I currently work as a study nurse in a public clinical laboratory. My work is versatile and requires a lot of cooperation within and outside of my organization. My work includes writing and maintaining instructions, contract and invoicing arrangements. I use a variety of digital tools in my work daily, and I’m interested to see whether I will find new tools from this task.

I use a variety of digital tools in my work, for example:

  • Teams for communication, meetings, storing and sharing information within and outside of my organization.
  • Outlook for communication, information exchange, and calendar management.
  • Collaboration platforms to collect documents or to educate myself.
  • Skrive for electronic signing of contracts or other documents.
  • Google for information searches.
  • ChatGPT to translate or check my writing.
  • And lots of other digital tools

Exploring new tools and their usability

I chose these different types of tools because I wanted to find out if I could truly utilize them in my work. I tried to select a wide variety of tools so they could assist with different types of tasks. Some of the tools I had heard of beforehand, while others were totally new to me.

Miro

Miro is a digital “whiteboard” that you can use together with your team. It makes collaboration with your team members easy.

Miro offers an interesting tool to manage projects together with your team. I could see myself using Miro’s Kanban framework tool to manage projects. The tool provides a visual overview of tasks in progress. It also allows us to see who has been designated to take care of a specific task.

This tool would make it easier to keep track of project progression and highlight the tasks that need to be prioritized. On the downside, Miro is only free of charge to a certain extent. Using Miro efficiently requires time and effort to learn how to use it properly.

Doodle

Doodle is a platform where you can schedule an appointment or a meeting with a group of people by voting for a suitable time. It helps you find a suitable time for the planned meeting.

I have experience in answering Doodle questionnaires, but with this task, I had the chance to familiarize myself with how to use Doodle. I could use Doodle to arrange meetings for larger groups of people. It would reduce the need for emails to find a suitable meeting time for all participants. I found Doodle very easy to use, but at the same time, I learned that Outlook has a similar function that I wasn’t aware of before.

Slack

Slack is a platform that brings together people, processes, data, and AI. It offers a secure environment to work together. Slack enables people from different organizations to work seamlessly together.

Slack seems to be similar to Teams. It offers the same type of services. I don’t see a reason why I would use Slack over Teams, which my organization is already using. However, it was interesting to familiarize myself with it.

Blogger

Blogger offers the possibility to create your own personal blog. It offers an easy-to-use template to create the blog for your style. It also includes analytical features so you can see your most liked posts and where your audience comes from.  You can store various types of data on Blogger.

If I wanted to create a blog (besides this one), I could use Blogger for the job. It seems to be easy to use and promises to be a safe place to store data.

iAuditor

iAuditor is an easy-to-use mobile application that digitalizes operational elements. It is software designed for inspections, issue capture, and corrective actions. iAuditor allows workers to report their findings in the field, guaranteeing real-time data on operations.

iAuditor is an interesting and promising application. I could use this to control workplace safety, and it would be a useful tool for training. Especially when training new employees, the easy-to-use mobile application would be a flexible tool that is always on hand.

Summary

To sum up, social media tools are helpful when used correctly. They can save a lot of time and make working more efficient. These tools allow you to work from anywhere and still collaborate on the same tasks as a team. Communication and arranging meetings are made easy with these tools. Sharing documents and other information becomes simple and fast.

These tools need to be easy to use, and most of them provided a teaching guide that was helpful. However, I wonder if it might be too much to ask someone to learn a new tool if they are in a hurry or not interested in using it.

On the downside, most of the tools I explored were free for only a short period, or some functions were only available via a paid service. These tools require competence to use them efficiently; otherwise, it takes time and effort before you can benefit from them. Before implementing a new tool, you should ensure that the tools already in use do not offer the same function. Continuous learning will help utilize existing tools more efficiently. I would also be concerned about the data privacy these tools offer—can they be trusted with sensitive information?

Self-evaluation

This was an interesting task. It was fascinating to familiarize myself with social media tools and think about how I could utilize them at work. I think it is important to keep up with technological progression and learn how to use multiple tools to enhance productivity.

I have experience with tools that initially seem to help with organizing tasks but end up being a burden. It is important to assess the value of a tool to avoid ending up with something that doesn’t help in any way. We should keep our eyes open and ensure that we do not value new tools just for the sake of their novelty.

This course was interesting and different from any other course I have done. Now I can say that I have my own blog. 😊