Digital Citizenship - Organisation & Empathy

During the next couple of weeks as part of the Learning Advisory curriculum RJHS students will be exploring how we can use digital tools to organise ourselves.

There are many tools that people use on a daily basis to stay organised. Some popular ones that we use at school are:

• Schoology Calendar

• Google Docs and Spreadsheets

• Google Gmail

• Google Keep

• Google Tasks

• Google Calendar

• Google Drive

• Trello

In your daily routine and at your places of work you might use project management software or other tools such as GANTT charts etc to manage projects. It would be great if you could share some of your own tips and tricks with your kids that you use to stay organised. How do you organise the weekly family routines? Kanbans can be a great way to organise kids jobs to be done as this video explains. Kanbans are basically 3 lists with sticky notes of tasks to do. First they are tasks that need ‘to be done’, then one is selected to work on and can be moved into the ‘doing’ column. Once the job is completed it is moved into the final ‘done’ column. It is a simple, visible and effective way to manage tasks that need to be completed.

Managing and sharing information is an area that our students are learning to deal with effectively. It is important to continue to have discussions with our young people about the types of information they are accessing, storing and sharing. Are our young people really aware of the full impact and implications of using social media apps and how their choices about what and how they share information truly affects others? Research has shown that ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ empathy are still developing during the teenage years. Cognitive empathy is the ability to think about things from someone else’s point of view (perspective-taking). Affective empathy is the ability to recognise and respond to other people's feelings appropriately.

We can support our young people to be more consciously aware of developing these skills by:

• Discussing current events/TV shows/movies and how the different people involved might be thinking and feeling.

• Role modelling and sharing your own thoughts and feelings about situations and the different perspectives involved.

• Helping them to problem solve by asking them how they would feel in a particular situation and actively exploring someone else’s point of view.

Our young people are starting to develop empathy and compassion and although they might be able to theoretically put themselves into someone else’s shoes it might be difficult for them to act on this particularly in group situations. Empathy is an important disposition that fits in well with the ‘K - kindness and respect’ part of our CLOAK and learning experiences here at RJHS.