ULASAN ARTIKEL: http://kupukuputp.blogspot.com/

1.    Judul

“Integrasi Teknologi Komunikasi dan Informasi dalam Proses Pembelajaran dan Kesenjangan Penggunaan TIK di Indonesia”

Setelah membaca artikel ini, menurut saya pemilihan judul ini kurang tepat dengan isi dari artikel ini. Isi dari artikel lebih mengarah kepada kesenjangan SDM dan masalah infrastuktur dalam pengintegrasian TIK. Sehingga, hemat saya mungkin lebi tepat kalau judul dari artikel ini adalah “Kesenjangan Integrasi TIK di Indonesia”.

2.    Content

Berdasarkan artikel yang diposting oleh Putriya, menurut saya inilah fakta yang dihadapi oleh negara Indonesia. Dimana ini merupakan tanggung jawab kita, sebagai generasi Indonesia agar mampu menjadi penerang terhadap teman-teman guru kita di segala penjuru Indonesia yang masih belum mampu menggunakan fasilitas ICT agar dapat menggunakannya  dalam proses belajar mengajar, entah itu sebagai media, ataupun cara kita untuk berbagi pengalaman mengenai pendidikan.

Saya sependapat dengan artikel ini yang mana terdapat dua masalah pokok dalam pengintegrasian ICT di Indonesia adalah (1) sumber daya manusia yang belum mencapai tingkatan di era globalisasi dan (2) infrastruktur (biaya yang mahal) yang belum memadai.

Di era globalisasi ini, bukan hanya masyarakat Indonesia yang dituntut untuk mampu menggunakan teknologi, siapapun yang ingin maju dan berkembang, maka menjadi sebuah keharusan adalah mampu bersaing di era ini. Karena era globalisasi ini merupakan era persaingan. Siapa yang mampu bersaing dan menang maka dialah yang maju.

Masalah SDM, dalam hal ini adalah kualitas guru. Guru-guru kita ada yang beranggapan bahwa di jaman mereka sekolah dulu tidak tersedia fasilitas TIK, jadinya banyak di antara mereka yang tidak mampu mengoperasikan komputer, dan perangkat-perangkat lain dalam  ICT. Sehingga dampak dari masalah ini adalah pembelajaran menjadi membosankan. Padahal banyak sekali situs-situs pendidikan yang bisa mereka akses di internet, mereka bisa menambah wawasannya melalui ICT ini, bisa sharing dengan guru-guru lainnya lewat media online.

Masalah infrastruktur, saya pikir ini menjadi tanggung jawab pemerintah kita. Bagaimana kesiapan dan kesanggupan pemerintah dalam mengintegrasikan, memeratakan pembelajaran melalui ICT, demi membangun generasi Indonesia yang melek Tekhnologi.

3.    Penggunaan dan pemilihan kata

Penggunaan dan pemilihan kata dalam artikel ini saya pikir sudah sesuai dengan acuan dalam membuat sebuah artikel, yakni tidak terdapat banyak istilah asing yang mungkin bisa tidak dipahami oleh pembaca. Mengingat yang membaca posting artikel ini adalah siapa saja yang berbeda latar belakang, yag mungkin tingkat pemahaman tiap orang itu berbeda-beda.

Technology and the Kindergarten

 

Technology is transforming how students in kindergarten through grade 12 are being taught as new ways of e-learning start to become part of the standard curriculum. With the help of the Internet, mobile devices and specialized educational software and hardware, today's technology is empowering educators to bring a new level of interaction, communication and collaboration to the classroom. The K-12 generation is adept at using this technology, having grown up in a world steeped in digital media, so learning comes naturally in the context of interactive applications and online social networking forums. Here are the top 10 tech trends we're seeing as K-12 educators take advantage of mobile devices and rich media applications to communicate, inspire and engage students.

1. Educational games: Video games challenge kids to explore an imaginative world and engage with visual information. Educational games use this interactive interface to impart knowledge and expose students to new concepts. The new learning format is not only fun for kids, but also takes advantage of the learning abilities they have developed through gaming. The vast majority of the K-12 student body is gamers; a 2008 Pew survey found that 97 percent of children aged 12 to 17 play video games regularly.

Researcher Patricia Marks Greenfield has found that gaming cultivates skills useful in learning: enhanced visual perception, the ability to process information quickly and in parallel, the ability to analyze information and the ability to access information through imagery and text. Just this month the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced that it invested $20 million in online learning, with a third of that dedicated to educational video games and tools. Popular educational games include Civilization and Europa Universalis, which teach history.

