Ilmu Bebas Pakai - Free usable knowledge

Mari menghapus Ujian Nasional untuk peserta didik

2009-12-13T23:02:00.004-05:00

Dad, ajarin bikin puisi buat PR dong. Setengah kaget, saya sebagai seorang ayah yang kebetulan juga berprofesi pendidik, mencoba menggali lebih lanjut mengenai tugas putri saya yang masih duduk di kelas 4 SD. Ia diminta membuat satu bait puisi mengenai hutan. Tentunya komentar saya sebagai pengemar dan penulis puisi adalah "kok bikin puisi dibatasi?!" Ternyata pula tugas ini bagian dari sejumlah soal dalam buku latihan dengan tipe soal cloze test atau isian bebas.

Tanpa mau menambah kebingungan putri saya dan keheranan saya pribadi, saya mulai dengan meminta ia menceritakan apa yang ia rasakan - bukan yang ia ketahui - tentang hutan. Cerita tentang rasa ini pun dapat dikembangkan menjadi satu artikel kegagalan sekolah dalam mendidik anak serta ketidakmampuan Ujian Nasional mengukurnya. Tapi untuk mempersingkat cerita, anak saya tidak mampu menceritakan perasaannya tentang hutan meski mampu menceritakan banyak hal yang ia ketahui mengenai hutan. Pun saya meminta ia menulis 4 baris dari hal-hal yang ia ceritakan sebelumnya. Ia pun protes, "kan cuman diminta menulis puisi satu bait kok 4 baris?!?", tanyanya setengah bingung.

Saya yakin fakultas pendidikan di mana pun akan mengajarkan para guru membuat lesson plan. Memang banyak sekali perspektif pembuatan lesson plan, tetapi semuanya berbicara tentang penjenjangan dalam desain instruksi. Dari cerita di atas jelas bahwa anak saya meski telah berkali disuruh membuat puisi oleh sekolahnya, tetapi belum pernah dijelaskan apa itu puisi dan apa yang membedakannya dengan pantun, gurindam atau lainnya. Bukanlah berarti bahwa sejarah sastra Indonesia selengkap-lengkapnya harus diberikan terlebih dahulu sebagai pra-syarat untuk dapat membuat sebait puisi bagi anak kelas 4 SD. Tetapi kejelasan perintah agar anak mampu membuat puisi seperti yang akan diukur oleh sang guru atau pembuat buku tidak pernah diberikan apalagi perintah pembuatan ini merupakan bagian dari kumpulan soal-soal bersifat pertanyaan terbuka. Hingga - tanpa bermaksud berprasangka buruk - dapat disimpulkan bahwa, pertama, guru tidak membuat lesson plan dengan baik hingga ia sendiri mencobakan soal-soal yang akan diajukan kepada murid-muridnya. Kedua, soal-soal yang diberikan adalah soal asal comot dari sumber-sumber yang tidak terjaga kualitasnya yaitu buku yang dipaksa beli oleh sekolah. Dan yang terakhir, pemberian soal ini hanya merupakan penunaian kewajiban guru bukan pada upaya mengukur pencapaian penyampaian materi oleh guru. Benar, anda tidak salah baca soal-soal itu untuk mengukur pencapaian guru dalam menyampaikan bukan pencapaian murid dalam menerima.

Di sinilah paradigm shift yang perlu dipahami dalam menghapuskan Ujian Nasional. Ujian Nasional selama ini dimaksudkan untuk mengukur peserta didik saja. Sementara guru, seperti yang selalu dikeluhkan oleh orang tua, hampir tidak pernah menerapkan metode-metode pengajaran secara berkualitas apa pun mazhab pendidikannya yang dianut sekolah.

Penggunaan paradigma lama memberikan hasil yang beragam. Mulai dari yang tampaknya tidak ada hubungan sama sekali hingga yang jelas di depan mata. Salah satu contoh yang tampaknya tidak ada hubungan adalah sebagai berikut. Saat saya sekolah dulu, semua orang tua berebut memasukkan anaknya ke sekolah negeri, tetapi saat ini orang tua (teman-teman saya sekolah dulu, setidaknya) berebut memasukkan anaknya ke sekolah swasta. Dahulu ada sekolah2 swasta di tempat saya menghabiskan masa kecil yang banyak orang tua malu memasukkan anaknya ke sekolah itu karena memang tempatnya anak-anak buangan dan bermasalah. Tetapi kini beberapa sekolah itu menjadi sekolah mentereng. Padahal tidak ada perubahaan signifikan antara sekolah negeri dan sekolah swasta. Sekolah negeri saat ini pun mampu memiliki fasilitas guru dan infrastruktur yang tidak kalah dengan sekolah swasta. Menurut hemat saya banyak orang tua yang kecewa dengan cara mereka diukur dahulu sewaktu mereka sekolah di sekolah negeri. Mereka pun tergiur dengan cara pengukuran tambahan bagi anak mereka yang ditawarkan sekolah swasta meski seringkali tidak dipahami oleh para orang tua. Padahal kesemuanya hanya mengukur peserta didik. Walhasil, salah satu yang tampak di depan mata adalah keluhan banyak orang tua murid saat anak mengerjakan PR dan mengalami kebingungan sehingga harus bertanya kepada orang tua.

Di negeri orang tempat saya dulu menuntut ilmu, peserta didik memang mengalami ujian regional, tetapi hal itu bukan untuk menentukan kelulusan para peserta didik. Hal itu digunakan untuk menentukan kualitas sekolah. Bila sekolah mampu melampaui batas-batas yang telah ditentukan maka ia akan dianugerahi kesempatan lebih besar mengembangkan sekolahnya - swasta atau pun negeri. Tetapi bila sekolah tidak mampu, maka sekolah akan diberi waktu untuk memperbaiki diri dengan pendampingan dari pemerintah atau bahkan ditutup selamanya bila tidak juga mampu memperbaiki diri meski telah didampingi.

