Developing Empathy in the Digital Age | edCircuit
Empathy is the pathway between us. As educators, it connects us to our students, our colleagues and our communities. In education, we have been quick to adopt new technologies without long range data about the impact the implementation has on students and staff. With Chromebooks for instance, being unboxed in American classrooms at a rate of 30,000 per day, there is quite literally a wave of technology entering our schools. We are rushing down the information corridor, toward a virtual reality before we have learned to exist empathetically in our current reality. Without empathy, particularly self-empathy, a person will never know internal peace, nor will they be able to express empathy towards others. This is to say nothing about an individual’s ability to process and respond appropriately to academic and social stressors.