MY WORK AND DIGITAL TOOLS
I work as a compulsory education instructor in the General Upper Secondary Education Learning Services of Kuopio City. My job is to supervise and guide young people who have completed primary school to apply and start their secondary education. The job is new and is related to the reform of the Compulsory Education Act, which came into force in the autumn of 2021.
I use a few digital tools and systems every day. I could take advantage of many other digital tools, but my first year of work I spent studying new law and solving practical development challenges. However, now might be the time to explore the use of different applications, for example in youth counseling.
Here are the digital tools I use the most in my work:
ASSI:
Assi is a registration and case management system. I use it to document customer work and store encrypted documents. Assi is a secure environment for recording even sensitive things.
MICROSOFT TEAMS:
I use Microsoft Teams in my work every day. This is the tool I use absolutely the most. Teams is a communication and collaboration platform that enables among other things teamwork remotely, chat, working between different organizations, video calls and meetings, sharing files and information. I have found the use of Teams easy. With the COVID-19 pandemic telecommuting and remote meetings have become a normal part of everyday life. Teams is a great tool for that.
NEPTON:
Nepton is a working time monitoring application. I start and end my day at Nepton. I record the length of the working day and the duration of the lunch break in the application.
WHATSAPP:
I think basically I shouldn’t use WhatsApp on my organization’s phone anymore. However, I have found that it is challenging today to reach young people during office hours by phone, text message or email. Young people often have mobile subscriptions that contain only mobile data. That’s why they handle all the communication through apps that work over mobile data like WhatsApp or other social media. So in order to reach the students, I have occasionally continued to use WhatsApp. Don’t tell anyone! 😉
DIGITAL TOOLS I COULD USE FOR DAILY WORK
TIKTOK & INSTAGRAM:
If I were brave, I would go there where the young people really are. If I have understand right, the youth use a lot the TikTok. However, TikTok is a social media channel where you have to bring yourself out and pose. I don’t like filming myself and I have a very hard time publishing material where I perform myself. The app only reminds me of dance videos but I guess it’s a lot more. Instagram is more familiar to me than TikTok because I use it in my civilian life.
However, setting up TikTok and Instagram accounts would help me reach my target group, the youth. With these social media accounts, I could share information about compulsory education reform, current education issues, and my own job description. I know that several social and health professionals have set up their own social media accounts and I find it fun to follow them. Some focus more on sharing information and some produce very hilarious content. I just met a school curator at the seminar who makes TikTok videos. I found the content he produced to be wonderfully entertaining and fresh, yet informative. I think young people like the videos she makes.
The minus side to maintaining such social media channels is that they require time and regular content production. Secondly, do I want to make myself such a public figure and take this matter into my own name. What if the employee changes? The account should be created in such a way that it is not only personalized to me and can be transferred to a potential successor.
DOODLE:
Why haven’t I figured out how to use Doodle in my work before?! I’ve struggled dozens of times with finding common meeting times and I haven’t remembered Doodle’s existence. I plan to take Doodle to me as soon as I return to work from my summer vacation. With Doodle, I can save dozens of emails and phone calls while looking for a meeting with colleagues. I have used Doodle in my spare time to organize baby showers, dinners or bachelorette parties. It is extremely easy to use and I do not see any risks in using it that would prevent it from being used in my work.
TWITTER:
I’ve been thinking about signing in to Twitter for a long time, actually for years. My interest in Twitter has been fading since my husband started using it and telling me about interesting tweets and tweeters. However, I would not want to join any new social media channel besides the old ones (Facebook, Instgram and LinkedIn). I have recently been consciously trying to reduce the use and following of social media and pay attention to screen time. Logging in to Twitter would fight against this. I think we spend too much time on various IT tools. The distorted flood of information brought about by social media increases anxiety, comparing oneself to other people, and jealousy. This is not good for me. This is why I have refrained from joining Twitter despite all its benefits.
LEADOO-BOT:
I have been wondering how I could take advantage of the bot-service in my own work. I have decided that next fall I will start develop and build a compulsory education- bot targeted at students, guardians and schools . With the help of the Bot, I am trying to reduce my own workload and provide a quick way to get information on issues related to the Finnish compulsory education reform.
SELF-EVALUATION
During the assignment, I became acquainted with all the digital tools listed in the assignment. I got the most insight into using Doodle in my work. I got a lot of tips about different tools that I can use in my work in the future. There were many different tools in the listing that are suitable for project and team work. I hope that in the future I could work on some project or development tasks. In a job like those, I would definitely use tools like Miro, Mural, and Asana. I think of all the tasks in the course, this taught me the most new things.
The course as a whole has been quite the culmination of my studies. The course is the last of my studies. I did it on my summer vacation while the rest of the family was on a summer vacation trip in Tampere. Also, producing a text in English is really challenging for me. However, I am extremely pleased to have survived the English course I feared. Even though I avoided it until the last…