The COVID-19 lockdown has had emotional and psychological effects on students. The lockdown also compromised the ability of educational institutions to support social-emotional learning (SEL). The educational institutions stumble upon many challenges during that period as the semester continued while the students and teachers didn't arrive to the institution. This qualitative phenomenological study analyzed seven interviews in the interpretive approach of pre-service teachers. The pre-service teachers learned via the Book Creator, which is a digital platform for creating and sharing digital books. Therefore, we asked: What characteristics of social-emotional learning were expressed, according to pre-service teachers' perception who used Book Creator? The findings indicate three themes: social learning, ethics in learning and humanistic assessment. The students indicated that proper use of the Book Creator can bridge the complexity of teaching and learning during the pandemic and integrate the social-emotional learning principles while emphasizing the importance of ethics in learning. [For the full proceedings, see ED626668.]