2.Interactive whiteboards (IWB): These large interactive displays bring the blackboard and the overhead projector into the 21st century. Teachers use the technology to project images and videos, share a computer screen and write information through pen and touch technology. Lessons projected on the whiteboard may be saved for later viewing, aiding students who benefit from repetition or were absent from the classroom.

3. Classroom management software: Software designed for the K-12 classroom allows teachers a central platform for managing the classroom. Standard classroom management software gives the teacher remote access to all computer workstations in a classroom, for the purpose of sharing a computer screen, supervising online activities or monitoring progress. Comprehensive course management systems go further, offering a platform for managing all classroom activities. Instructors may use these platforms to record grades, integrate lesson plans, track student progress and communicate with parents. Some platforms allow students to access the system, providing a forum for posting assignments and sharing information with peers.

4. Computer-adaptive testing (CAT): Computer-adaptive tests adjust to the student's ability level, automatically selecting questions based on performance on preceding questions. The technology uses item response theory (IRT) to select optimal questions. Research says that compared to static multiple choice tests, computer-adaptive tests require fewer test items to arrive at equally accurate scores. Computer-adaptive testing is used by TOEFL and GRE.

5. Dynamic assessment software: This adaptive learning software provides teachers with the ability to create customized learning plans, allowing the teacher to assess each student's strengths and weaknesses and adjust the learning experience accordingly. The software may operate as a standards-based assessment database or as a real-time automated system. The assessment database allows teachers to record and analyze student performance data over time. Teachers may customize the standards to reflect their particular class requirements or adopt state or school district-mandated testing standards. The adaptive assessment technology is generally a program that reacts real-time to student performance, identifying trouble areas and speeding up or slowing down lessons in response.

6. Simulation programs: Simulations model the real world, allowing students to explore concepts and solve problems in a fictional environment through role-playing. Simulators are already commonplace in workforce training, where they are used to simulate medical procedures for health professionals, flight controls for pilots and astronauts and more. Teachers can use 3D modeling and simulation software to "create learning experiences that are authentic models of real world situations," helping students contextualize abstract concepts. Simulations allow students to work through implications of different scenarios and solve problems in an imaginary environment. Popular simulations include SimCity, which models urban development, and ChemLab, a virtual chemistry lab.

7. Social networking: When properly supervised, blogs, online chat rooms and communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook have a place in the K-12 classroom. Students connect with each other online, using the web to collaborate on projects and share ideas in a structured digital environment. At the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, for example, students use social media to message each other, share documents and blog. One assignment, for example, had students write memoirs, upload them onto the school's network and then turn them into podcasts using GarageBand software. They posted blogs about the memoirs and shared them on social-networking site EduSpaces.

8. Mobile devices: Teachers are using handheld devices in the classroom to connect students to the web, to e-learning applications and to each other. Examples include tablets such as iPads, netbooks, smartphones, MP3 players and even GPS and GIS systems. These devices support digital quizzes and assessments, access to podcasts or online videos, conferencing and other activities. GPS and GIS, for example, can be used for teaching astronomy (viewing constellations), geography (mapping latitude and longitude) and more. Classroom-specific devices such as "clickers" are among the handheld tech trends in K to 12 education. These voting devices allow the instructor to gather feedback in real-time through group assessments, polls and surveys.

9. E-readers and digital books:The use of e-readers, such as the Kindle, and tablets, such as the iPad, in the classroom is on the rise, fueling the emerging trend of interactive e-textbooks. Electronic textbooks enable multimedia features such as embedded videos, quizzes, highlighting, text-searching features, note taking and interactive graphics. A biology book, for example, might allow students to navigate 3D molecules from any angle. One innovator in the interactive textbook market, Inkling, lets students share and comment on the texts: "By selecting a piece of text you can leave a note for others to read and develop a conversation around the text." Teachers can view and moderate the students' textual commentary, incorporating it into the lesson.

10. School community networks: Cloud computing offers an affordable means for schools and school districts to set up shared networks. Teachers and education specialists access these networks to share lesson plans and information, upload documents and communicate with other education professionals. The community network can also serve as a student information database. Cloud-based applications eliminate the need for schools to invest in costly hardware. As educational technology specialist Lynn Reedy observes, "We don't have to worry about space because the files are all stored in the cloud and accessible to everyone." Cloud-based networking applications allow teachers and staff to collaborate and share their best classroom practices, bridging classrooms, schools and districts. One recent successful example: the Portland Public Schools moved its staff and student resources to Microsoft's Live@edu cloud computing platform.

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Snowball Throwing Method

Definition of Snowball Throwing Method

According to Firdaus (2010:3), snowball throwing is methods which make students enjoy and can decrease worry in learning speaking. It encourages creative thinking. Students can increase their speaking ability by using a new language and being motivated students for learning.