Di sinilah sebenarnya common ground untuk menghapuskan Ujian Nasional, buat mereka yang pro-Ujian Nasional, adalah alat ukur kualitas pendidikan bangsa. Sementara itu yang anti Ujian Nasional merasa bahwa hal ini hanya proyek buang-buang duit saja karena tidak mampu memotret kualitas pendidikan bangsa yang sebenarnya.

Terlepas dari cara mengukur, memang untuk memotret kualitas pendidikan bangsa ini kita perlu alat ukur berbentuk ujian. Tetapi alat ukur ini sebaiknya ditujukan untuk mengukur mesin pendidikan dan komponen-komponennya yaitu sekolah dan para guru. Hal ini akan menunjukkan bila produk yang dikeluarkan mesin berkualitas rendah, maka pada bagian mana dari mesin yang rusak dan perlu diperbaiki. Bahkan pada skala yang lebih besar hal ini justru mengukur kinerja Departemen Pendidikan Nasional (DIKNAS) melalui pencapaian sekolah-sekolah akibat pendampingan dan pemberian kesempatan berkembang oleh DIKNAS. Sekali lagi anda tidak salah baca, memang bukan mengukur kinerja sekolah-sekolah dalam mencapai ukuran-ukuran yang ditetapkan DIKNAS.

Jadi marilah kita melaksanakan keputusan Mahkamah Agung untuk menghapuskan Ujian Nasional bagi peserta didik. DIKNAS tidak perlu khawatir dan membatalkan Ujian Nasional yang sudah terencana untuk tahun ini, hanya saja DIKNAS perlu segera membangun pembaca alat ukur yang berbeda, yaitu untuk mengukur pencapaian ujian nasional ini sebagai gambaran pencapaian DIKNAS. Masalahnya, maukah DIKNAS mengukur dirinya sendiri melalui Ujian Nasional. Mari kita doakan. Amien.

On Birthday or Year Recounting (Literal Translation of Indonesian: Ulang Tahun)

2009-11-22T22:43:00.003-05:00

I was born years ago today. Were I reborn today?

Which moment in my life that was recounted today? If life has come to a full circle for me this year today, have i fulfilled it with life that build my path to eternal life or the life after.

What if there is nothing to be recounted today, nothing comes in full circle today, or nothing was born out of me today... what if so many what if that give birth to frustrations, anger and regrets.

Or what if there is simply nothing... no feeling, just empty.

Ah.. emptiness.

When it comes to a full circle, it looks to me a fine-rounded-looking zero

Ah.. emptiness

We came here empty handed,

We shall be reborn today, on the day we call birthday, feeling empty,

Inshaallah...

We will return lightly into the light.

Office, Nov 23, 2009

Travel Warning: Indonesia is Dangerously Beautiful

2009-02-22T23:21:00.001-05:00

Welcome holiday seasons. Watch out for travel warnings. Though Osama doesn't hide in Indonesia, just don't go there. It's extremely dangerous. See the facts below.

The politicians are greedy in Indonesia. Protesters are conducting rallies everyday. They turn to riots easily.

More over, Indonesia is a country where accountants are not accountable. Auditors are blind, corruption is everywhere. Why would anyone want to go to Indonesia? Even Indonesians are terrified with the above facts.

I can argue about the above facts. However, it makes this writing dull. Have you been to Jakarta lately? Perhaps you have seen a bumper sticker that says exactly the same as the title above. The creator is a brilliant Indonesian Tourism Marketer. First of all, the sticker is a very rare souvenir that you can brag about when you return to your country.

Secondly, Indonesia is not for the faint of hearts. Thousands of travel warnings will never prevent the bolds and the braves coming to this archipelago that hides mystery and fortune. They come to challenge the waves, dive the reef, climb the cliff, camp in the deep of tropical forest or travel to the center of earth. Adventure Tourism is the niche market for Indonesia.

Here, the list continues. Indonesia is the home of thousands volcanoes, the biggest tsunami ever and perhaps – with climate changing and global warming – we will see typhoon and other devastating natural phenomena in the future. Do you know that Indonesia has more days with lightning strike that any other place on earth? Ask Indonesian Geophysics and Meteorology Agency. Surely, these are not for tourist. These are for scientists loaded with research grants. Scientists have already come to Indonesia with tourist visa. It would be a lost of income and a theft of local wisdom. Research Tourism is another niche market for Indonesia.

Indonesia is not that bad. It is the most democratic country. Reformasi has marked the world political history as a swift and peaceful power change. Even the US can not outperform the percentage of Indonesian voting participants. Indonesian’s climate is not nice for protester rally. Bet, you rarely find protesters on the street. Consider it a bonus of your visit when you find one.

Some municipalities are well governed. They have become an icon for other municipalities. There is this success story about once a village of sea pirates that became an exporting village. Gambus Laut is located in the remote area in, Asahan Regency in North Sumatra. A team of Indonesian capacity building consultants came to the area. They convinced the villagers to change the course of their lives regardless that they were marginalized by the country and had become sea pirates. They sat together applying the Best Value Approach and redesigning future. There were seldom villagers went on Hajj Pilgrimage then. Now, Gambus Laut can send 11 persons per year on Hajj Pilgrimage. It was the performance standard that the villagers set together and were compelled about.

Gambus Laut is not the only success story in Indonesia. Ministry of Bureaucratic Reforms publishes “Seeing is Believing” – a collection of municipalities that out performs others in applying good governance. These areas are worth visiting to see whether they are for real. These areas are worth research about.

Unlike regular tourism, the research tourism is apparently a very large market. Regular tourists come for short visit of average a week. Researchers stay longer and spend more money. They bring knowledge as well. In return, Indonesia gets more publicity from the research reports published in international journal. It gets more famous, more and more. Not to mentioned that it gets smarter and smarter.

