My Current Job and the Digital Tools Used in It
I work as an early childhood education teacher in a daycare center. My job involves educating and teaching children aged 1-5 years, and I am responsible for the pedagogical activities of my group, as well as leading my team. The workdays in the daycare center consist of planning, implementing, and assessing the quality and pedagogical daily activities for the children. Additionally, I participate in various weekly or monthly meetings and maintain the children’s early childhood education plans in collaboration with their families. In my daily work routine, I use several applications such as Päikky, WhatsApp, Outlook, and Teams. Less frequently, I use Pinterest, Facebook, and various apps designed to support children’s growth and learning.
Päikky is an operational management system for early childhood education through which all information related to children’s education plans, support needs, contact information, and care times is communicated and recorded between families and staff. Päikky also serves as the primary communication tool between the daycare and families, similar to the Wilma system used in schools.
Collaboration with other group employees and my supervisor is a daily occurrence, and WhatsApp is the application used for daily instant messaging in my work. However, WhatsApp is not used for communication with families due to security reasons, and it is crucial to remember that no private information or photos can be shared through WhatsApp even among staff. Email is also a daily communication tool, and the Outlook application is used for less immediate and more formal communication with partners and supervisors.
Although the nature of my job involves a lot of in-person presence without the possibility of remote work, Teams is still used for participating in various meetings or training sessions. It is also possible to have early childhood education discussions with families through Teams, although it is recommended to hold these meetings face-to-face.
I use Pinterest when planning activities for my child group, searching for various craft ideas, for example. Pinterest is a great app because, with its search engine, you can find ideas based on specific themes. I also use Pinterest to some extent in my personal life, as it offers fun DIY ideas for home decoration.
The early childhood education department in my hometown maintains a shared Facebook page where staff from each daycare can post content related to their group’s activities. It is essential to ensure that children are not recognizable in the photos and that no identifiable information is visible in the texts. I have personally submitted content related to Valentine’s Day and our forest trips for publication. It is also enjoyable to view other people’s posts, as they sometimes provide nice ideas to support my work.
New Applications to Support My Work and Their Pros and Cons
The first application I chose to support my work is Blogger. I’ve often thought it would be nice to compile some sort of blog about my work, reflecting on and developing my professional skills. Although I do this constantly in my own thoughts and informal discussions with my team, writing would make it more structured. In the form of blog writing, someone else, such as a student in the field, might benefit from it. Blog writing could also be used to highlight the activities of the child group. My workplace maintains a blog similar to the Facebook page, but I’m not sure if it is very actively used today. However, the absolute obstacle to blog writing is insufficient time, as even now, there is too little time available for tasks outside the child group.
The second application I chose to utilize in my work is ChatGPT. I believe it could save work time, especially if time-consuming documentation could somehow be done using ChatGPT. However, the application would need a feature through which the text to be written could be dictated to save the worker’s time truly. I haven’t used ChatGPT enough to know if it has such a function. If ChatGPT could be used in this way, it would be crucial to remember data security issues when handling children’s information. How would data security be implemented in such a situation, or would it be implemented at all?
In early childhood education, various social media channels are often used to highlight child group activities and provide activity tips related to different seasons. I think Instagram and TikTok could also be utilized from a recruitment perspective since there is a nationwide workforce shortage. Many private daycare centers have their social media accounts, and I would argue that almost all individuals also have some kind of account. Of course, it’s a different matter how actively each account is used. Through posts on Instagram and TikTok, potential employees could be targeted by highlighting the positive aspects of early childhood education and, for example, employee benefits. On the other hand, searching for employees through such free social media services could be risky, as individuals who are entirely unsuitable for the job might also end up seeking work, especially since substitutes can be hired without formal qualifications.
Canva is an application I would particularly like to learn to use in my work. It allows you to create various visual templates that can be used in posters, communication, and even pedagogical materials designed for the child group. The basic version of Canva is available for free, but the more versatile and advanced version is paid. I have tried the free program before, but colleagues have told me that the paid version is much more user-friendly and versatile, which is, of course, tempting. The downside of the paid version is that I am not willing to pay for work-related things myself, and the employer does not cover any extra costs, so it might be better to stick with the free version of Canva.
Elements of Successful Use of Social Media
Regardless of which social media channel is used to support work, several key elements should be considered for successful use. Data security is crucial, as mentioned earlier in the blog post, and must always be prioritized. It’s also important to plan posts somewhat in advance rather than writing the first thoughts that come to mind. When a text is thoughtfully composed and planned, the audience is more likely to read it, and the text is more likely to achieve its purpose. The ability to condense text is also essential to prevent posts from becoming too long, as I, for one, do not have the patience to read overly lengthy texts. The more concise and informative the text, the more it will capture the reader’s interest.
When producing text, it is also important to write about a variety of topics, especially if the text is intended for an audience and not just for the writer.
When publishing images, it’s important to ensure good quality, which can be achieved today even with high-quality smartphones. It is also essential to have written permission from everyone appearing in the publication.
Social media activities can be fun and engaging, making it easy to spend a lot of time on them. However, in the workplace, it is important to remember that using social media is often not the only task, and time spent on it should be limited to ensure that other tasks are completed with the same level of efficiency.
Here are some initial tips for successful social media use, and I would love to hear more tips from readers in the comments.
Self-Evaluation
This task was the most interesting of all the tasks I’ve written so far. It was eye-opening to consider my work in the light of digitalization and realize how much I already use various applications in my job and, on the other hand, how many more applications I could also utilize to support my work.
Blog writing is starting to flow nicely by this third task; this is quite an enjoyable way to study, and I am already considering how I could incorporate blog writing into my thesis.
Through this task, I feel I have genuinely learned new things or, more accurately, I feel I have gained new ideas to replace old ones. It’s gratifying to see how my thoughts are increasingly turning towards digitalization and how I could work in that field after this education.