Challenge
As the world is coping with the Covid 19 pandemic, education has taken a new form never before seen. As more countries go into lockdown and schools are closed as a result, online teaching and learning have become prevalent. I started teaching in an international school in Singapore recently and I notice there is a worrying trend of a particular challenge faced by students. I started the academic year after the summer break with students missing from my classes. These are students who are in quarantine as instructed either by Singapore or the countries they are at. Requests were made to allow the use of a laptop from one of the students so that these students who are in quarantine can "attend" classes in real time. In some very unfortunate instances, some students are in quarantine in a country that follows a different time zone. As a result, they have to attend classes at very odd hours. With the unpredictability of the Covid 19 pandemic and chances of students in quarantine going higher, we would have more students who have to miss classes and resort to attending classes using a laptop placed in class. This does not sound like the best solution. How then can technology and innovation solve this problem? What about the social emotional well being of students in quarantine? Can technology and innovation be a solution too?