent. We mostly use the Omametsä application, which is a program for viewing and updating forest plans. In teaching, I make extensive use of computers and projectors. During teaching sessions, I show images or slides to the students. We also watch related educational videos on the projector screen.
This spring, we have started creating teaching materials for self-study courses. The goal of these courses is for students to independently study topics according to the curriculum.
I use WhatsApp extensively for communication with students and colleagues. We have WhatsApp groups for different student groups, through which we can quickly communicate various matters. The application also makes it easy to send pictures and videos. We even use it for arranging presentations and sharing visual material for screen evaluation.
Our school utilizes various social media channels. Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok are among the applications used. Personally, I do not actively participate in their use, as there are separate team members responsible for adding content to different channels. Each teacher and staff member produces photos and videos, but this social media team transfers the content to platforms like Facebook. This helps in focusing on the core task of teaching.
In my free time, I use YouTube a lot for information gathering, especially for various repair tasks like fixing cars or machinery. It’s convenient to watch tutorials on YouTube, for example, when doing a tractor clutch repair, to avoid unnecessary disassembly and ensure that the repair proceeds quickly and correctly.
I chose five different applications that I could start utilizing more:
ChatGPT
I logged into the service for the first time because of this course and tried to gather information related to my profession. I noticed the service to be very functional, so I could utilize artificial intelligence in teaching, especially in lesson planning and material production.
Mobile ID
In my work, I need to handle a lot of electronically signed documents nowadays, so Mobile ID would facilitate logging into these services. It would also improve security since I wouldn’t need to carry online banking credentials and an authentication list for electronic signatures.
YouTube
I could start producing videos for educational purposes. Producing videos would later facilitate teaching, and it would be easy to revisit topics or absent students could catch up with the rest of the group through videos. I’ve long dreamed of starting to make videos about my hobbies and leisure activities as well. I feel that my various projects might interest viewers of different ages.
Todoist
I explored this service, and it could be a good app for me in my work. I’m a mildly impulsive person, and sometimes I find it difficult to keep things and events organized. This service would help me organize tasks and remind me of important things on time.
Blogger
We could start using this for guiding students during their internships. The blogs created by students could also serve as peer support, and they could follow each other’s blogs effectively.
Self-assessment
This topic was somehow the most interesting of these different sections. Previously, I have mainly used WhatsApp. It was fun to notice how extensive the list of various platforms that can be utilized in the workplace was in this task. In the field of education, before the era of COVID-19, there weren’t nearly as many different digital platforms in use as there are nowadays. Currently, for example, all our meetings are held on Teams or Zoom. And many teaching sessions can also be followed to some extent remotely, for example, on Teams. The digital world is, of course, a part of today’s reality, but at the same time, people’s well-being is decreasing due to constant restlessness. Therefore, I feel it is very important to regularly take breaks from all the incoming messages and social media. I have made it a habit to minimize phone usage on weekends and focus on close relationships within my own family. I am also concerned about the addictive phenomena caused by various applications, even concerning my own children. However, when used correctly, social media can be a good and refreshing thing. Nevertheless, as adults, it is important for us to supervise, guide, and even warn our children about the various dangers associated with these matters.