Tourism industry in Indonesia is very pessimistic about the election next year. The two round elections leave them no room for tourism event. Protesters rally and riots will be everywhere. However, it is another attraction for the brave and the bold, who have gone to where no man has ever gone before. The world is curious whether Indonesia can maintain its world record as the most democratic country, especially when North Maluku’s election has been a bad apple in Indonesia reputation as democratic country.

In 1998, journalists all over the world stayed in the hearts of the history in the making in which it was the most dangerous hotel in Indonesia. They spent a lot of money. One student from the University of Indonesia made USD 1,000.- a week by becoming interpreter for these foreign journalists. She is now a journalist for Voice of America.

Media workers and tourism industry shall work hand in hand to make this event bigger than Obama’s election and save Indonesian Tourism Industry.

All beautiful sceneries and cultures in Indonesia mean nothing. Malaysian can say that they have whatever Indonesian has. However there are plenty to watch here that no country has it like Indonesian does. All travel warnings issued by many countries are actually free publicity for Indonesia. It takes the bolds and the braves to unravel the mystery of Indonesian beauty. Take this article as an invitation for the bold and the braves to discover the dangerously beautiful Indonesia.

by Jaha Nababan of Public Management International Institute

Don't spend new education budget on computers

2008-08-25T21:50:00.001-04:00

Don't spend new education budget on computers
The Jakarta Post, Saturday, August 23, 2008

Jaha Nababan, Jakarta

It could be illegal if Indonesia does. The visit by Bill Gates and Craig R. Barrett to Indonesia a few months ago to offer Indonesia cheap processors and free software may invite Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) curiosity.

The Jakarta Post, May 16, 2008, noted behind the US$200 PC program was the goal to improve the PC-to-student ratio from 1:3,200 to 1:20. According to figures from the National Education Ministry website, there are approximately 53 million students from kindergarten through senior high school. It means the government must buy 2.65 million new computers at $200 a piece. This is the point where the KPK should start nosing around.

First, since the education budget for next year is Rp 244.4 trillion ($26.6 billion), the cost of buying the computers is very small compared to the proposed budget.

Second, Intel and Microsoft are not the only processor and operating software producers on earth. Accepting the offer may run contrary to Presidential Decree 80/2003 on the procurement of goods and services.

For cheap computers, there are currently many options starting as low as $100. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program sells a wireless laptop, called XO, to students in underdeveloped countries. It may look like a toy, but it was designed according to the needs of the user. It has a crank so children in areas with no electricity can still run it. Its basic functions allow children to read, write, calculate, browse the Internet, draw and even learn programming.

OLPC's XO is not the perfect cheap computer. The online science and technology magazine The Register noted some of its downsides. However, learning from OLPC's experience, the government should think strategically and consider asking vendors to design a computer to meet specified needs.

Should the government be cash-strapped, it can give incentives. The city of Manningham, Australia, offers a good case in point. City officials wanted to build and maintain a road for 20 years. It set out a wish list and calculated the cost, which turned out to be A$160 million over 20 years. It put out a tender for the project. The tender winner proposed a project for $140 million for 20 years, a $20 million saving.

The city will pay the tender winner monthly for 20 years plus some tax incentives should they achieve service targets. This is a win-win agreement. The city saves costs and pays less monthly while the company is guaranteed liquidity for 20 years. By handing over the operation to contractors, the city is steering not rowing. That is the role of government.

For 2.65 million new computers specially customized to meet Indonesian needs, many vendors, local and international, would be interested in the bid. Moreover, if production is located in Indonesia, it would help energize the IT industry here at home. Indonesia could create a niche market for the computing needs of underdeveloped countries. Indonesian software could go international with the penetration of this new breed of computers. In this scenario, Indonesia could become a giant in the internet and communication technology industry.

Industry giants like Microsoft and Intel are capable of helping Indonesia realize this dream. Intel is offering its Classmate laptop in stores for US$225. The Classmate runs Linux or Windows with classroom collaboration software. It is strong competition for OLPC's XO.

The second generation of Classmate PC is even better, with built-in webcam, wider screen and larger storage. According to the Post report, Intel is going to build the latest generation of cheap processors for these cheap computers for Indonesia. What Intel is going to give Indonesia for $200 remains a secret.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Both giants are betting on future market security. For Microsoft it means securing 53 million students as Windows users and for Intel, a 2.65 million new Classmate PCs deal could leave OLPC's XO or other competitors in the dust. It is vital the government take more initiative in shaping the offer.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was expected to tell Gates and Barrett he really appreciated the offers. However, accepting the $530 million deal would be breaking the law. Moreover, in the name of free market competition, Indonesia must not join with one players to beat the others.

Indonesia must make use of this free market competition for its own benefit. Who would turn down such a deal? If both Gates and Barrett are serious about helping Indonesia, they can help this country become the new giant in ICT. In return, Indonesia would help them in producing cheap but powerful computing machines for underdeveloped countries.

The government needs to see this as an investment opportunity to build its ICT industry not just as an opportunity to get one-time price discounts from the giants.

The writer is an educational technologist. He can be reached at jaha@fulbrightweb.org

The New Internet Sport: Scambaiting

2007-03-20T04:22:00.000-04:00

This article was published in the Jakarta Post, March 20, 2007.

Jaha Nababan, Contributor, Jakarta

Jaha Nababan and his family died in a sea accident. I never got a chance to write my own obituary.

I was Googling my own name on the Internet to see who was quoting the articles I wrote. To my surprise, I found a forum where someone complained about a 419 email scam he had received.

David Yegeni, the scammer, wrote that I had unclaimed payment for a housing development contract I carried out in South Africa because my whole family and I died at sea. The amount was a mouth-watering US$20 million. Yegeni, the scammer, offered to transfer the unclaimed payment to whoever was willing to pay him a small fee.

According to www.419eater.com, the 419 scheme refers to an advance-fee fraud, so known internationally after a section of the Nigerian penal code.

