Technology Can Enhance Creativity

            Technology really can support language teaching and learning to be effective, useful and fun. Nowadays there are so many kinds of technology that are used for delivering knowledge such as google, Wiki, podcast, youtube, blog, my space, even Facebook and twitter. That is a kind of modern language teaching way.

            But in the real situation, most of schools in Indonesia still apply conservative way in teaching and learning language. They may know about those kind of 2.0 technology although not at all but there is no idea for tem to connect between those two things. Even they seldom use technology tool for supporting teaching and learning language.

            Let’s see a case that has happened in a school that I have observed. In that school teacher don’t ever use any kind of technology except language laboratory. Actually the language laboratory is not useful much because as I saw, the last usage of language laboratory in the class that I have observed is at January 2009. During in the class the teacher just use textbook as a media in language teaching. Even she did not use whiteboard in the classroom. As her own confession, she has never used digital technology like computer, LCD, power point. When teacher explained about the lesson that it was type of text, students just listened to the teacher. It was so boring and made students did not pay attention mush to the language teaching, or made some of them felt sleepy.

            Well, if I act as a teacher I will maximize my skill about technology to apply language teaching. The simplest thing is I will use slides of power point to explain what type of texts are, the generic structure and language features, and those each example. Actually my partner and I did it in our team teaching practice.

            If I can maximize my time and have internet connection, I will search an interesting video about that kind of lesson from youtube and I will share to my students. Students need visualization in case of comprehending the material. I will also use Wiki to get resources of the material or I will suggest my students to visit the link of Wiki’s webpage that I have found it.

            If it is possible and they can make entry in blog, I will give a task for students to make text that they should post it in their own blog. I can ask them to write recount according their experience or write narrative text of fairy tale and fable but they make a different or funny ending based on their creativity, and they also upload picture as the illustration.

            Actually, many things can be done by technology in teaching and learning language. It can create a great idea or an amazing creativity. According to me it also the best way to enhance comprehension the material and apply the real practice for the students. The effective teaching also can be achieved by using technology.

            So, as a candidate of the next generation of the teacher, I should be expert in using technology and combine it in teaching and learning activity to make it not only effective but also fun.

My First Week Classroom Observation in Teaching Assistance Experience

            In my first week classroom observation, I found many things to be shared. Both of effective and ineffective teachings were applied by teacher in the classroom. At that time I observed a teacher who taught about text. Firstly, teacher asked students to discuss text together with her. Students were asked to read the text first than they were given questions about what was the main idea and what were the meanings of some difficult words. There was a student who knew the answer and gave the response. It also happened in the next paragraphs. If there was no response from a student, teacher would point a student to answer the question. Teacher helped student to answer by giving a clue but sometimes the clue was like a “burung beo” way. I think it is totally a wrong method because they have already Senior High School students. In answering other questions, sometimes students read together the sentence in the text so it did not sound clearly. Those statements included into ineffective teaching because it can make some students who did not pay attention much to the big discussion class became sleepy or did something else.

            Anyway, the effective part is the teacher always said thank you and also said the name too to students who had already answered the question. It made students were appreciated and motivated to do answering in next time. In teaching time, teacher tried to move from one side to another side in the classroom so she could get attention from all of students. In the end of discussion, teacher asked someone to make a conclusion or repeat what was the last answer so everyone should pay attention if suddenly he/she was pointed by teacher. In the last, teacher asked students to do task in the textbook and when students were doing the task, teacher moved around to check or help their work.

            I was surprised when after students did the task, one by one of them went to the teacher’s table to collect their tasks by queuing while teacher checked and gave mark. Oh, it also happened in my Elementary School in the much previous years. The rest of students who finished to be checked just did chat with their friend because there was no something to do. It was the most ineffective part of the classroom activity.

            For me, if I had to teach the same lesson to the students, I would create group discussion to make it more effective and did not waste much time. For the discussion of the answers, each of group could shared the report of their discussion result and the other groups paid attention and could gave response or feedback to the report. In out of grouping time, if I asked students to answer my question, I would asked whoever wanted to answer to raised her/his hand first and then she/he said the answer. It would be clearer than answering by said together. Of course I would not do the same thing like checking the task like that. May be I could bring their task to the home and checked it later on or while I checked their task, I gave them something else to do. I think it was better if I did a short reflection to the students before I closed my teaching time.