Integrating SEL and EdTech to Benefit Students

Tamara Fyke wrote this column in 2019 to ask how social-emotional learning and edtech can work together, and Fyke offered three strategies. A new section after the text looks at what CASEL and recent reporting say about SEL and technology now that artificial intelligence tools are in students’ hands.

In my early days in education, a wise leader said to me, “The trends in education swing like a pendulum.” At the time we were focused on No Child Left Behind; now, almost twenty years later, we are focusing again on the needs of the whole child, but with a different perspective. In the 21st century, we understand the needs of the whole child include social-emotional learning, and we also know that technology is a ubiquitous, essential, and powerful part of education. So we must ask ourselves this necessary question: How can SEL and edtech work together to benefit students?

In order to answer this question, we must take a look at the future of our children. With the growing prevalence of technology in every facet of our lives – from digital grocery shopping to project management, students must be equipped to do more than watch YouTube videos and post on Instagram. They need a thorough and practical knowledge and understanding of information systems, typing skills, and coding. Technology will continue to be a part of everything in their lives, so the true test is knowing more than the mechanics ― it’s knowing how to use tech with purpose. They need to be taught the consequences, positive and negative, of their interactions with technology. It is a matter of ethics and morality.

According to Merriam-Webster, ethics are the principles of conduct governing a group and morals are principles of right and wrong behavior. In our society, how do we know what is right and wrong? Regardless of our political or religious beliefs, one thing upon which we can all agree is the law of love – doing good for ourselves and others.  

One of the challenges with technology is that it depersonalizes activities and can, thereby, desensitize us. This is a longstanding issue that was even addressed by literary leaders a century ago, including TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf during World War I (1914-1918). Through their poems and stories, they painted a picture of the grim realities of war, such as in Eliot’s The Waste Land. The accounts reflected the hand-to-hand combat nature of that war – a time when soldiers still looked into the whites of the eyes of their enemies. With the advancements of technology by World War II, soldiers were no longer face-to-face with their enemies. Guns and shells made it possible to keep more of a distance, both physically and emotionally. With the use of even greater advanced technologies, such as training simulations that look and feel like video games and drones for weapon deployment, the distance and depersonalization have increased all the more.

Think about the movies of the past twenty years that paint prophetic pictures of man vs. machine, such as The Matrix (1999) and The Book of Eli (2010). These and other films issue a warning of what will happen if we subordinate our ethical and moral responsibilities to the convenience of machines.  

Therefore, it behooves us as educators and community leaders to take up the mantle of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant, who advocate for individual freedoms and community justice – the dignity of the human being. As this relates to technology, we must remind ourselves and teach our students two very important principles:

1.) Technology is a tool that is to serve our needs as human beings. We are not slaves to it.

2.) There are real human beings on the other side of the screen who have rights, freedoms, thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

So, again, back to the question at hand. How can SEL and edtech work together for the benefit of our students? I believe it begins with valuing humans over machines. As my technologist friends say, “Technology is only as good as the people who create it…or use it.”  

Edtech can support social-emotional learning by giving hands-on opportunities for development of CASEL’s five core competencies: self-management, self-awareness, responsible decision-making, relationship management, and social awareness.

When we use edtech for skill and drill in order to give us a snapshot of a student’s current abilities in a particular subject area, we are then able to provide more personalized instruction to meet their needs. This increases their own self-awareness. Additionally, the power of edtech can be harnessed to help students create meaningful and lasting projects, such as websites, blogs, and digital art. In our increasingly tech dependent world, we must teach students how to be responsible digital citizens and use technology for good. This helps improve their social awareness.

Not only can edtech be used to help increase self-awareness and social awareness, it can also be used as a tool for self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship building, which are critical skills for employment in the workforce. Digital projects, such as coding or movie-making, demand problem-solving and collaboration in order to create a vibrant product and meet deadlines. The key to using edtech to promote social-emotional learning is to be intentional about the conversation with students about the competencies and skills they are developing for personal and interpersonal growth.

