How to Make Back-to-School Better with Technology

While summer is in full swing, the back-to-school season is closer than you think (just visit any large retailer’s seasonal section and you will see what we mean), but this year it might feel a little different — and by different, we mean “sort of normal.” After the truncated 2019-2020 school year and the mostly at-home 2020-2021 school year, it looks like students and teachers will, for the most part, be going back to in-person learning. Assuming the Delta variant that is currently making news is under control by September, the CDC’s most recent guidelines note that “Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority.”

But that’s not to say that it’s going to look like 2018 in the nation’s classrooms. The COVID-19 pandemic did happen, is still happening, and will continue to shape the way we do things for the near future. While discussions about masks and vaccines continue, other changes are taking place, and many of those will require changes to the way children learn and teachers teach, and the tools and technologies that facilitate those activities.

Enabling school safety

The CDC recommends that schools maintain at least three feet of distance between students, and stresses screening, handwashing, cleaning and other fairly common-sense activities to curtail germ transmission. These measures, of course, apply not only to classrooms, but to all school personnel in administrative as well as classroom settings. So how can you help encourage common sense?

Temperature screenings. One of the first steps in managing a healthy environment is temperature screenings. We’ve all gotten pretty used to having temperature scans when entering certain buildings – medical offices and the like. It’s extremely non-invasive and I think we can all take a moment to be grateful for how far temperature-taking technology has come. So, having thermal screening technology that provides fast, reliable readings for all students and faculty with no touch needed is a great first step toward a safer school environment.