The schemes usually start with an individual or company receiving a letter or fax, or email in this case, from an alleged "official" representing a foreign government or agency. The correspondence offers to transfer millions of dollars in "over-invoiced contract" funds into the recipient's personal bank account. The sender will provide many fake documents to convince the recipients and encourage the recipient to travel overseas.

The goal is to get money from the recipient through advance fees for various taxes, attorney fees, transaction fees or bribes. Many have fallen victim to such fraud.

The scammers locate victims by using guest books on personal websites. Typing "guestbook" in a search engine will deliver millions of results. The scammers use an abundance of emails to target the victim. Responding to such email will only show the scammer that the email is active.

The people in at www.419eater.com, known as scambaiters, step into the scammers' game. Scambaiters try to scam the scammers and beat them at their own game -- with pranks.

Scambaiting is like a sport that involve scammers and scambaiters, who try to best the other by throwing convincing words and evidence. The scambaiter wins when they are able to get the scammer to do foolish things like send their own photographs or artwork. The scambaiter loses when the scammer finds out about the pranks.

In responding to scams, the scambaiters use funny names such as Shiver Metimber, Eric Shun, Acksi Dent and the like. With a little photo editing skills, scambaiters can provide documents such as airway bills, bank forms, booking forms and even newspaper clips to prove the pranks.

The scambaiters even have their own fake bank, Plunder and Flee Incorporated with a P.O. Box address, to convince the scammers.

There are many free services on the Internet that the scambaiters can use to trick the scammers, such as Internet fax services and Internet voice mail services. The scambaiters consider this a sport and the trophy is a picture of the scammer, not to mention useless international phone calls, fax and courier service charges made by the scammers as bonuses.

Many of the scammers hail from western and southern Africa. According to www.419eater.com, about 50-55 percent of Internet scams come from these areas.

Scambaiters also warn newbees of this new Internet sport, and that the scammers are very dangerous. Newbees are warned not to disclose any personal information nor be persuaded to travel to South Africa, a common destination in these scams. They also underline in a disclaimer that theirs is not a racist site.

The scammers work in syndication. They have the financial capacity to make expensive international calls and faxes, as well as send documents using courier services. In some cases they are willing to sent a few thousand dollars to convince the victim that the money they offer exists.

On my encounter with these scammers, I received emails using names from the Middle East, Asia and many more regions. Judging from the email header, many of these emails are routed back to the African region.

Some of the smarter scammers have figured out that African names will ignite instant suspicion. The names are probably fished out from Google or another search engine.

As mentioned in the introduction, the scammers also use the names they have fished to create a convincing story.

Should one want to enter this new Internet sport, please make sure that the scam email was sent from far away Mugu-land -- land of the scammer.

But www.419eater.com also mentions that many scam attempts are sent from England, Spain, Ireland, the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and many more.

If your name has been used as a sender in scam email, you can report this to your service provider by sending a copy of the scam email. Consequently, the service provider will likely terminate the account.

On the other hand, it is difficult to handle cases in which your name is used in a scam story, as in my case. The best thing you can do is ask the search engine where you got the hit to erase the entry.

As a preventive measure, running your name occasionally on a search engine can halt further damage to your credibility.

The writer is a Fulbright grantee and Kelly Elizabeth Stephens Scholar, who contributes articles on educational media and technology.

Sepotong Surat Kematian

2006-10-19T05:02:00.000-04:00

It's been quite a long time since i last wrote my poem. The last time was probably during my flight back home forgood from Boston in Jan 2005. Gee...

The title is "A piece of Death Certificate - Sepotong Surat Kematian". I wrote this when I was holding and starring at my Dad's Death Certificate. I was daydreaming of the goodtimes i had with him and all those quality times we had. I often went very far from him (geographically) on assignments or study. I once prayed that I'd be by his side when he passed away. My prayer was granted, I was with him from his fainted, coma, and passing away.

Yes, the poem was made in good memory of my father, however I hope that this poem may inspire you to write everything. It is our life that what we are talking about.

Sepotong Surat Kematian

Kupandangi selembar, tidak… bukan selembar,
Hanya sepotong surat kematian.

Kupandangi terus hingga ia membaur dengan halimun khayalku,
Tak terbaca meski tertulis.
Tanpa arti tetap ia pun tertulis.

Hidup mulai dengan tertulis di atas selembar surat bernama Akte Lahir.
Konon kita menulis hidup kita sendiri
di antara dua buah surat tertulis tanda kehidupan.

Hidup ini pun konon tertulis dalam takdir baik dan takdir buruk Illahi.
Tetap kita menulisnya…. Konon,

Bila kita memang menulisnya…
Mungkin kita tidak tahu apa yang kita tuliskan
Mungkin pula tahu.
Mungkin…
Tetapi ianya berakhir tertulis di dalam sepotong surat kematian.
Tanpa arti tetap ia pun tertulis.

Bila kita memang menulisnya…
Mungkin ia tercatat
Mungkin ia dicatat… Konon, memang dicatat di atas sana.
Atau mungkin
Kita sendiri yang mencatatkan.

Mungkin…
Tetapi ianya berakhir tertulis di dalam sepotong surat kematian.
Tanpa arti tetap ia pun tertulis.

Tak ingin keakuanku berakhir dalam sepotong kertas tertulis tanpa arti.

Hey….
Sepotong surat kematian itu seolah membantahku.

Aku bukan sepotong kertas tertulis tanpa arti, katanya.
Padaku tertulis akhir manusia yang tahu apa yang ia tulis, meski ia tak tahu bagaimana hal itu berakhir.
Padaku tertulis akhir manusia yang menuliskan hidupnya pada buku-buku catatan manusia-manusia lain selain buku catatannya.
Padaku tertulis akhir manusia yang menulis dengan keringat pada lembar-lembar darah dagingnya.
Meski ia tidak tahu bagaimana itu berakhir,
Ia berharap berlembar-lembar catatan itu menuliskan hal-hal baru yang menghiasi dunia ini dengan keindahan.

