In my childhood at 80’s there was no digital society 🙂 When I wanted to meet my friends, I got bike under me and cycle to my friends house. Or if I wanted just to talk to my friend, I called with landline to her and I was stucked in to my house hallway so rest of my family could hear what we where talking about. But when I study this section, I realize that in digital society now the same risk. All tough I have now risk of bigger audience to my personal things than just my family back in 80’s. It was a wake up call in this video when he says that the email is same thing as a postcard. Anyone could read it.

Digitalisation in my field of expertise 

I work as a vocational teacher to people with special need at vocational special education institution. I have worked in this job about 13 years now. When I started as a teacher, we have this big diary books, where teachers write what they do in every class and who wasn’t at the class. These diary books includes names, reason of absences and other personal things and they were kept somewhere anyone can look them! At the present we have Wilma, which is digital diary and much more. When I write there I can be quite sure it’s safe there and that it’s only safe way to communicate digital with students parents i.e.

During the pandemic we found many things, that has helped our work, i.e. teams-meetings with the students parents if they live far away. Distance learning did a huge jump in digital skills for the student and for us teachers too. All my students have special needs, so their digital skill are not allways very good. In that pandemic time all of my students learned so much from different ways to use digital tools in their studies and personal life.

Risks of open digital society

One risk in open digital society is that everyone is not capable or do not want to use it. I think it’s not a good thing that there is no alternative for digital transaction. It put’s people in an unequal position. Digital transactions is from my point of view very good thing, because I can use all the applications with my cellphone but we should remember i.e. the elderly and the disabled, who find it difficult to use them.

Digital society effects in my personal life that it’s easy to handle banking matters, insurance matters and even order food from the store to my door. I can look from social media, what my friends do. But this social media isn’t just a good thing! It will easily take too much time from my free time. I’ve cut back on it a lot over the last few months and it has helped me focus on other things. It can be very addictive for many it becomes a big problem.

Not everyone understands that when you publish something on social media, you can’t get it out of there. Never. I use as an example for my students that you only write what you could say to someone face to face. Or you send a picture to someone, you must remember, that they can share it everywhere.

Future ideas

In future I think these remote meetings which became more common during the pandemic will be a good alternative to meetings to on-site. You don’t have to travel and this saves money and time. When you need the services of an expert, for example the services of a therapist you can choose an expert who lives on the other side of Finland or even in another country.

Distance studies brings more opportunities. The opportunity to study something does not necessarily require moving from one place to another. On the other hand, social interaction can remain low in distance studies which is important in youth. Distance studies are a great opportunity for adult students especially if you study alongside work and you have a family.

Digital society increases accessibility on the one hand, but creates inequality on the other hand to them, who can’t or do not want to use digital tools. This should be kept in mind when developing a digital society

Self evaluation. 

Nothing really new came to me in this section. Instead, there were good reminders that in the digital world nothing is protected if it is not separately protected, such as for example a bank’s system. It was interesting to read other people’s writings and creating a blog and writing here is something I like. I’m familiar with using Word Press and it’s a nice change not to have to write reports on every task in the Savonia report base:)

Blog posts I comment

I comment this section in these blogs: Sanna’s site and Johanna’s site