MY CURRENT WORK AND DIGITOOLS I USE

I work as a social instructor in a child welfare institution. We use a variety of digital tools at my job. For recording and reporting we use Nappula (myneva.nappula) which is a patient information system. For communication and calendar, we use Outlook. We keep in touch with other workers and the youths’ social workers through email. In the calendar we list our daily to do lists and the appointments our youths have. We never use their names when marking out appointments though and rather use their room numbers to keep up an anonymity. At my job Teams is used for meetings inside the company or with social workers. At times we have training courses organized through Teams as well, but it used to be more common during the Covid pandemic. Nowadays in person training is preferred. For messaging app WhatsApp is used both for communication between different units in our child welfare institution and with youths and their parents. It is important to keep in mind cyber security while using WhatsApp though and we never use clients’ names or send messages containing personal information through it. It would be ideal to not use WhatsApp when discussing with the youths and their families, but WhatsApp is so widely used nowadays it is difficult to steer away from it. When communicating with different units in our organization WhatsApp is functional as with the chat group created, we can reach many people quickly, for example when needing advice or wanting extra hands to help in the unit. Microsoft 365 is used for example for writing out memorandums from our team meetings. My unit also has their own profile both in Facebook and Instagram which we use to communicate with youths who have gained their independence from our unit. We have a habit of organizing regular evenings where old clients can come to visit the unit and workers. It is obviously voluntary whether they want to befriend us on social media and we are never the first ones to send a friend or follow request. When posting invitations to the events organized, we can use Canva to create flyers.

SELECTED DIGITAL TOOLS

I went through the provided list of digital tools and have selected the following ones: Snapchat, DeepL, Openbadges, Pi and Todoist. I found these digital solutions to have the possibility to suit my work the best and be combined with the tools we already use.

Snapchat

At my work we have previously discussed creating a Snapchat profile for our unit. Snapchat is commonly used by the youths we work with. We could use Snapchat for reaching out to the youths (in a way cyber security is considered) and as another platform for sharing invitations to our events. That makes the intended use of it to be similar to WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram which is probably the reason we haven’t yet got to creating an account as we cover most areas with the applications mentioned.

DeepL

At times we work with youths and families we cannot communicate in Finnish with. Obviously official communication containing personal information is dealt with through translators and their services provided. But for quick, basic communication a tool like DeepL could make it easier to interact and understand each other. The translations it offers seem more accurate than Google Translates, which has been used as a quick fix at times.

Openbadges

My organization puts a lot of effort into training their employees. Openbadges seemed like a fun way to broadcast the skills we have collected during our professional career. It would also make our knowledge more noticeable, and you could for example reach out to coworkers you know have the specific knowledge in a topic you need guidance with.

Pi

AI is gaining popularity and it isn’t widely used at my work yet. The app Pi seemed like an interesting tool to offer for youths to use personally to talk through their issues. Clearly the goal is to form a connection with the youth and have them go through their thoughts and worries with us, but sometimes it is not possible, or the youths share only a part of their mind. The possibility of talking to an AI like Pi might help them to let their worries out. AI won’t replace the human connection and interaction but at times it could take away some of the shame and make one share things more freely. That could help to organize their thoughts for possibly reaching out to the workers afterwards.

Todoist

We have a habit of creating an “appointment” to our Outlook calendar titled “to do list” in which we write out the tasks one should complete during the day. In practice I don’t see a reason to change the existing system we have but if we wanted to do so Todoist seemed like a good solution for our needs.

PROS AND CONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is widely used and carries some possibilities for my working life as well. It can make communicating and reaching out easier and faster. But when working with sensitive situations in social services one must be extremely concerned with cyber security and following laws such as the GDPR. This brings many restrictions on utilizing social media at my work and makes it important that the workers acknowledge the risks social media contains.

SELF-EVALUATION

The assignment was interesting and made me consider social media as a tool at my job instead of only using it in my personal life. I had not fully realized the number of digital solutions I use in my work life daily as it comes with such a routine. The assignment also allowed me to look into digital solutions I had not previously heard of. I enjoyed trying to come up with ways we could utilize the tools at my job. Still, it was important to stay critical about cyber security rules concerning the clientele I work with as it sets many limitations on the applications we can freely utilize.