Sepotong badanku memang tertulis,
Mungkin tertulis tanpa arti
Tetapi kau yang tertulis padaku bisa hidup beribu-ribu tahun lamanya.

Maukah kamu?

Jaha Nababan,
Ramadhan 1427 H – Ramadhan pertama tanpa Papa.

Using HCI approach to learning

2006-05-08T03:56:00.000-04:00

Using the HCI approach to learning

The Jakarta Post, Saturday, May 06, 2006
Jaha Nababan, Jakarta

Stopping poor, disadvantaged children from turning into criminals is not easy -- yet the people who do so are rarely honored or awarded. However, SDN 16 Johar Petang, a poor state elementary school in the heart of Jakarta, has done just that for the past 10 years.

Most of the children at the school come from the lowest of the low in society -- if they are not in class they would be out scavenging trash, pushing a street vending cart, busking or begging under a bridge.

At the bottom of the heap, these students are vulnerable and their lives are full of economic hardship. Normally, the idea of getting them any education at all would seem far-fetched to their often-illiterate parents.

Despite them being forced to work from a young age, SDN 16 Johar Petang manages to keep its students in class for six years of elementary schooling, although the cost of higher education means it sends only a few on to junior high.

It its 10-year history, all except two of this school's students avoided a criminal life. Despite this, the Indonesian education system has failed to acknowledge SDN 16 Johar Petang's success because it rates schools on the number of students they send on to higher institutions.

But with the best will in the world, poor parents cannot afford higher education for their children, so something in this system is obviously not working.

Here, an explanation of a concept in computer learning illuminates how education policy could be made to work better. Educationalists here would do well to get familiar with the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) approach to learning.

Don't mistake this article for a technophile's blyth assertion that every complex social problem can be broken down and solved using black-and-white computer thinking. Computer logic, as we know, exists in what is best described as an artificial environment -- where the programmer creates a world as simple or as complex as he or she likes -- a ceterus parabus situation. Real policy design, however, exists in an infinitely more complex universe.

Just to get things straight, HCI is neither about making a fat computer screen into a flat one, nor does it have anything to do with the ergonomic aspects of a computer. What HCI is about, is recognizing why, for example, many personal data assistant (PDA) users prefer to tap their stylus on a small virtual keyboard rather than tackle the PDA's simple handwriting recognition feature.

The key word in HCI is "interaction". HCI is finding out how people gradually begin to interact with a computer; from knowing nothing, to being confident in their ability to use one.

Despite the terminology, what those researching HCI study is the same skill sets people acquire when they learn to use any technology, like say, driving a car.

For the new driver, shifting gears is a careful, conscious process, and for some people it may be full of apprehension. But for the more experienced driver, it is almost an unconscious routine.

Taking this into account, we find that designing a highly interactive computer is not about creating an operating system using a person's local language.

Instead, it is about creating a system that gives users the ability to control their pace in adapting to that system. The longer it is used, the more the system will automatically be customized to a user's current skill level.

Just like a computer, the national education system is a set of complex policies. Using the HCI approach, the education system should be designed to interact with its audience, although the audience may know little in the beginning.

Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland introduced the Activity Relation Table (ART) to understand how people interact with computers -- or national education systems in this case.

He says humans learn how to interact in four general steps -- they "Collect, Relate, Create and Donate".

In order to allow poor schools like SDN 16 Johar Petang to compete with wealthy schools like BPK Penabur, whose students have won several International Physics Olympiads, the education system must assist poor schools to "collect" syllabus that "relate" to their visions and missions.

Furthermore the system should be flexible enough to allow elementary schools like SDN 16 Johar Petang to "create" their own systems. In short, if these policies are usable, accessible and appealing to students, and give them an incentive to learn -- again the "relate" idea -- the school should then assist other schools to repeat its success, or "donate".

Although SDN 16 Johar Petang may be able to compete in the national school awards system, it may not be able to win, since coming first at an International Physics Olympiad seems incomparable to fighting neighborhood crime, or giving the underprivileged a hand up. In order to acknowledge this unique success, the system must be capable of measuring a school's educational achievements by the objectives it sets and by judging the school's relative reach of influence. If a wealthy, well-resourced school wins an international Olympiad every year without raising its goals, it could be concluded that far from succeeding, the school is stagnating.

However, if SDN 16 Johar Petang can influence other schools and help them to help their students, it surely deserves an award more than BPK Penabur. SDN 16 Johar Petang's achievement is judged to be worth more than its students competing abroad because the school's influence has had a greater reach.

To develop new policies that positively affect the wider education system, the Association of Indonesian Municipalities (Apeksi) is initiating a Public Service Award in Education.

A portfolio-based award, it emphasizes what a policy can do -- quality and effectiveness -- rather than how many policies are produced.

Schools will be assessed on the effectiveness of their portfolios of regional education policies.

The schools will be assessed against the objectives they set and their local needs using the ART approach -- Collect; Relate; Create; and Donate. This portfolio will then be marked based on its reach of influence.

Such an approach will give poor municipal schools an equal chance of competing with richer counterparts because the assessment takes into account local needs.

If one school starts by influencing its neighborhood, it may end up influencing the world, by donating its ideas into the growing pool of international knowledge.

An idea that could best be summed up as "acting locally, influencing globally".

The writer (jaha@fulbrightweb.org), a Fulbright recipient and a Kelly scholar, is a Boston University School of Education Graduate in Educational Media and Technology. He is currently volunteering to help Apeksi design a Public Service Award in Education. He blogs at http://ilmubebaspakai.blogspot.com.

For once in your life, write!

2006-03-29T09:20:00.000-05:00

This is a true story about my cousin's life.

My cousin and I grew as above average kids. We were excellent students all through our school life. Too bad, he came from a broken home family and grew in poverty.

