DIGI SOCIETY

For the last ten years, I have worked as an early childhood education teacher. Teaching digital and meda skills has been part of the national early childhood education plan since 2016. The Covid-19 pandemic diversified and accelerated digitalisation methods in early childhood education. The use of new technologies, such as Teams and Zoom, brought flexibility to my work. For example, during the pandemic, I provided pre-school education remotely. I have continued to use remote access, Teams, and Zoom for discussing early childhood education plans with parents. Many staff meetings are still held entirely remotely or as hybrid sessions. Although it initially seemed challenging to learn how to use these new technologies, I now use the applications and tools with children. For example, I have had singing sessions on Teams with another group of children and hold children’s meetings via Teams.

I studied mathematics in early childhood and pre-school education at the University of Helsinki. During these studies, a whole new world of digitalisation and its use with children opened up for me. Many digital tools, for example, support creativity and collaborative learning. In pre-school, we engaged in coding (with robots) and video editing (using iMovie), which provided opportunities for children to express themselves in new ways. Using digital tools and technologies can help develop children’s ability to think logically, solve problems, and approach challenges systematically.

There is currently a debate on the need to teach digital skills to young children and the impact of children’s time spent in digital applications on their literacy skills and various behavioural and emotional regulation challenges. Personally, I think that teaching digital skills is justified. Teaching digital skills helps children to promote online safety and media literacy. It teaches children how to use digital tools safely and protect themselves online. It is important to ensure that the applications children use are appropriate for their age and time spent on digital devices is limited. Despite all the benefits, we must remember that digitalisation is a useful teaching tool, but it cannot replace human presence or interaction in early childhood education.

An open digital society offers many advantages. It brings people together and makes it easier and faster to accomplish tasks. At the same time, it has exacerbated inequalities both globally and locally. There are people in the world who are excluded from digital services. Most young people are adept at working in different digital environments because they were born into a completely different world than older generations. Digitalization has progressed rapidly over the last thirty years. An open digital society also creates a wide range of security risks for both society and individuals. These risks must be carefully considered when developing services. A major risk in an open digital society is ensuring data security. Societal information security has become even more critical since Russia invaded Ukraine and Finland joined NATO. Open digital environments attract criminals aiming for data breaches and hacking. Additionally, an open digital environment can cause significant harm to society in a short time when it is used to spread false or misleading information.

GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to every organization and employee. The general data protection regulation has caused that for every digital platform we use and the data we collect, there must be privacy statements. With increasing digitalisation, children’s and families’ privacy and data security have become even more important. In early childhood education, we must pass a GDPR test every two years. Parents have the right to access and review the information collected about their child, and the data must only be used for its intended purpose. According to GDPR, personal data should not be collected more than necessary, must be kept secure, and cannot be disclosed to third parties. Individuals have the right to access, correct, or delete their personal data.

Everyday examples include being cautious when I am sending a weekly newsletter by email to parents, ensuring that email addresses are hidden, or making sure that photos of children do not show other children’s faces unless parents have given permission.

Chat GPT

I asked ChatGPT about the key tasks of an early childhood education teacher. The response regarding the job description of a teacher in early childhood education was very comprehensive and accurate. Second question was How many children under the age of 3 were enrolled in municipal early childhood education and care in 2023? Chat GPT retrieved data from five different pages and the response gave general information.  I asked the same question also for year 2022 and 2021. Those answers data Chat GPT had retrieved from Education Statistics Finland Vipunen and Statistics Finland websites, and they were correct when I checked them from Vipunen website.  I also asked from ChatGPT How many early childhood education teams are in Finland. The response was general information, but Chat GPT redirected me to the Vipunen website to get exact data.

This was my first time using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Certainly, AI is a tool of the future. AI can offer endless possibilities if you know how to use it. You have to be critical of the information AI produces because it collects data from various platforms on the internet, and the reliability of the information cannot be guaranteed. AI feels somewhat unfamiliar to me, and I am a bit skeptical about using it. In my work, AI can be useful, for example, in writing texts

Self evaluation
This was an interesting assignment. It made me reflect on how quickly and dramatically digitalisation has changed life and work. The orientation videos were very interesting, especially “James Lyne: Everyday Cybercrime.” It reminded me how significant information security is and how we all should consider it in our daily lives. After exploring posts from fellow students, I realised that in many workplaces, digitalisation is more advanced and more widely used than in my own work in early childhood education. This task also reminded me that while digitalisation offers many opportunities, it also brings risks.

Digitalisation and I have come a long way from my childhood to this moment when digitalisation is everywhere. I remember back in the early 70´s when I was a child, and we didn’t even have a television or telephone at home. In elementary school, we did all our work in books with pens, and information was found in encyclopedias. In the early 90´s, the internet and computers became commonplace, and the world changed along with me. Nowadays I use digitalisation in one form or another almost every day in my work or private life and this course sparked my desire to learn more about it, especially AI.

I commented on the blog posts of 

 DIGI SOCIETY | Karoliinan ajatuksia (savonia.fi)

Hi Karoliina,

Thank you for your blog post. I have also taken quite big leaps with digitalisation, starting from the fact that when I was born in the late 60s, we didn’t even have a television or phone at home. It was interesting to read how digitalisation can be utilised in mental health work. I’m sure it can help speed up tasks like documentation, communication, and meetings, leaving more time for direct interaction with people. Just like in my work in early childhood education, digitalisation can be beneficial for certain tasks, but it can never replace the presence or interaction with another person.

DIGI SOCIETY – AnuMaria’s Site (savonia.fi)

Hi Anu,

Thank you for your blog post. I could relate to your writing in many ways, even though I work in a different field than you. I was born in the 60´s and learning digital skills has required quite a change in attitude and the effort to learn new things.

Your thoughts on using and utilizing AI in work also resonated with me. I haven’t used AI in my work yet, even though many in my workplace are already using it.  At times, my lack of skills frustrates me and makes me feel like time has passed me by.  But as you wrote, if you want to keep up with the development, you must also be prepared to develop yourself, whether you like it or not.