by Dr Lee Kean Wah

It is an honour for me to announce the launch of the Going Digital ELT Blog. To provide a bit of background, the Going Digital ELT’s website (previously Going Digital Kota Kinabalu) is an online extension to a professional learning community for ESL teachers that I initiated together with Cynthia James and a team of educators from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and Kota Kinabalu District Education Office (PPD KK) in 2016. This community gathers ESL practitioners who have a common passion in digital technology for language education in Sabah, Malaysia. (Go here to find out more).
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Introduction

​Precisely at 12.01 A.M. on the 4th of April 2021, I decided to pull the plug on my two main social media platforms – Facebook and Instagram after years of online engagement.
 
I woke up the next day with WhatsApp messages from colleagues, family and friends who were asking if I was doing fine and if everything was okay. I reassured them that I was in a sound state of mind and that I just needed a break from the perpetual loop of virtual connectedness.
 
It was not an overnight decision. It was a gradual feeling of exhaustion from the frequent need to be seen online in order to stay active and relevant in today’s world. However, this weariness turned to mental fatigue when the pandemic hit in the first quarter of 2020 and how ever since, teachers and students alike have been ruthlessly inundated with suggestions of innumerable virtual platforms and applications to facilitate online teaching and learning.
 
While I understand the need to fully exploit virtual platforms and cutting-edge applications to ascertain that teaching and learning will continue to take place albeit the persistent pandemic around us, I cannot help but notice that very few of us actually care enough to tell each other to stop and reflect. After more than a year since the pandemic first radically forced the transformation of teaching and learning as we knew it, have we reflected on the reality on the grounds, the well-being of teachers and students as well as what it means moving forward for teachers and their professional development? 

Summary

This article relates my personal experience as a teacher, conducting remote teaching during the pandemic. Teaching students who mainly come from lower socioeconomic background in the district of Semporna in Sabah, Malaysia has put me in a deep reflective mode. This article is an honest sharing of the mental burdens and emotional turmoils I had undergone during those very challenging times. This article ends with some recommendations on how education leaders and district education offices can play a more active role in supporting teachers' mental and emotional well-beings in this unprecedented time. 
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by Cynthia C. James

Summary

I have plenty of experiences with low-resource classrooms - as a student, a teacher, and someone who works with and alongside teachers. In this post, I would like to share how all these experiences have shaped my thinking about technology integration practices in the classroom, and my belief about what matters. To borrow Clandinin's (2013) term, this is my 'narrative beginning.' I am sharing my reflections on how it all started, and how I came to be part of the Going Digital community. 
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