reflection for school experience program

In this semester, I get an assignment to observe and also to be a teacher’s assistant. This is my third experience in school, and I’m doing observation and teaching assistance at SMA 54. The technology that was used by SMAN 54 was projector and speaker. Each class has its own projector, the screen, and also speaker, but no computer in class. When they want to use the projector, they have to bring their own laptop and borrow the cable for projector and speaker from the administration room. In my opinion, the school had tried to provide facilities for technology, but it was still not complete.  

Based on my observation, the language class that I observed didn’t use any technology. The teacher just used pedagogy skills in class. I think the teacher used one of model of instruction, it was lecture-discussion. Teacher focused on reading skills and then students answered the questions from their textbook. But, I found the good thing from the students, they used their cell phone and digital dictionary to find some vocabularies. When I interviewed 3 students from the class that I observed, they said that they use their phone to translate or find something that they want to know. They also said that the teacher never use any technology in class. The teacher also admitted about it. The teacher said that she must learn a lot about technology from her child. So far, the teacher used pedagogy skills for teaching and learning activities in classroom. 

The students have become digital native in the era of digital media. Whereas, the teacher is digital immigrant. It makes the gap between them. In opponent, digital immigrants are more likely use real things, like they prefer to edit the digital document rather than online editing. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be considered as a problem. Even the teachers are digital immigrants, they still can learn about technology and engage it into teaching and learning activities. Technology should be a tool for helping teaching to delivered material to the students, it cannot replace teacher’s role in class room.

Basically, pedagogy comes first before technology, therefore, today’s teachers are still comfort to use the first one. They come from the era before the technology exists. Technology refers to computer that familiar in school recently. Computer interactivity refers to human-machine interaction, whereas, pedagogy interactivity provides multiple interaction, such as learner-content, learner-instructor, learner-learner, and learner interface. Computer tend to seems ‘cool’ in many aspects, because the technology itself makes computer has many functions. According to me, if I compare with pedagogy, it seems not as cool as I thought before. Computer can present materials and provide pre-determined feedback, but teacher can present material and provide feedback that suitable with the learners’ needs directly. In other words, computer can give information and feedback that has prepared, otherwise, teacher can do that the computer’s can do directly. 

In my opinion, pedagogical is still the priority in class, because it can make the learning programs more interactive and provide the creativeness to set teaching and learning activities. We can see from the homeschooling students, though the program based on internet, they still need teacher. Technology is also important, but it cannot guarantee the learners to be success to reach the goals of the lesson. Computer assisted learning material should have good quality content and also pedagogical support.

There is no reason that teachers who are digital immigrant cannot engage students in teaching and learning activities. Teachers still can use their pedagogy skill. Good teaching can attract students’ interest, therefore, teacher should provide interesting learning method in class. The most important thing is today’s teachers have to adapt with technology in order to create better generation in the future.

IDENTITY

Until now, I’m still confused if there is people give me question ‘what is your identity?’ or ‘where are you from?’ the first answer from me is Jakarta. Then, I have to explain from my parent’s culture until me. I give answer like that because I think every people have different perspective about culture, so my answer will let them interpreted what my culture is based on their perspective. 

Mostly, my culture is influenced by my mother. My mother is from Pekanbaru, I often hear my mother talks to my auntie with Melayu language. Automatically, it makes me understand what they are talking about, but I cannot speak it. My cousins were also married with Melayu culture and I often asked to help them when they were married. My father also from Sumatra area, but he is from Aceh. The language is more complicated than Melayu, so it’s difficult to understand it. My father’s background culture is not really dominant, moreover, I have visited Aceh only once until now.  Those background cultures makes me confused, because I have been live in Jakarta from long time ago.  I was born, live, and school in Jakarta. Sometimes, I said to my friends that I don’t have hometown. Therefore, I envy to my friends when they go to their hometown.  So, I prefer to consider myself as Jakartans.

Mostly, people consider themselves about their identity because they are from that area (they were born and used to live), he/she also can speak the language from that area, and they also follow the culture/habit from that area. Whereas, I cannot speak in Melayu or Aceh language, I’m not from Aceh or Pekanbaru, and I’m not following habit/culture from that area. According to me, culture is about habit which people follow.

I’m still considering my background culture as my culture, that’s why, I always explain to them about it. It is one of my actions to respect my parents’ culture, besides I follow their culture. Based on my case, cultural identity is not always descent from the parents. Every people have their own perspective about culture. They can describe their own identity based on their perspective. I realize that having a culture is very important because people need to have identity, in order to others will recognize. However, is there anyone who doesn’t have cultural identity? Is it good or bad? For me, I think no good or bad thing about cultural identity. Probably, that person just doesn’t recognize his/her culture.

