I work as a vocational special education teacher at Valkeakoski Vocational College on the field of beauty therapy. On my work I use Microsoft365 platforms continuously. I keep in touch with my colleagues by Teams, I use for teaching mostly Teams and make tests by Forms, now all teachers at VAAO are proceeding to use Moodle as a platform. I have taught also some courses with Google Classroom. I also use Wilma as a student data administration. We have our personnel intranet, working time control platform and personnel administration programs.
I communicate to some extent with colleagues and students by WhatsApp. Our team has own WhatsApp team to communicate quickly with each other. I used to have a WhatsApp teams with my students too, but couple of years ago there turned out off-topic behavior, so I ended the teams. Now I still answer if a student put me a WhatsApp message, but for information security reasons I prefer Wilma as a communication channel. For keeping up security we have on our work phones Secapp app and Powertools incident notification app.
It was in a way quite easy for me to pick up several electrical platforms to explore, because I don’t use them much outside work. I am not interested in tools, apps or platforms by and large. I need to see good benefits for using them before I bother explore a new one. Well, on this course I have opportunity to focus on this subject.
DeepL
I picked up DeepL, because it would be useful to translate texts, files, edit texts with AI and to have expert translations to deepen understanding for texts. For example, when I search information about a particular ingredient in a cosmetic product sometimes, I have to review long scientific texts. It would be much quicker with expert translating tool.
Disadvantages on using DeepL is that you can use it for free only to three non-editable file translations per month and uploads are limited to 5 MB. Paid versions cost from 7,49 – 49,99€ or if you order “Enterprice level” for an entire organizations pricing is negotiable.
LinkedIn is my other new companionship. I made an account on this fall but haven’t orientated myself on it until now. I find out LinkedIn beneficial on keeping touch with my connections and colleagues on other organizations. It seems to be easy to create new professional relationships also. I can make a job-hunting extension on my profile, if I wish. Many companies and organizations are active on LinkedIn. I started to follow Service center for continuously learning and employment, Ministry of Education and Culture, Sitra, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and Work2030 project. LinkedIn gives me possibilities to take a part to interesting events.
From my point of view LinkedIn offers many exellent opportunities. The tool is versatile and for the time being free. There is available paid properties too, but I don’t look for them now. When using LinkedIn you must be aware how manage tool setting. If you leave everything on proportion shape, the tool will send you a lot of information all the time and everything you operate, or post is pretty much open for all users and can be partly open for non-users too.
Miro
The third tool I explore is Miro. I watched an introduction video and enthusiastic about the tool. Well, when I signed in with my work email, I wasn’t so enthusiastic anymore. Having the free version only, there is a forced setting that everyone who use the @vaao.fi email can join to the same working platform. My idea was that when I teach course of customer event planning or business planning my students could make their plans, timetables, budgets and monitoring results by Miro. That is of course possible if our school buys a license.
Pi.AI
The fun and a bit creepy new tool for me is Pi.AI. On it’s introducing says: “Pi.AI is empathetic and smart personal assistant, ready to support”. There is no need to sign in at all. If you want to save your conversations, then you need to have an account. Pi is a very empathetic and compassionate “pal”. There were topics about mental disorders on front side. I asked how I can understand and support a student of mine who is struggling with bipolar disorder or borderline personal disorder and what is the difference with those two. Pi gave me a reasonable answer.
I watched also a video which introduced how to use Pi. A man wrote about his stressful day and Pi started to comfort him and suggest options how to relieve stress and solve the specific problems.
I will take Pi along when having discussions about different topics with students in my class. I could ask Pi’s opinion when I don’t know how to support or motivate students. Pi itself reminds that it can make mistakes, so it is always a human responsibility to evaluate Pi’s opinions and suggests.
Vimeo
The last tool I picked is Vimeo. My colleague has made tutorial videos on Youtube about facials and foot massage. I have considered to make some of my own too, but I don’t like the idea that my videos would be freely seen by anybody. Vimeo gives me a good option to make tutorial on teaching use and define access rights for my students. I found out that Vimeo is quite easy to use, and the free version works okay. I am delighted that there are no advertising videos before or in the middle of my videos.
Self-evaluation
I came out of my comfort zone when exploring so many kinds of new platforms. There was a fear deep in my mind that if I do something wrong, it would be difficult to get rid of a platform or service. Now I feel that I exceeded myself and can proudly note that I have learned a bunch of useful things.
I preferred the most LinkedIn and Pi. They were easy to use, made me interested and were in a good way different than any other platform I had used before. I see valuable for me in the future too.