Using Digital Tools To Promote Social And Emotional Learning

History proves that money and fame are not the happiness parameters.

This is especially true in the case of some brilliant corporate leaders, who are at the top of their game and the most heralded geniuses of their line. But, are they happy? The answer is, not likely.

Many such leaders carry emotional baggage of being bullied or mistreated in the past which makes them subconsciously, surly towards emotional factors like empathy, gratitude, self-humility, compassion, courage, and self-reflection.

The anxiety often builds up during the student stage where they are not introduced to the concept of adult learning process of emotional education and moral learning which they absolved from emotions & sentiments.

This can be called as the mindfulness-awareness that is very important in the holistic development of students who often find themselves at the cross-roads of growth & development and happiness & peace.

The fact that the competition doesn’t allow one to think beyond success is deeply ingrained into our mindsets also doesn’t help. Therefore, there is a severe lack of empathy and understanding among adults.

How Can Digital Tools Help Build Emotional Health?

While many may attribute technology to be the culprit in isolating people and making them.. well.. less human, the tables can be turned when we can leverage technology to be an omnipresent ally that can improve social and psychological paradigms of the human mind.

Technology and digital tools are, especially, helpful when the educational institutions are spread in the remote inaccessible areas where education in its raw form is the only academic introduction to the children.

Technology can be integrated into the conventional education system where students can virtually interact with mediums that help boost their learning reformations as well as make them aware of their actions if they rise from a place of righteousness or not. For instance, an innovative software called Freeze Framer by HeartMath has a fingertip pulse sensor that monitors the students’ feelings and what is going on inside them. Teachers who have used it claim that it encourages students to self-reflect on their lives, the turbulence if any and work on their relationships with people around them.

While the Indian culture often tilts towards moral education, there has been an infiltration of several negative elements that are defiling the concept of socially sensitive growth. Technology with communication plays an important role in helping parents, as well as teachers, understand the mind trajectory of the students.

Artificial Intelligence plays a great role in tracking the students’ behaviors and suggesting teachers the modulations that they can adopt to make their teaching more impactful. The same can be extended for parents. Interestingly, a Chinese school has fitted classrooms with cameras that recognizes the emotions of the students with the help of any and look for tell-tale signs of any red flags.

Audio-Visual mediums are also the perfect means to help children understand the ideas of emotional well-being. Visual teaching is more impactful when it comes to the learning process. For instance, watching a movie for three hours is more and retaining that reading because of the visuals that play a very vital role. With visuals, there are no filter relations which means whatever you see gets registered in your subconscious mind instantly. Visual combined with auditory and kinesthetic is the way of expressing and storytelling. In a nutshell, digital tools in education can actually promote a lot of engagement and create a more sensitivity for students to stimulate their social and emotional learning.

Digital Tools and Positive Psychology

Today, the world is more into positive psychology. Therefore, it is imperative that teachers and parents to focus more on what is good in a child rather than spend time changing the negative aspects. Of course, there is always a scope for improvement, but it will be more impactful if the positive elements are taken up and worked upon.

Yet again, digital tools help determine what are the positive attributes of the child and what methodologies should be undertaken to refine them. With each student having its own character chart and ability to learn, teachers will now be able to personalize their approach for the child. This will make students connect with themselves and improve their self-awareness.

An emotionally aware child will be better at taking care of the surroundings and society better than one who is bottled up. This emotional freedom will convert competition into inspiration and will act as a catalyst for emotionally mature adults who are balanced and free of their baggage.

Clearly, there is more to technology than meets the eye!

Paras Daithankar

Guest Author The author is the founder of Matrrix, corporate training institute, and life leadership coach.