5 tools to help you implement your school-wide well-being policy

We are living in unprecedented times. Technology has an ever stronger influence in our lives and social emotional well-being is becoming more crucial for navigating the many ways in which technology enters our lives. The pandemic has certainly highlighted the importance of this as many students around the world have had to go through a chaotic period while the educational system is adapting to the situation.

Schools and educational institutions are now more aware of the immediate importance of promoting agency and self-awareness not only among students but also their staff. Skills like creativity, critical thinking, interpersonal understanding and empathy will be playing a key role in academic and employment success and educators and educational leaders are at the forefront of this wave of change.

A well-being policy is hence becoming on top of the agenda for many school leaders and educators. Developing a solid policy is not easy and will take time specially if you are new to the idea. There are many aspects to a well-rounded well-being policy but to name a few: having a social learning environment, introducing healthy challenges, creating a sense of community and belonging as well as fostering meaningful relationships are all at the heart of it.

Thanks to pandemic and our highly interconnected world though, no well-being policy can be devoid of technology. While technology hasn’t always played a positive role in boosting social emotional intelligence and self-awareness, a new wave of technology tools is bound to change that. Traditional social media and communication tools the likes of Facebook and Instagram usually come at the cost of repeated compulsive behavior and indulgence that does no good to an unsuspecting audience. The new wave of edTech tools however are created on the premises of personalised learning, social emotional learning and overall promotion of self-awareness and genuine meaningful relationships.

Here we have curated a list of some of these new tools to help you in your mission of implementing a successful school-wide wellbeing policy. So without further ado let’s get to them!

Clanbeat aims to address a whole range of topics in social emotional learning. From wellbeing to helping to create healthy habits, personal diary and reflections, promoting sense of belonging and meaningful relationships as well as a safe communication environment.

It also offers a data insight report which could be very handy to school leaders looking to measure their status quo and rate of improvement. It supports Android, iOS and web and with the host of features it has to offer, it really comes down to what you want to make of it. It can even be used amongst staff themselves to promote healthy habits. Educators and school counselors can stay in touch with their students more consistently while spending less time trying to capture a wholesome picture of their classroom.

Oh and did I mention the early warning flags to detect where and when intervention might be needed to help students with professional support?

Gobubble is geared towards the youngest age group between the tools we are introducing today. It’s a social media app for kids under the age of 13 and supports both Android, iOS as well as web platforms. It is essentially a safe communication and social media tool.

The strongest selling point of GoBubble is that it prides itself for providing a safe platform for kids to communicate. The safety aspect is both around data privacy (your data is not used for feeding advertisement algorithms) and any content that is unsafe for children including harassing and bullying. Gobubble has a live moderation team (as well as an automated one) to ensure this promise. So if your well-being policy considers a safe environment you give them a try.

It might be worth mentioning that GoBubble might not have the humane tech principals built into it just yet as students could get lost in a neverending feed of engaging content.

At its core, ClassDojo is a class communication platform where students, teachers and families can build a community through day to day interactions around classroom topics. It also has a gamification aspect to promote developing good behavior. These behaviors can then be tracked and turned into a report which might be a good option for educational leaders looking for validation on their wellbeing policy efforts.

Their Trendspotter feature paves the way for gathering insights over where students are the happiest or are struggling the most. In a nutshell, ClassDojo helps teachers gather more wellbeing insight from their classroom while spending less time on the logistics of it. The customization aspect of the app also gives students a reason to love it, although they could also have access to their own data if needed.

Seesaw is a digital portfolio tool where students can share their learning content and connect and engage with others and supports Web, iOS and Android platforms. In an age, where students typically share a lot of content digitally, a common well designed place where students could safely share their content is the market niche they are trying to fill. SeeSaw has specially taken off due to the highlighted need of fostering home-school relationships as parents can see what students are working on.

Teachers can track students’ work and cater for their special learning needs. SeeSaw also integrates with Google Drive in case you have that already as a part of your school suite of digital tools. Through Seesaw, families can be in constant communication with school and by working on the built-in activities, students can exercise creativity and collaboration.

That’s it for now. There are other tools out there but the whole wellbeing space is just about emerging and we have no intention of presenting an exhaustive list. If you have a tool of choice and would like to have a more in depth discussion around it please do feel free to send us a message. While we might be a bit biased, we would love to see other contenders paving the way for a better more humane educational space for all.

Stay tuned for our next post and do send us your comments.

Hesam YR
Clanbeat