Three strategies for using technology to support social-emotional skill development:

1.) Define “The Good”  — The Good is loving ourselves and loving others. Love is Courageous – standing up for what is right. Love is Honest – speaking and acting truthfully. Love is Kind – treating others the way we want to be treated.

2.) Make the human connection. — Have intentional and thorough conversations about the people on the other side of the screen. Talk about the real human beings who create and manage the technology as well as the real human beings who are impacted by technology, i.e., everything from electronic record management (EMRs) at hospitals to their own social media usage.

3.) Adopt a makerspace mentality. — Empower students to create with digital tools and give them a voice. Move beyond PowerPoint presentations to providing options for fun and interesting individual or group-based projects, such as comics, digital posters, movie trailers, songs, photo galleries, playlists, etc.

SEL and technology in 2026: what the research and field reports say

Tamara Fyke’s 2019 column above asks how SEL and technology can work together, and the answer given is that technology should serve people and that students should be taught who is on the other side of the screen. The questions about SEL and technology have changed since the column was written because generative AI tools are now widely used by teenagers. This section reports what CASEL and recent education reporting say, and what that means for the three strategies Fyke proposed.

The five competencies still apply

Fyke’s column ties edtech to CASEL’s five competencies. The CASEL framework defines them as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. The CASEL page itself does not discuss technology, so any link between a tool and a competency has to be made by the school. The question to ask of a digital project is which competency students practice in it and how the teacher will make that visible, as Fyke recommends when calling for intentional conversation about the skills students are building.

What the field is discussing about AI

An Education Week report from February 2026 on CASEL’s annual online conference describes experts divided on whether AI will support or weaken social-emotional development. It reports that 64 percent of teens use AI chatbots. The article credits Gallup for that figure but links to a Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, conducted in September and October 2025, which reports the same 64 percent, so Pew is the source cited here. The report records several concerns and benefits.

• David Adams of the Urban Assembly worries about “emotional offload”, meaning that students hand over social and emotional reasoning to a machine.
• An American Psychological Association health advisory, as the article describes it, warns that adolescents may have difficulty telling a chatbot’s simulated empathy from human understanding.
• Justin Long of Instructure raised questions about how student data is used and stored and whether students know they are speaking to a bot.
• Chatbots can give students a low-stakes place to rehearse hard conversations or job interviews, and teachers can use generative AI to find journaling prompts or mindfulness ideas.
• One participant said that AI can help students practice skills but that adults build safety, emotional connection and empathy.

These are the views of conference speakers reported by a news outlet, so they identify concerns and hypotheses and do not prove effects. CASEL’s August 2025 comments to the U.S. Department of Education reach a similar conclusion: AI should enhance, not replace, the relationships that research links to student success, and teachers need preparation to use it in ways that support student well-being.

What this means for Fyke’s three strategies

1. Define the good. Fyke’s definition of the good as caring for ourselves and others gives a school a plain statement it can apply to a new tool. Adams’s suggestion that educators set clear SEL goals for AI and evaluate against them uses the same idea.
2. Make the human connection. Fyke asks teachers to talk about the people who create technology and the people affected by it. With chatbots, a first conversation can cover what the program is, who built it and why its answers may sound caring without coming from a person.
3. Adopt a makerspace mentality. Students who create projects such as comics or trailers practice decision-making and collaboration, and the project keeps the student as the author. A school can decide whether AI is allowed in a given project and how its use is disclosed.

Questions for school leaders

Before adopting any tool that touches students’ feelings or personal reflection, a leader can ask what student data it collects, where it is stored and who can see it. A leader can also ask what the school will do if a student shares something worrying with a program rather than an adult, and who reviews the tool’s effect against the SEL goals set for it.

For more, see edCircuit’s Social-Emotional Learning Guide and edCircuit’s Digital Citizenship Guide.

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