What are the benefits of mindfulness for students/teachers?  

 Is there a way to integrate the use of mindfulness apps into the classroom?

Which mindfulness apps are free/accessible, and could be used in classrooms? 

These are a few of the questions that 3 classmates and I came up with as the basis of our EdTech inquiry. Our goal is to not only research mindfulness to develop our understanding of the practice, but also to look at the implementation of mindfulness in schools. As this is a tech inquiry, another main focus will be to find apps that we feel promote the core values of mindfulness and that could be feasible in a classroom setting.

Our Process:

  1. Each group member is going to research apps, and choose one that they want to thoroughly explore. Apps will be chosen with consideration as to not only the quality of content but also the level of transference to classroom use.
  2. We will also accumulate a list of key readings (scholarly and non-scholarly) that we feel helped us understand the aspects of mindfulness, or that could be a resource used to assist teachers with incorporating mindfulness into their classrooms.
  3. Both the app information and the resources will be used to create a mindfulness resource to share with the rest of our class. At this point, our thinking is that the easiest format will be a shareable google doc that we can link to both on our blogs, and on our class resources website.
  4. We will also have a presentation at the end of the semester, where we can introduce our resources. The bulk of the presentation is going to be sharing information about the apps we have chosen, to give our classmates an idea of the content that is available and how they can be used in a classroom setting. We do not want the presentation to focus too much on the logistics of mindfulness, as we will be providing our favourite readings/resources with that information. Presenting mainly on the apps will provide our classmates with information and tools that they can actually use for themselves or in their future classes.

We are using a group Trello board to organize all the various research and app finding. We are also going to be posting blogs (such as this one) about our individual processes and discoveries.

Overall, I am excited about this project as we are going to end up with concrete resources that people can use to make their classrooms a more positive place for students. I think this is also a really important topic for teacher well-being, as these tools could also be used to support our own mental health.

Featured image by  Lesly Juarez on Unsplash