Yet he managed to become the first state university student among us. He worked hard to fund his study. He tried all kinds of job from mentoring children to singing in a band every night. He's been in the darkest side of a student's life, however, he graduated with flying color.

He was active in politics fighting for poverty. Then he got married. To feed his family, he chose the job that was unwanted for many. Many become part time salespeople because they don't have any choice. He tried many sales positions and have climbed all the way up.

He was very active all his life. Too active as a matter of fact that he didn't give his heart (lever) a rest. Now, his heart puts him in his dying bed waiting for his time. His death wish is to write two books which he cannot do in his current state. The first one is about the expertise he gained within 10 years working in the unwanted-for-many kind of job. He wanted to show the world that if you love your job, it will love you back. It may not give you luxury but it gives you the pearl of knowledge. He doesn't have time to harvest the pearl by writing it.

The second book is his autobiography which he titled "Tiga Bengkoang". The three fruits represent the phases in his life. How his heart puts him in his dying bed and how he fought it. He may lose the fight, but he learns a lot that he earns another gem of life.

His pearl is his to keep. I cannot harvest it by writing it for him. Nor can I understand the three phases of his life. I am writing his short biography with simple message which I learn from him. Read, read from your life then write, for once in your lifetime. Whatever it is that you have been through it is worth written.

March 06, 2006

E-learning: The Death of Human Resource Department

2005-12-22T11:12:00.000-05:00

Human Resource Department (HRD) in many corporations must overcome its fear of technology. Otherwise, it will be replaced by other departments or outsourcing agents. In Information Era like today, e-learning is a trendy training medium among corporations. In fact, like other learning methods, e-learning also has potential failures, from dropouts and dreary sessions to technology glitches. There are more problems ahead; HRD’s ignorance will increase e-learning failures. Currently, e-learning dropout is estimated at 35% and above according to Ruth C. Clark and Richard E. Mayer. It means, if we train 100 employees, then more than 35 of them will quit from the session. Furthermore, of those e-learning graduates, there is even smaller number of people who actually benefit from the learning.
E-learning is often measured wrongly. E-learning is measured by using adoption rate. This rate does not show learner attrition in e-learning solution. The adoption rate of the first three months of implementation in Bank Mandiri which implemented e-learning in Indonesia recently, has almost reached 6,000 employees. Within a year, the adoption rate has increased significantly to 25,000 employees. If the figures are combined with above statistics, there are estimated 8,750 dropouts in a year. Supposedly, Bank Mandiri spent about US$ 10 million to implement its state of the art e-learning solution, alas, the institution has burnt down US$ 3.5 million into ashes because 35% of it was wasted.
The loss is more than the training travel savings that e-learning promised. It is often that the saving after e-learning implementation is diverted to learners. In branches where internet connection is slow and charged on usage, the branch must pay extra for internet connection and overtime for employees doing the training. Not to mention, that the centralized training prints decrease its economies of scale because all learners must print ones for themselves. The so-called corporate saving has become branch’s extra spending.
In today’s competition, business organization is personified. Any organization that is incapable of learning or retaining learning in its organization is doomed to fail. According to Knowledge Management studies, knowledge can become obsolete very quickly. Companies are forced to create, retain, distribute and recreate learning. Learning has become the thirst of every company.
Learning is defined as a transformation from old behavior to new behavior – from not knowing to knowing. In organization’s perspective, learning is a transformation of the old strategy to the new strategy. Clark and Mayer defined e-learning or electronic learning as training delivered on computer – including CDROM, Internet and Intranet – that is designed to support individual learning or organizational performance goals. Therefore e-learning must be built around company’s strategy. The company that wants to improve its customer retention must decide whether its strategy lays on customer information acquisition or performance improvement of the front office staffs. E-learning strategy for information acquisition emphasizes on providing more information and less practice opportunity while performance improvement emphasize on more practice to strengthen response of the front office staffs.
Though it is very important, e-learning solution fails as we know it. First of all, it takes an e-learning consultant who understands company’s business strategy and educational technology issues beside human resource issues to design a good e-learning solution. A good e-learning must be based on business strategy analysis and job analysis. Secondly, HRD has surrendered its function to Information Technology Department (ITD). The learning environment should have been designed by a “teacher” instead of a “techie” – technical people – since there are more human problems rather than technology glitches. For example, in a low adoption and high dropout case, HRD, not ITD, must investigate the main problem. Sometimes it requires policy adjustment. As an example, in one hand, the employees do not want to take the e-learning on office hours because they may be piling on their assignments. In other hand, the company refuses to have employees working overtime. The company can slightly change the policy by allowing employees to take overtime for e-learning purposes only and use the overtime money as incentive to employees taking the e-learning.
Other example, many e-learning graduates fail to benefit from the learning. The reasons vary from lacking of job aid to no immediate real life situation where graduates can utilize the new knowledge or skills. This situation requires intervention from HRD, not ITD. In a simulation of operating new machinery, the simulation is presented in a perfect world where all tools needed are provided. A highly-scored trainee in that simulation may perform poorly back in the real world just because his or her body figure does not allow him or her to reach a certain panel in the machine. A stool as a job aid may be helpful for him or her, not more e-courses.
In the case where e-learning graduates do not have immediate real life problem that is related to the e-courses taken, HRD may need to create activities, as intervention, to retain the newly acquired skills. For example, the graduates can be assigned to a small task group of improvement based on the e-courses taken. Let there be competition among the task groups. The findings of the winning team can be adopted into company’s policy and the winning team can earn money as incentive for exercising their new skills. This is what Nestle Indonesia does with its SGIA (Small Group of Improvement Activities) competition, as part of its learning organization strategy. Post e-learning activities, such as SGIA, improve retention of the newly acquired knowledge. The post e-learning activities must be aimed to develop a learning organization. Issues in Change Management, Knowledge Management become crucial.
Life after e-learning for HRD is no different. Yes, e-learning solution helps HRD in collecting data on how the organization transforms. However, e-learning is only a tool, not some magic wand that grants all the wishes. HRD must continue analyzing e-learning solution performance and provide solution in order to increase the e-learning Return on Investment post implementation. Giving it up to ITD, that knows nothing about human resources, means surrender and die. HRD must improve its role in e-learning implementation.

