KOMPAS 22 April 2013 "Saya Ingin Jadi Penguasa"

Setelah tulisan saya menyebar di blog, majalah dan tabloid nirlaba, tampaknya harian KOMPAS menilai tulisan saya cukup aktual untuk dimuat. KOMPAS memuat tulisan ini pada tanggal 22 April 2013. Kebetulan dekat-dekat dengan tanggal itu, saya berulang tahun. Sepertinya, ini adalah "kado" ulang tahun buat saya. Terima kasih KOMPAS!
Selamat menikmati!


salam,


H

SOCIAL SKILLS

Using my classroom and other classrooms as laboratories had put me into a deep thought. Among many thoughts I had in mind, I stopped to one skill that students used naturally: Social Skills.

What are Social Skills?
In brief, Social Skills are skills that we use to communicate - verbally or non-verbally - with other people. In this writing, I mostly will see skills used in classrooms that related with social skills in general.

Social Skills in Classrooms
I will use some skills depicted in classrooms such as accepting responsibility, cooperating and resolving conflict. To my point of view, these three skills are related with each other. Once again, using my classrooms and other classrooms as laboratories, I saw these three skills - included in Social Skills - were really needed and powerful.

Accepting responsibility
Some students need extra encouragement to accept responsibility in some extends. Lack of confidence, fear, underestimating themselves might be some reasons to see. Here are some examples that I have seen happening in classrooms.
Why should I carry this responsibility? Can you please choose someone else? These questions are mostly asked by students with low self-esteem - sometimes a bit of fear that they might not lead well as it has been asked. This kind of reaction is like a disease. It is truly contagious to other students within the group. If my friends can escape from that responsibility, why can't I?
Again, as teachers, we need to give motivational inputs. Some students feel more comfortable when there is assignment to do, it is completed with the how to do list. We need to give them a bit insight then the rest of what will happen, we let them to anticipate as the real life will do similarly.

Cooperating
It is a bit difficult and frustrated sometimes for some students to cooperate themselves in a group work. Some of them might have an idea of becoming passive members as their sign of good cooperation. It is something that teachers need to aware of. Students with that kind of attitude soon or later will take everything passively. When starting the learning process, teachers need to give clear expectation on what is accepted and not accepted as a cooperation. Being attentive as well as active in sharing materials or opinion are some real actions in making word cooperation comes true.

Resolving Conflict
This skill is really hard when nobody wants to lose. For many children, loosing an argument is not a good way to impress their buddies. In a group work, conflict happens easily. One child wants to be more recognized than others and vice versa. As teachers, we need to remind students that it is better to keep the situation healthy than to let things loosen and conflict comes. Small things mean a lot such as listening to others, taking turns, reacting positively to others' opinion, compromising opinions, connecting things. To make things run smoothly, as teachers we need to guide and train students on reacting in such conditions.

Those are the skills that students need to improve. Once again, different classrooms will have different point of view as I see these skills needed in classrooms I have observed.

cheers,

H

LATEST WORKSHOP: PYP EXHIBITION: A COLLABORATION IN 21ST CENTURY

Hello!

I need to update this post since I keep thinking on copyright issue. Therefore, I stop link sharing to the presentation in prezi.
I will give you some screen shots from the presentation itself.

In November 24th, 2012, I conducted a workshop about PYP Exhibition for IB Dunia Conference at Sekolah Pelita Harapan Lippo Village. With the help of some teachers - Shanti, Roy and Mega -, I prepared the materials. Started from my idea on why not sharing with others working on the same thing: Primary Years Program Exhibition?

Why were there many teachers involved? It's because Shanti and Mega are the Year 6 teachers, while Roy is our ICT integrator. More over, they had done such a wonderful jobs integrating technology within the exhibition. PYP Exhibition itself is a culmination of all years students have walked upon their PYP journey.

Here are some pictures from our presentation. Thanks!


cheers,


Hugo

ARE WE WISE OR FATALIST TECHNOLOGY USERS?

ARE WE WISE OR FATALIST TECHNOLOGY USERS?

Hugo D Gunawan I

Language Advisor: Frances Hazle

“The technology development drives people into two mainstreams:

wise and fatalist users”.

It’s a common thing now in big cities in Indonesia, to see a 7-year-old children play with a sophisticated handheld. The words: pad, tab, touch screen, swipe, wifi, online and many other technological words, are often heard from our children’s conversation. The rapid changes of technology cannot be avoided. In line with the rapid changes of technology, the mid level society in Indonesia is massively growing. 

The phenomenon of positive growth of economics in Indonesia has been predicted. This phenomenon triggers some changes in many aspects such as life style, education and living cost. Life style is mostly related with technology changes. The closest example is the technology exploration on handheld. The handheld that we knew before was mostly for calling and texting. Unavoidably, the technology has had to touch up the handheld we use today.

