Visualizing Empathy

What is the meaning of the word empathy? How do youth represent this value and how do they apply it through ethical or moral codes in their digitally mediated interactions? How they build a common understanding of this principle through new forms of digital communication? 

 #Visualizingempathy acknowledges the role of mobile technologies in the construction of both individual and collective identities. Thus, in order to counter the phenomenon of hate speech online, our curriculum promotes positive identity construction that begins with introspection on the part of the individual and moves toward the development of a shared vision for an inclusive community.

This is achieved through a series of creative missions, where the instructor sends out a series of visual, textual and auditory prompts to participating students through a social network.  These missions require participants to create multimodal representations of themselves, friends, school, community, city, country and world. Throughout this process, students and educators will have opportunities to engage in conversations about each other’s representations online and within the classroom. These acts representation and dialogue enable students and teachers to engage in reflexive conversations about the moral and ethical codes involved in responsible digital citizenship.  

 We suggest a total of 4 to 6 weeks to achieve the learning objectives.  The learning objectives are: 

• To foster a sense of empathy toward diverse individual and cultural perspectives. 
• To participate in the development of moral and ethical codes for responsible digital citizenship within an educational community. 
• To develop media literacy skills by creating and interpreting a variety of messages disseminated through social and mobile media.   
• To build skills in expression and media communication through the use of various digital modalities.