DIGI SOCIETY
MY EXPERIENCES OF DIGITALISATION
I started comprehensive school in the early 1990s. My first experience with digitalization happened in elementary school. I clearly remember how exciting it was when the computer connected to the internet. I still vividly remember the sound it made when the connection was being established. For a long time, we weren’t allowed to stay online, because it was expensive these times.
In middle school, our school already had computer labs where we could spend time on things like online discussion forums. We also practiced IT skills during those years. Around that time, mobile phones were also starting to become more common. When smartphones started to become common, I was very skeptical for a long time and thought that I wouldn’t want to get one myself. Well, guess what happened…
Digital development has advanced tremendously. It is visible in our everyday lives—for example, when I go to the store, I pay for my purchases either with a card or with my phone. I didn’t get my first bank card until adulthood, whereas we’ve already gotten bank cards for our own children when they were in middle school.
I studied social services at a University of Applied Sciences from 2015 to 2019. In the final years, it was possible to attend some lectures remotely. This changed significantly after COVID-19. Remote work became a permanent part of both working life and education. I have completed this current degree entirely remotely as well.
When I look back on life, digitalization has advanced tremendously even in a short period of time. I could never have imagined driving a fully electric car equipped with top-level technology. For example, I can turn on the car’s air conditioning from my own couch at home. Almost all of the services I use are digital. In my everyday life, I use many different applications, such as Wilma for my children’s school matters and the Kidplan app at my workplace.
FUTURE
When I think about digitalization in relation to my work in the future, there will still needed for real people to teach and care for children. However, when it comes to using different teaching tools or materials, digitalization can bring new innovations. In both the social and health care sectors, as well as in the education and early childhood fields, creating various client records takes an enormous amount of time. I believe that in the future—and even in the coming years—the advancement of digitalization can lead to significant progress in this area. In early childhood education, as in many other fields, various meetings are now in different kind platforms like after the COVID pandemic. This naturally saves working time, as there is no longer a need to go from one place to another. It also enables better participation for everyone in different meetings.
OPEN DIGITAL SOCIENTY
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in 2016 and it was applied starting in 2018. It sets requirements for companies and organizations regarding the collection and management of personal data.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has also brought clear benefits to early childhood education, as a significant amount of personal data is collected about families — both children and adults. Nowadays, more and more processes are handled digitally, such as care agreements, termination of care, and service voucher decisions. Children’s early childhood education plans are also created in electronic form. All of this documentation contains sensitive information and is classified as confidential, which highlights the importance of strong data protection. With the implementation of GDPR, it has become even more essential to ensure that this data is stored and processed appropriately, securely, and accessed only by those who are authorized to do so
At my workplace, we use a secure application for communication between the daycare and parents. In early childhood education, we still manually compile daily care time lists and weekly summaries of children’s care hours, but we are gradually transitioning to using a secure application for this purpose as well. With these paper-based care time lists, there is always a risk that the list might be left on a table, where other parents could potentially see information about other children’s schedules.
However, there is a small challenge here: a paper care time list can be handed over to the last educator after one’s shift ends, allowing them to read the day’s notes about the children being handed over. Of course, it’s convenient if this information can be directly entered into the application for the parents, but that does take a lot of time during the day, especially if writing updates for each child individually. Still, it’s definitely something worth trying.
(source Yleinen tietosuoja-asetus (GDPR) – Your Europe and Europe’s digital decade: 2030 targets | European Commission.)
CHAT GPT
In these studies, I had the opportunity to make use of ChatGPT. It has been an excellent tool—very easy to use—and it’s been incredible how well certain issues can be solved with its help. One example is from this summer when we were repairing my son’s moped and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. Even the repair shop had trouble identifying the issue, so we asked ChatGPT—and with its help, we were able to solve the problem. Amazing, right? However, artificial intelligence cannot replace humans in everything. It should be used as a support and a tool, not as the only solution.
As part of this assignment, I asked ChatGPT several questions related to my field. I asked ChatGPT a question about the benefits of early childhood education. I received a concise and fairly decent answer to my question. ChatGPT also translated nearly the same response into English. I then followed up by asking: what are the sources of this information. ChatGPT provided good and reliable sources for the question. It also made a summary of the benefits of early childhood education from the child’s perspective, referring to research studies.
I personally use artificial intelligence like ChatGPT very little in my studies or at work, but it is clearly an effective tool that can be used to support and strengthen ideas. Especially summarizing information is very efficient. However, I would never fully use the text exactly as it is generated here. After all, there are ethical and moral considerations, as well as legal implications.
My colleague tried using ChatGPT last year to create a story for their group’s Christmas calendar. It couldn’t be used as it was, but it provided a solid structure that could be modified to make it more suitable. Another colleague used ChatGPT to write a poem for a friend’s birthday card, and the result was quit fanny.
SELF- EVALUATION
What I found especially interesting in this assignment was exploring artificial intelligence and the future from a digitalization perspective. In this course video, there were glimpses of what life might look like in the future. Even today, many homes already have robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers. In the future, it’s likely that other household chores will also be done by robots.
Even today, the threats of digitalization include numerous scam attempts that affect us all. Cyberattacks, for example targeting banks, can disrupt services. Many services now require strong authentication, and for these I personally need online banking credentials. Especially during the summer, I receive some suspicious calls on my phone. For this reason, many people probably choose not to answer calls from unknown numbers. In the spring, it was even reported in the news that many young people couldn’t be reached by phone, and some may have missed out on summer jobs because of this.
(source Digitalisaation heikot uhkat ja vahvat mahdollisuudet | Digi- ja väestötietovirasto and Nuoret karttavat puhelimella soittamista – “En vastaa, jos soittaja ei ole puolisoni tai joku muu hyvin läheinen” | Paikalliset | Helsingin Uutiset.)
Here are the blogs where I have left comments:
(Source: all images are from www.pixabay.com)