Journal 2 TLL - Responding to article written by Davies G. and Hewer S entitled “General Characteristic of Digital Media”

It is true and undeniable that technology offers us so many facilities. It is true that technology also make teaching and learning process easier and effective. But the questions are: “have Indonesian teachers maximized the usage of technology in their teaching and learning process?” and: “have the teacher in Indonesia used technology appropriately?”

According to my experience and my friends’ experience when we were students, there were so many teachers ignored and closed her/himself about the development of technology. They just used something that I call “the old way” in their teaching methodology. I think some of them were lazy to learn about it. Because as we know, technology required people who use it to learn how to operate it.

In the other hand, some teacher used this technology wrong. My uncle told me that his son was asked by his teacher to make a description about something. And his teacher asked my uncle’s son to find out material in internet. Do you know what happen? My uncle’s son totally copied the answer from the webpage. Can you imagine it? There were no thinking process when my uncle’s student doing this. It is no use. I bet that my uncle’s son will not know if someone asks him about what has been written in his description.

We can see how important technology, and how important to use it appropriately. So for Indonesian teacher, keep teaching and keep being updated for any kind of development of technology and also use it appropriately. The world will change and as a teacher, we should aware of those changes.

Essay 1 Humanistic Studies - Who am I?

Well, I am not got amnesia. I could still remember all of my friends, my family, my teachers and everyone around me. But if someone asking: “where do you come from?” I will say, I am live in Jakarta. I do not know from what tribe I was. If s/he keep questioning, I will say: “well, my dad is from Java, my mom is from Sunda, but I live and growth in Jakarta and not able to speak Java or Sunda.  Confusing, right? But it is happen. And this kind of problem not only happens to me, but also to some people who live and grown up in Jakarta.

Yes, Jakarta is the place of a lot of people from different cultural background. And in this city, we commonly use Bahasa more than use any other language from any tribe. Person’s like me also different from people. We are different in term of cognitive development toward difference among people. So somehow I feel grateful that I born and live in Jakarta.

People who are like me, for me, is a victim of globalization. Because of the development of Jakarta as the impact of its status as the capital city of Indonesia the growing period in this city will be different from another city.

It is not really bad in being different. It is even enrich our knowledge of people. Hope that this thing will bring more good than bad.

Journal 1 TLL - Responding to an article written by Mark Warschauer and Carla Meskill entitled “Technology and Second Language Teaching”

It is very interesting to know about the development of technology in teaching and learning process. I was surprised when I realized that even a blackboard is a very important invention on that era. Even Mark and Carla said that it was “the most ubiquitous” technologies in U.S. education. Now we can see how it develops. There are overhead projector, computer, LCD projector, etc.

That development should be the tools to make the teaching process effective. In the other way, based on my experience, there are some problems. When I was a junior high school, I feel more comfortable if my teacher taught me with whiteboard than if my teacher used overhead projector (OHP). That is because we need to be adapted when the teacher uses that.

It is also surprising to know that those technologies also influenced the teachers’ approaches in teaching language. For me, I did not really realize about those technologies and their influences in some approaches. That is because some of teachers in Indonesia are out of that in kind of new invention in education. 

In my opinion, technology is important for teacher. So teacher, especially in Indonesia, should be up to date with that thing. The technology used also has to be appropriate and contextual to the students. We can not act like an up-to-date teacher but does not use in the context. I do believe with some of my lecturers who say that something most important was to know who was our student and what they need.

Warschauer, M., & Meskill, C. (2000).Technology and second language learning.In J. Rosenthal (Ed.), Handbook of undergraduate second language education (pp. 303-318). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.