With school safety and student mental health a national priority after school shootings, Austin-based, AI EdTech company OneSeventeen Media has launched a mobile-delivered mental health and behavior management tool for elementary schools. The ThinkingApp pilot launched May 2018 at the request of Austin ISD in direct response to a new law by the Texas State Legislature prohibiting behavioral expulsions of PreK – 2 graders.
See the Built-in Austin article.
ThinkingApp employs intelligent, adaptable machine learning to tailor advice to a child’s specific needs, helping them make wiser decisions. The platform assesses emotional and mental states, enabling students to process difficult emotions, understand their behaviors, and navigate those of others, while adults receive real-time, in-depth insight into what is on a child’s mind. Whereas many school safety solutions are reactive, ThinkingApp is based on trauma-informed, restorative and social-emotional learning (SEL) principles to provide real-time “emotional digital triage”™ for upset students before they escalate damaging behaviors, engendering a safer learning environment for all students.
OneSeventeen Media’s solution for PreK – 2 graders is smartly disguised as engaging, interactive eBook stories meant to transform this age group’s misbehaviors. Underpinning the powerful backend-technology are algorithms that deliver evidence-based, restorative exercises for creating safer campuses and inclusive learning environments to improve student mental health, school safety, attendance, and grades while reducing lost teaching time.
Backed by seven years of third-party, evidence-based research, components of the technology resulted in a “statistically significant reduction in students’ emotional distress.” One school reported a 77% decrease in alternative school transfers, preserving more than $100k while averting a potential school shooting. The real-time, actionable insights provided about a troubled student are a nod to the study’s observation that students share five times more information via the apps than they do in face-to-face interactions – data that makes OneSeventeen Media’s work crucial to today’s urgent need for improved school safety.
Cedars International’s Les Simpson noted, “the apps provide a secure way to de-escalate classroom drama, enabling teachers to focus less on discipline and more on teaching.”
For more information and to deploy ThinkingApp and reThinkIt!, visit www.oneseventeenmedia.com.