Technology for Speaking and Listening

I think every student agree that teaching and learning must be fun. Method that using in class also must appropriate and interesting. Based on comprehensible approach, learning language must be low stress. Teaching with technology must be suitable with that statement.

Students can enhance their speaking and listening by themselves. Comprehension must come before productive skills. That’s why students have to listen first to acquire language. Mostly, teacher is considered as the role model for students. They listen to teacher’s instruction, words, and also pronunciation.  For TPR (Total Physical Response), teacher usually gives command and then students do the command without saying anything. If it implicates to technology, students can use TPR games from internet. Technology can make students have low anxiety, they won’t feel embarrassing if they make some mistakes, because there is only human-computer communication. Besides, students can use technology as many times as they want and whenever they want. For natural approach, teacher can use song or video to enhance students’ listening skills. If they are often listening to the music, they will learn a lot of things, such as vocabularies, idioms, etc. After they listen, they have to try their speaking skills. One of important thing from speaking skill is pronunciation, because English is inconsistent. There are some website that can give example to pronounce. Students can watch the video about how to pronounce and then students can imitates it. Besides, grammar is also important. Chatting is one of technology that can be used in class and also outside the class, like schmooze. The teacher also still can monitor the students in the chatting room. Teacher can correct students’ grammar through the conversation. 

Technology is good helper for students and teacher, though there are some weaknesses, such as internet access, expertise of the technology, computer, etc. for me, with or without technology teaching and learning activities must be fun in the class, so students can enjoy ad acquire language subconciously.

Portable Technology for Learning

In people’s mind, maybe cell phone is not useful and appropriate to bring to the class. Mostly teacher in Indonesia forbid their students to bring their cell phone to the class, because the students will misused it. Students can texting during lesson or searching some website (ex: social networking). The thing that students like to use cell phone is SMS. It makes students cannot far from their phone. Besides, cell phone now more sophisticated with internet access, video recording, and camera. Those sophisticated things should be used more useful in class. For example, teacher can held polling through text message. Teacher can give question or quiz and then students can vote the answer. Students also can use to get some material from their teacher.

The second portable is PDA. PDA is more sophisticated than cell phone, because it works like computer. It can support multimedia functions and video. Video in PDA has higher resolution than cell phone. Besides, students and teacher can do file sharing. They can also do web-based grammar and vocabularies.

Another portable technology for learning is iPod. In iPod, we can do listening and recordings activities. Students can record their assignment and then send it to the teacher. In the iPod, there is Podcast that can support students to learn. They can download some listening sessions from there as references or sources.

I can conclude that MALL is also help students, the special thing that computer cannot get from mobile is portable. CALL is also more complete rather than MALL. Computer can deal with sound, visual, and text at the same time. The number of data in computer also bigger than mobile. So, teacher shouldn’t avoid students to bring their portable thing, teacher should deal with technology that evolves fast.

DIGITAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL NATIVE

http://www.mathiaspoulsen.com/tag/digital-natives/

Today is the era of digital. Everything is easy to get, especially information. There are so many sophisticated gadgets in the world. Kids are more sophisticated now, they can do multitask with phone in the hand and the other hand works on Laptop. They are really usual with technology, although it evolves really fast. Even, since they were still in womb, they used to listen to the music from their mom. Those are the evidence of the digital era has happened in this world.

Digital natives are the expert of all the things that sophisticated. They are really usual with computer, phone, and also software. Teachers should be digital native in this era, because they have to follow the times and technology. Web-based learning is really helpful today for teacher and student. There are a lot of things that can be used by teacher for teaching and learning activities, like prezi for presentation,  blogger for sharing information with student, webquest, email, using audio and video recordings,  etc. students can still learn even in long distance, teacher can use skype, video recording, or video call. Teacher and student also can sharing about some subject or discuss through chatting in forum. If the technology is available in class, but teacher is not the digital native, teaching and learning activities through technology cannot woks well.

image source : google.com

Digital media are the tools, like MALL and CALL. MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) is everything about portable, such as cell phone, PDA, and iPod. CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) is computer based learning. Teacher used some software for teaching and learning activities, such as poser point, translator, etc. all the things that seems useless like cell phone can be useful in class.

Digital natives and digital media should be available in school. Those two things have to work well in class, so the new generation will be good generation and recognized in the world.