Jaha Nababan, Ed.M (jaha@fulbrightweb.org)

Educational Technology Road Map

2005-12-13T18:45:00.000-05:00

This is what i am talking about in going beyond electronic in e-learning

For more information about this concept, e-mail to ilmubebaspakai(at)gmail.com

Going beyond the electronic in e-learning

2005-11-17T06:04:00.000-05:00

This one was published in November 17, 2005. I finally made it to the OpEd. My article usually landed in Features column or IT column. I guess, educational technology is now worth debating :)

Going beyond the electronic in e-learning

Jaha Nababan, Jakarta

The 'e' in front of e-learning can limit learning potential. Though many experts agree that technology is only a tool to help learning, the word 'electronic' in e-learning refers only to computer technology. William Horton wrote that e-learning was rooted in correspondence education started by Sir Isaac Pitman in 1840. Though he listed many forms of technology in the history of distance education, he refuses to call it e-learning, rather terming it web-based training.

Meanwhile, Ruth C. Clark and Richard E. Mayer defined e-learning or electronic learning as training delivered via a computer -- including CDROM, Internet and intranet -- that are designed to support individual learning or organizational performance goals.

There are many variants of e-learning based on the above concepts. It is truly an irony that these technologies are so technology centric when everyone believes that technology is only a tool. For example, an e-learning CDROM has turned the computer into a teaching machine similar to the old concepts from B.F. Skinner's behaviorism.

The computer's role has competed with that of the teacher, and that's one of the reasons teachers have only reluctantly accepted computers into the classroom.

With the development of Internet technology, computer-based training (CBT) has been transformed into web-based training (WBT). Many early developers of WBT repeated the mistake of trying to turn the Internet into a teaching machine by publishing CBT-like courses on the Internet. Today, besides Learning Management Systems, there are many web-based applications that can be used to deliver e-learning such as blogs, message boards, newsgroups, search engines and even chat rooms.

These new tools allow teachers to be more effective as learning facilitators. However, they are still using technology as the center of the design by using these tools as knowledge delivery tools.

What lies ahead in the not-so-distant future is more interesting with the emergence of "ubiquitous computing". With the miniaturization of computing devices -- such as palm computers, pocket personal computers, and smart phones -- ubiquitous computing allows learners to learn almost anywhere with a technology that disappears into the background.

The intelligent environment recognizes the learning needs of each learner because they have set up preferences in their personal devices. For example, in a museum, a learner who is interested in the history of an artifact will only be supplied with relevant information to their personal device when approaching a statue.

The information the learner receives would be different from other learners who were interested, for example, in the design aspects of the statue. Later on in the classroom, they could share the different experiences they obtained from the field trip and thus collaborative learning would be created. With this new technology, design has shifted from being technology centric to being user-centric, by using technology as a knowledge gatherer and production tool.

The embryo of such activities has been demonstrated by Elliot Soloway from University of Michigan with his Highly Interactive Computing in Education (HICE) projects. In one of the projects that uses concept mapping, learners learn how to develop ideas and share them with friends. Later on, learners go into the field to test the ideas they developed earlier.

They collect data in the field using palm-size computers and return to the classroom to present their findings on a traditional blackboard. The activities are very rich in integration. This is a good example of implementing a competency based Curriculum that the Indonesian Ministry of National Education has set as standard curriculum.

What Soloway did was to technologically enhance educational projects. It does not fit into the e-learning definition -- although it involves electronic devices -- but it has more impact than e-learning. Though WBT has the ability to allow learners to share their work, it is still limited by its lack of personal contact because learners are subsumed in front of a bulky computer.

Today's developments in technology have enabled certain technologies to become affordable. A million-dollar video production can become a shoestring video production. This phenomenon provides more variation to technologically enhanced educational projects.

In July 2004, a group of high school students in Jakarta were involved in an educational video experiment. They developed educational videos about osteoporosis using their youthful perspectives, without the need for additional video editing software or sophisticated video production machines.

Surprisingly, the amount of video production time was equal to the time taken to produce a term paper. Best of all, the students enjoyed it because they learnt better in a fun way.

One may be skeptical about these concepts above, especially when considering Indonesian's situation. These technologies are expensive. However, several solutions can be found. For example, instead of presenting a student's findings on video, a teacher could instruct students to create posters that educated people about osteoporosis.

Rather than using a camcorder and computer, the students could use cardboard and paint to present the knowledge they discover. After all, educational technology is not always electronic.

Jaha Nababan (jaha@fulbrightweb.org), a Fulbright grantee and Kelly scholar, is a Boston University School of Education graduate in educational media and technology. He is currently teaching at the school of social and political sciences at the University of Indonesia.

Jarod - The Heir of Thunder

2005-07-04T08:12:00.000-04:00

This is the comic character that I have been developing for years. Unfortunately I never have time to really finish it. Oh BTW his name is Jarod. It derives from the word Jarot which means nucleus in Javanese.

Though his name was taken from Javanese word, the story was actually inspired by a legend in my family that originates from North Sumatra. Through out generation, we were advised not to swear on our offspring by the name of thunder. We were told that it would happen instantly because our ancestor, Balige Raja, once defeated the thunder in a fight. The thunder had sworen to obey whatever commanded by the offsprings of my ancestor.

We were also told that the earliest of our ancestor was a wise woman. She had talked a tiger into giving up its anger towards the villagers of Kampong Sihombing. She was the only one who knew the reason why that tiger was in rage. The tiger had also sworn to obey her offspring.

With these two legend, I created Jarod who commands tigers and thunder. Sounds like my imaginary life, isn't it?