The changes in our handheld consist of the colored screen, integrated camera, more capacity for text characters, multimedia service (MMS), integrated music player, touch screen, internet access,  etc. , you name it. It seems that the new products bring a lot of changes that users cannot resist having. The unbearable resistance to have the latest technology is triggered by the growth of social media that have been integrated to the Internet bundling within the handheld.

As most of us are in mid level society, the impact of this technology growth does exist. Our kids are whining to have the newest product from Apple or Samsung i.e. iPhone, iPad, and the MacBook series for Apple, and Galaxy series phone and Galaxy Tab as the iPad competitor. We cannot cover our ears when husband or wife also argue with each other about how important it is to have iPad to support their work.  At the end of the day, we should be honest with each other, is it for work or life style? Are we insisting on following the latest technology fad for recognition?

The technology development drives people into two mainstreams: wise and fatalist users. The reason behind our motivation in keeping up with the latest technology offered by all gadgets is questionable. Unfortunately, we can “pull our brake” while our kids cannot. It is not because our kids do not have self-control. It is mainly because they belong to this technology era and have not reached maturity in deciding what is best for them. They can stare at their gadgets for hours and try all applications while adults like us worry too much about spending more money to fix the gadgets supposing they are broken.

How can we keep up with what our kids know? To be honest, there’s no other way than dedicating our time to learn what they know from them directly. Most of us think that we are too busy to sit and learn the games that our kids are playing. Or worse, most of us think that we are too old to know such things. Even worse, most of us think that what they are playing are useless. The willingness is the key. The rest is time dedication and management.

“Getting involved in educating and nurturing within 21^st century education

is not only school responsibility but also parents’ ”

The best thing that we will get when we are spending time with our kids is a better family relationship. There are three things we will have. First, we will be able to justify and influence our kids in choosing and valuing the right games. Second, we will be able to facilitate our kids to think naturally. The last, we will be able to operate new things in our golden age!

The positive impacts are more dominating than the negative ones. Once again, we should sacrifice our time though.

The use of technology is also widely misused by our kids. The boredom, peer pressure and addiction are some reasons technology misuse. Rules have been introduced at home and school to minimize the tendency of misusing. The best part of anticipating this technology abuse should be coming from the users. At this point, basically, it is personal calling to know whether the users want to be wise users or fatalist users. Covering as the shield for personal calling will be the maturity. How do our kids get their maturity? They get their maturity from their families and environment. Remember, we raise our kids with the consideration that their maturity meets the age and is at the right time.

The wise users will consider cutting the word fun into two categories, which are fun to help, and fun to use. Fun to help, of course, the users know that the gadgets offer a lot of fun to help users open their mind. On the contrary, the fatalist users will think that the gadgets are fun to use. Addiction is going to be the result. To be wise or fatalist users, you do not need be kids, adults might do a similar thing. Therefore, the role of parents and teachers in building wise users is critical.

There are a lot of ways to guide users into becoming wise users. The technological gadgets are in trend putting educational games to help our kids to learn academically. Adults will need to make an effort to select and apply these educational games. At this point, educational games cannot always become an oasis to rely on. Addiction is another result for fatalist users. It is kind of funny to hear that the kids are addicted to educational games and cannot put their gadgets away.  Therefore, knowing the right time and the timing will be of great help. 

Getting involved in educating and nurturing within 21^st century education is not only school the responsibility but also the parents’. As it was mentioned in the beginning of the article, the impact of the economic growth is in symbiosis with almost all technological aspects in our lives. That is why it is important for us to know how technology is used in different perspectives among generations. Otherwise, we are going to raise fatalist technology users. To be honest, we don’t want to end up in such a situation, do we? Being parents and teachers in this technological generation is not an easy thing to do. As there’s no institution running educational session to prepare one as parents, we, as parents are required to be committed in paving the way for the success of our kids. In conclusion, I would like to quote what people often say,” no pain, no gain”.

Hugo D Gunawan I is currently Tunas Muda International School Secondary Coordinator and an IB Asia Pacific PYP Bilingual Workshop Leader. He also writes his ideas at http://guruhugo.blogspot.com

References:

·      Booklet Perkembangan Beberapa Indikator Utama Sosial-Ekonomi Indonesia Agustus 2012 Badan Pusat Statistik, ISSN: 2085.5664 Publication Number: 03230.1203

·      http://www.edutopia.org/blog/21st-century-learning-students-parents-suzie-boss

·      Boss, Suzie. Edutopia: A Parents Guide to 21^st Century Learning © 2012 The George Lucas Educational Foundation