Schools can sometimes feel like a place to only learn about facts and figures. This is even supported by the fact that students need to appear exams and they need to “understand” or “memorize” certain number of facts to move onto the next grade. If you ask any student or parent about why school exists, learning different subjects top the list, but almost nobody will mention learning about controlling emotions, and empathy.
In this post, we will learn about teaching students to comprehend their emotions fully and fit into society as an emotionally stable person in what is called Social Emotional Learning (SEL). The focus of this post will be how technology can exponentially multiply the effectiveness of SEL.
What is Social-Emotional Learning?
Put simply, social-emotional learning is a learning path for students to understand their own emotions and demonstrate empathy for others. By learning more about themselves in this way, they will be able to be:
- Aware of their own emotions and how it affects their day-to-day behavior.
- Manage their own self and allow themselves to work towards a specific goal by taking ownership of their own actions, skills, and emotions.
- Make themselves socially aware by putting themselves in the shoes of others. Be it someone who has a different cultural background, or someone who has had a different life from their own.
- Make good relationships and maintain those relationships with people from all walks of life. It will make the students be able to communicate effectively, live peacefully with others, and resolve conflict effectively.
- Make good decisions in any situation by analyzing their own mental state effectively. Students will also learn to consider ethics, safety, weighing consequences, and thinking of the well-being of others, and themselves.
As you can imagine, SEL is something that will make not only the life of the student better, but also the society in general. It is not a designated subject like physics, or math but a wholistic learning path that can be woven into the entire school’s curriculum.
SEL and Technology
Any almost any other subject in school, technology is able to make teaching SEL more efficient and effective. Technology can help expand the minds and voices of students. Till now, technology has mostly had a negative effect on the social, emotional, and mental wellbeing of students.
Relationships within Technology
Technology connects billions of us humans around the world daily. You can literally talk to billions of people through the touch of your fingertip. This can be used to our advantage by connecting students more deeply within their existing relationships.
You can use Google Jamboard, or Google Docs in the classroom to make students comfortable working as a team, asking for help, and offering support. Online collaboration tools such as Trello can also be used in the classroom to improve and promote relationships skills and teamwork.
You can connect peers within the same classroom, school, or district. You can also bring in families into mix and connect them to the classroom. By doing this, you will be strengthening the existing relationships and integrating those relationships into the academic curriculum.
Building Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is one of the most important aspects of the learning path because it helps students be aware of their own skills. Not only being able to understand where they are in the learning process, but also the progress made till now, and the amount of progress that is required to be made is important for themselves.
Technology can be very helpful for them to start sharing their own experiences. Students can make a video diary to understand their own emotions, and their responses to different situations better. Students can use tools such as Flip to record reflections of their day.
Some students cannot express themselves through words. So, technology also makes capturing their emotional state without words so much easier. They can use websites such as Canva or Adobe Creative Cloud Express to create a visual representation of their emotional state, and convey their feelings in that way.
Managing Themselves
Students learning how to manage themselves is one of the most important life skills they need to learn. Online goal setting is just a start which allows students to keep track of and take ownership of their own learning path.
Students can use digital tools such as Padlet, and Trello to create to-do lists, set deadlines, and make reminders. These tools also help students by visualizing the tasks they need to complete, set goals for the future, and it will also teach them how to manage their time more effectively.
Students will also need to be taught that you cannot work a 100% of the time, and some students will start stressing over all the minutes wasted in a day. They will need to be taught that taking breaks is normal and taking brain breaks will help them deal with stress and manage their emotions. Flocabulary offers short brain break videos and activities. Meditations can help students as well as teachers to destress and calm down. Teachers can explore Jabu, and students can explore Calm, and Headspace.
The Way Forward
Social-Emotional Learning is very important to teach students. It is a way to learn more about their emotions and show empathy towards people they meet in their day-to-day life. Technology can be used to multiply the effectiveness of social-emotional learning in the classroom.
Students can learn more about relationships by using online collaborative tools such as Google Docs to improve and promote teamwork, and communication skills.
Self-awareness plays a pivotal role in the learning journey, allowing students to grasp their strengths, weaknesses, and progress along the way. Harnessing technology enhances this self-awareness by providing innovative avenues for self-expression and reflection.
Mastering self-management is an indispensable life skill for students, and online goal setting serves as a fundamental steppingstone in this journey. Leveraging digital tools such as Padlet and Trello empowers students to organize their tasks, set objectives, and cultivate effective time management habits.
