Using technology to help promote student and staff wellbeing in your school
Student and staff wellbeing are top of mind for school Principals and Administrators. A recent report by Monash University titled Perceptions of Teaching and Teachers in Australia found that many teachers find their workload unmanageable and that this is impacting on their physical and mental health and wellbeing, distracting them from their core focus of educating students. Similarly, the recent Education 2020 report delivered by the Educator Magazine, found staff and student mental health and wellbeing as one of the biggest challenges facing education leaders.
How can technology reduce staff workload?
According to the Monash report, one of the key challenges affecting teachers is the need to dedicate more time to meet increased administrative demands. Teachers either need more time to be able to complete administrative work or the administrative burden needs to be reduced.
While some may argue that technology may be contributing to teacher stress, with the requirement for teachers to provide tech support to their students, Technology could also be viewed as a key enabler to being able to reduce the administrative burden for teachers.
Standard, automated workflows for tasks such as student attendance, excursions and risk assessment can help reduce administrative time being spent by teachers, offering more time to focus on student outcomes and learning. Instead of having to collate and key-in information manually, automated workflows allow for information to be entered and channelled through pre-determined workflows with less human intervention.
This is just one example, with technology also able to assist in other areas such as parent teacher communication [another common challenge identified]. Moves toward conducting activities such as parent teacher interviews online, instead of in person, have reduced the time needed to be spent on such tasks. People interact with technology in different ways than if they were meeting in person, often spending less time.
How can technology promote student wellbeing?
An example of a technology that could be used to help promote student wellbeing is location sensing beacons, used in conjunction AI and smart data analytics, to help identify and pre-empt threats to student wellbeing. Similar technologies have been deployed in environments such as Aged Care with success. In a student context, these beacons could have applications such as:
- Looking at patterns of student movement during breaks to deploy supervision to the right locations. This could have the added benefit of stemming bullying or other negative behaviour by identifying hotspots for such activity and ensuring that adequate supervision is provided where needed.
- Track the location of students, staff and assets during an emergency ensuring that all members of the school community have been evacuated to safe areas and that no one has been left behind.
How can FUJIFILM Business Innovation help?
FUJIFILM Business Innovation are here to help make teachers days easier and students futures brighter through technology. To find out more speak to your account manager, call us on 13 14 12 or click here to complete an online form and we’ll contact you.