In addition, he described that snowball throwing encourages the students’ active speaking participation in the classroom, because this method contains a rich communication where students must be active. Snowball throwing also has capability to increase self-confidence of hesitant students, because in snowball throwing activities, the students will have different role and have to speak, which means they do not have to take the same responsibilities.

Widodo (2009) recommends that snowball throwing method could train students to think more to received messages from others, and gave that message to friends in one group. These questions used by paper than press it be a paper ball and throw the ball to other students. Students who get the paper ball than open it and answer the questions.

So, it is appropriate to use snowball throwing in increasing the students’ self- confidence in speaking.

Procedures in Using Snowball Throwing Method

Asmani (2011: 47) gives the procedures in using snowball throwing. They are:

1.      The teacher gives the materials based on the basic competence.

2.      The teacher makes some groups and gives the explanation about the materials to the moderator.

3.      The each moderator back to their groups, then they explain again what teacher explained before to their friends based on their each group.

4.      Then, each student has given a work paper to write one question involve the material that moderator of each group had explain it.

5.      A question paper then made it like a ball and throws it from a student to another for ± 15 minutes.

6.      After that, each student will get a snowball paper then the student is given an opportunity to answer the question from the question paper as by turns.

7.      Teacher makes evaluation about the materials.

8.      Teacher closes the teaching and learning process.

Techniques and Application in Using Snowball Throwing Method

Farrel and Jacobs (2010) described that snowball throwing is a useful cooperative learning method because each member works alone first and then presents to the group, thus students are discouraged from either doing nothing or, the opposite, attempting to dominate the group.

Whereas, Kearney (1993) in Farrell and Jacobs (2010) gave that snowball is actually two techniques in one: forward snowball and reverse snowball. Forward snowball involves students in working together to generate ideas, and in reverse snowball, students choose from among the ideas their group has generated. Forward snowball is used for brainstorming and highlights the benefit of heterogeneity because it is good for gathering as many ideas or as much information as possible.

Forward Snowball is also useful for teambuilding (creating bonds among group members) because it provides dramatic proof that two (or more) heads really are better than one. Within second language teaching such as English as Second Language (ESL) class. And reverse snowball could work as follows each group member list four examples of good writing in particular text. By step 3 of reverse snowball, they try to agree on the best examples of good writing in the text and prepare to explain their choice.

Based on above statements, the researcher can conclude that snowball throwing can increase students’ speaking skill because it make students enjoy with throw the snowball question. This method is also giving high motivation to the students to speak through give and answer questions by them each other.

The process of learning that could increase the activities in asking questions systematically related the problems based on level curriculum education unit is asking question. By asking, students had discovered materials teacher have not yet explains. By the systematically questions, students tries to arrange sentences be right based on English rules. Based on the Jurnal Pendidikan Penabur-No.13/Tahun ke-8/ Desember 2008, many students still can not give a connect question when the subject was underway. They also cannot complete to arrange a good question. 

Snowball throwing method is one of the asking techniques modification that emphasize to arrange questions skill and it made in an interesting game, that is throwing the snowball. And the inside of snowball is question that students have to throw the snowball to other students and the other students have to answer it. This method needs students’ skill that’s very easy and all of students can make it where they give question based on material.

Widodo (2008) explained that snowball throwing method is a method used to increase a subject topic. This method is always used by several groups and it consists of five to eight students that have ability to make question in a paper made such a ball. Then, the ball is throwing to other groups to receive by answer that question.

Based on above explanation, snowball throwing encourages the students’ active speaking participation in the classroom, because this method contains a rich communication where students must be active. Snowball throwing also has capability to increase self-confidence of hesitant students, because in snowball throwing activities, the students will have different role and have to speak, which means they do not have to take the same responsibilities. Snowball throwing as a model of teaching are hoped can increase students’ speaking skill, because of this model is also give high motivation to the students to speak through give and answer questions by them each other.

The Strength and Weakness of Snowball Throwing Method

Widodo (2008) gave the strength and the weakness of snowball throwing method. Snowball throwing method could give an opportunity to students in a group to make a systematically question. Beside that, it can increase students brave to give question to others student or teacher. It also teaches students to answer a question from other students goodly. Snowball throwing method can stimulating students to give question based on topic of the subject when subject was underway. Then, it can least students afraid when they ask something to their friend and teaches students to practice their mental. Last, by using this method students can give information each other. The weaknesses of this method are the knowledge is not spread everywhere and it is not effective.

All of the methods and models of teaching has capability to increase and improve subject material. But beside of it, it also had the weakness. So that, as a teacher we also has to create all of item needed in the class in order to develop teaching and learning activities.