I have had a great time creating this hypothetical technology. It is a piece of technology that I believe would have greatly benefited my efforts in high school. Additionally, I could see this device helping a range of students, teachers, and parents.
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Hi Megan, great idea of a way to use new technologies to help our students with their challenges. At the start, I had similar questions about whether people would build a dependence on the device and how maybe that would impede on their ability to self-regulate, but perhaps there are techniques to help manage our anxieties that can also teach us how to manage those independently. Is this implant a permanent addition to our brain, or is it something temporary?
As you mentioned, Megan’s negative thoughts can hinder learning. Therefore, it would be good to expand the age range since we are now lifelong learners. When I taught classes composed of displaced adults, we were lucky to have funding for an art therapist to work with the students to manage the debilitating thoughts and haunting memories. The therapist always provided coping actions and strategies for the students to integrate into their lives to help them cope with their anxiety. The app you proposed would provide additional support.
Megan, what I appreciated most about your forecast is the idea of implant technology would help with CBT practices. There are amazing apps such as Bloom (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bloom-cbt-therapy-journal/id1475128511), but it requires the user of the app to dedicate a short amount of time for this each day. Oftentimes, that commitment is too cumbersome for many, so the implant would eliminate the need for that time commitment, thus still receiving the benefits of it. Essentially, instead of the user training their brain, the brain already is trained! Also, there are limited open sourced programs for children for CBT from my experiences and observations, so this technology supporting children will provide an incredible amount of affordances as you describe. Has anyone come across any CBT open learning resources for children that they have tried in the classroom or want to share with either primary years or for middle years children?
Hi Megan, I’m highly intrigued by the ideas you’ve introduced and found myself nodding in agreement with most of the concepts. Emotional support is a highly overlooked area in education as I personally feel too much emphasis is placed on grades/results/GPA with student wellbeing often neglected in favor of personal achievements. Even with counselling services available, some students might deny that they’re emotionally stressed from schoolwork and continue to push themselves to the limit in an unhealthy way. I’ve definitely experience the same situation as the character in your design slide where there was a decrease in self confidence when I encountered subjects which I wasn’t very good at. I also appreciate how you took the time to interview a peer about their personal experiences which made the concept much more relatable and personal. As a food for thought, I wonder if the implant technology you’ve introduced is capable of performing more advanced functions such as controlling the amount of dopamine being released to motivate the learner while decreasing cortisol levels to help them calm down when they encounter stress/challenges. Loved the OER, great work and a joy to read.
Hi Megan, what an interesting concept! I think that the artificial intelligence aspect is understated in the importance of your proposal. With CBT, it would be necessary to personalize the mindfulness prompts to maximize effectiveness. I think that incorporating AI that gradually learns what each individual needs and tailors the treatment would be an incredibly effective UX choice that you made. You also make reference to parental and teacher involvement with this type of application. Would other parties be alerted to the need for supportive prompts? Do you foresee being able to use this tool as a diagnostic screen for something like mental illness?
Thank you for the great idea Megan. As a physics and math teacher, I often sense the feelings of helplessness in my students and find it difficult to overcome these barriers. I am only with my students 80 minutes per day and with 40 students in a class it is a challenge to say the least to connect individually with each and every student. I imagine that the students who do have these feelings of helplessness are much less likely to seek out help as well; I have heard many times that they don’t like to ask questions for fear of being ‘wrong’ (even though that is a fundamental part of the learning process). It would be great to have these messages shared with students more often for sure. I do, however, wonder if the cost would be prohibitive to a number of students. I work at an inner city school where resources (both in school and at home) are severely limited – I cannot imagine many students would be able to afford this when they struggle to buy the basic necessities to live.
Hi Megan, I appreciate your insight into the roles that both fixed and growth mindsets play in student self-perceptions in learning and your research into CBT. I also appreciate the challenges the large (25+) class sizes you mentioned create for teachers when trying to meet everyone’s needs. I believe that brain chip implants will have a role in education in the future. A potential drawback I see is creating potential shame in a child who is feeling negative emotion during school, which may or may not be related to what is going on in the classroom. The child may have had a disagreement during lunch with friends, be tired, have a difficult home life, or have an undiagnosed learning disability. If implanted at a young age, a child may equate negative emotions as being ‘wrong’, when they are a normal part of social and physical development. I hope the device can differentiate the actual thoughts associated with the negative emotion. Every child would benefit from learning to self-regulate and understanding their own potential!
Hi Megan. I think you did a great job at combining implant technology with CBT to emotionally scaffold students throughout the learning experiences. It has been proven that emotions have a profound impact on learning to the point that they can completely obstruct learning. For my project, I also did some research on brain implantations because I was exploring brain-computer interfaces (BCI). Your project reminded me of stories I read about how brain implantations can be used to alter emotional states and attention. For example, a BCI interface would analyze brain waves to recognize emotional patterns and then select music that matched the mood. If the mood was negative, the BCI would produce music that could help with it (for example playing relaxing music to someone who is under stress). In another case, brain waves modification was done to dancers using invasive BCIs (meaning not implanted) and improved their performance. In this case, it is interesting to see how we might be able to directly alter emotional states without a medium, such as music or the images and thoughts in your project. This creates big ethical and security problems, of course. What I think works well in your proposal is that it makes CBT ubiquitous. Often, a problem is that we might understand something that must change in our thinking patterns, yet when faced with a challenging situation we can completely forget about it!
Megan, what a great idea to combine our understanding of self with technology. I like how you addressed that the ethical and social implications would have to be addressed more fully before prototyping this technology, and that you recognize that this is a needed device for many. I also liked how you talked about a psych assessment would have to be done and a doctor to sign off that this would support your learning. One big question I have as a math and science teacher, who experiences students who suffer from this kind of trauma all the time, is does our educational system need to change? Rather than an implant which implies the student has the issue, should we be looking at the bigger picture and saying that education as a whole causes trauma in students and should be adjusted and altered to reduce trauma? Another thought that came up is many teachers do not allow mobile devices in their classrooms let alone let students get ‘alerts’ on their phones to see the supports. I can see the benefit of this type of technology, and that it can support a growth mindset along with other supports in the classroom. I appreciate that you looked at the dependency that a student may have on this device rather than learning their own resiliency and responses. Great website, idea and research.