Today in tech class, we’re listening to the next round of my classmates present their projects on the topic of “technology in the classroom”.
First up is a presentation on “Mental Health and Technology”
The presentation starts with some statistics pointing out that mental health concerns are more prevalent in Indigenous youth, in girls, and in LGBTQ+ students, and that the prevalence of mental health issues has been increasing in recent years. When students struggle with their mental health it makes it hard to participate in school and have positive social experiences. Here’s the technologies I learned about:
Calm App– includes sleep stories, breathing exercises, health tracking, medication reminders, and child-friendly stories and themes. However, some drawbacks are that there is no “add friends” option, and sleep stories can be quite long. This app can help students relax and reset in the classroom with teacher direction. There aren’t many features included in the free version, but some school districts actually provide the app free for teachers.
Finch App- A mental health wellness app that uses a virtual pet to foster self-care skills and daily practices. In the class, it lets users track their emotions, mood, and mental health using daily check ins. Lots of exercises for stress reduction are included, and there is a journalling feature and friends option. This app is great for social emotional learning.
Headspace App- A popular meditation and mindfulness app that uses guided meditation, breathing exercises, and more to help the user with stress reduction and wellbeing. Teachers in canada can access this app for free. It does however rely on wifi and can be expensive for users who aren’t teachers. It also does store some data in the U.S., which is a potential privacy concern. This could be used for class mindfulness breaks to get students regulated when, for example, they come in from recess feeling amped up. This app is also excellent for teacher self-care.
GoNoodle App/website- Geared for k-6, GoNoodle involves meditation exercises and physically active brain breaks to help students stay engaged. These exercises helps students get in tune with their bodies and energy levels and stay regulated. GoNoodle is free and includes a wide variety of features, and the “pro” features do not pop up on the free version which is nice. GoNoodle has already been greenlit by my local school district. The data from the app is stored in the U.S., but luckily it only requires a teacher to make an account so it’s not much of a privacy concern.
Moxie the Social Robot- Moxie is a social emotional learning robot that has the goal of helping students. Moxie can do feeling check ins, movement breaks, social emotional exercises, breathing exercises, and more. There is a standard Moxie that can have 4 personalized profiles for users, but the version with extra profiles is quite pricy (upwards of $1000 CAD). The robot does store data, but student names are encoded as numbers as a privacy measure. This robot can be helpful for neurodivergent students who may struggle with social interactions but need someone to talk to. Unfortunately, Moxie only speaks English right now.