Dear Ms. Zong, please introduce yourself to our readers…
Hi I’m Weiwei Zong from China, nurtured in China, Singapore and USA. I work as a research scientist, but I am also passionate on education, philanthropy, art, and music. My motto is “brilliant life and pure love”.
How would you best define the education sector nowadays?
Since my background is on science, ideally, education is a playground to simulate the society, where you have so many roles with each one of them contributing in a different way. While some are dedicated to explore the unknown, some to serve and entertain other people, some coordinate and watch for any incidents, etc. Education sector would be an organization to carry out the simulation with the help from family and teachers as the frontline, schools, organizations, and government as the coordinator.
In your opinion, how did Covid-19 pandemic influence the education?
As a parent, ever since Covid-19, I’ve spent more time with my child and getting better idea of what is going on at school. So one positive impact that Covid has brought is the awareness of engagement into parenting and family time. My child’s school managed to have the hybrid learning where the children get to choose in person or online. My child has expressed great interest of going back to school. Another positive impact from Covid is they probably will appreciate school more. From the school perspective, workload gets doubled if not worse. Covid has actually played such a role in testing out the management and flexibility of the education system when facing the threat from the virus which is the common target for our human beings.
What are the major challenges for education? What about the opportunities?
The major challenge for education, in my opinion, is how to adapt to the changing trend. When facing the change, people can react very differently. The challenge here is how to find a solution to help each one of them feel accomplished.
This need can actually open up job opportunities for psychologists, therapists, musicians, scientists, engineers, etc. to be physically engaged in the everyday life of the education system.
Can you give us an example of successful technology implementation in education? Are modern tech innovations essential for the sector?
My child is a second grader. He has been using school distributed iPad since kindergarten where he has learned tons of science, math, and reading from the Apps there.
In your opinion, how will the sector evolve in the next five years?
WZ: It is really hard to predict the trend. I would expect more technology used in the classroom for the kids to be prepared for the job market later.