Disaster Recovery Planning for Schools

2005-07-04T06:28:00.000-04:00

After the tsunami that struck Aceh and its surroundings, I put this ideas into writing. This writing is mainly based on my experience as Business System Recovery Planner in Nestle Indonesia.

It is based on the idea that "Disaster is unavoidable, but it is not new",therefore we can predict its impacts and minimize the risk. Though i wrote many issues, I tried to emphasize on adaptive curriculum that adapts its content according to the development of the people in the school's surroundings.

Enjoy Reading,
Jaha

Pemulihan sekolah di daerah bencana

Ketika kutu milenium datang, dunia bisnis telah siaga menyambutnya. Kutu milenium (millennium bug Y2K) diramalkan menjadi bencana bagi dunia terutama karena semua kegiatan di dunia akan terhenti akibat mogoknya komputer-komputer pengendali dunia. Disaster Recovery Planning atau Perencanaan Pemulihan Paska Bencana (P3B) menjadi buah bibir di setiap perusahaan. Pada saat itu banyak P3B dibangun bahkan dengan asumsi yang lebih luas yaitu bencana alam. Dunia bisnis begitu siapnya karena P3B merupakan hajat hidup orang banyak. Namun ketika bencana menimpa sekolah, Departemen Pendidikan Nasional atau pun sekolah tidak memiliki prosedur Perencanaan Pemulihan Paska Bencana.

Bencana dikategorikan sebagai Force Major karena kedatangan dan dampaknya sering tidak dapat diramalkan. Meski kedatangannya belum dapat diramalkan, tetapi dampaknya adalah keterhentian sebuah kegiatan akibat berbagai pranata pendukung kegiatan tersebut yang rusak. Pranata pendukung ini tentunya tidak hanya yang berwujud tetapi juga pranata yang tidak berwujud seperti, dalam konteks sekolah, kesiapan mental murid untuk masuk kembali sekolah.

P3B berperan dalam menjembatani kegiatan yang terhenti dan pranata yang rusak agar dapat berfungsi lagi. Di samping itu P3B juga berperan menjembatani kondisi yang tidak normal dengan kondisi normal. Di sini artinya ukuran-ukuran kondisi normal tidak akan dapat berlaku pada keadaan sekolah paska bencana. Oleh karena itu dalam P3B, perlu sebuah ukuran-ukuran yang mampu menyesuaikan diri pada kondisi sekolah hingga kondisi paska bencana berangsur-angsur normal. Sekedar catatan, pada kondisi bencana yang meluluhlantakkan seluruh pranata sekolah, membangun sekolah kembali kepada kondisi normal merupakan sebuah upaya sia-sia. Akan lebih baik bila sekolah dibangun kembali dengan memperhatikan isyu-isyu gender dan lingkungan yang akan sedikit dijabarkan di bawah ini.

Pada kasus bencana di Aceh dan Nias, banyak bangunan sekolah yang rata dengan tanah dan brain drain atau pengurasan kecendekiaan akibat berkurangnya jumlah guru secara drastis akibat bencana alam. Lebih jauh lagi, anak-anak mengalami trauma akan bencana sehingga banyak anak menjadi tidak siap sekolah tidak hanya karena masalah kesiapan keuangan tetapi juga masalah kesiapan jiwa.

Membangun wujud bangunan sekolah tentunya mudah. Kalangan militer telah menunjukkan kepiawaiannya dalam membangun kembali pranata masyarakat, terutama sekolah. Seorang teman pernah mengacungkan jempol dan berucap bahwa ia akhirnya merasa bangga melihat militer yang sungguh sigap dan tanpa lelah membantu rakyat. Sekolah-sekolah darurat yang baru dibangun ini kurang memperhatikan perihal keadilan gender seperti jumlah kamar kecil untuk murid dan guru perempuan. Sudah seyogyanya jumlah kamar mandi untuk perempuan lebih banyak dari jumlah kamar mandi untuk laki-laki karena, dalam waktu penggunaan kamar mandi, perempuan lebih banyak menghabiskan waktu dari pada rata-rata yang digunakan laki-laki.

Isyu lain yang menarik diterapkan di sekolah paska bencana adalah perihal “Rute Aman ke Sekolah” (Road Safety to School) yang dicanangkan WHO, Organisasi Kesehatan Dunia, pada hari Kesehatan Dunia tanggal 7 April 2004. Menurut data WHO, setiap tahun 180.000 anak di bawah 15 tahun terbunuh dalam kecelakaan di jalanan. Upaya menciptakan lingkungan aman ke sekolah bukanlah masalah transportasi, demikian menurut Dr. Lee Jong-Wook, direktur umum WHO, tetapi merupakan masalah kesehatan masyarakat. Bagi Indonesia, tentunya masalahnya menjadi lebih kompleks karena juga melibatkan masalah kondisi perilaku sosial masyarakat di jalanan. Sering kita lihat bahwa anak-anak menjadi prioritas terbawah bagi supir-supir angkutan karena mereka membayar di bawah tarif umum. Di samping itu, sering pula kita mendengar kasus di mana anak-anak sekolah yang dimintai uang oleh preman dalam perjalanan ke sekolah. Sungguh saat yang tepat untuk membangun sekolah yang lebih baik dengan memperhatikan isyu-isyu baru di dunia saat sekolah luluh lantak oleh bencana. Khususnya pada kasus Aceh, akan sangat memungkin bagi Aceh melakukan salah satu rekomendasi Kampanye “Rute aman ke sekolah”, yaitu mengurangi rute ke sekolah yang terekspos lalu lintas jalan raya.

Mengenai mengisi kekosongan kecendekiaan akibat pengurasan kecendekiaan paska bencana, pemerintah perlu menyiapkan sebuah sistem pendukung relawan di daerah bencana. Pemerintah dapat juga memberi insentif berupa potongan pajak buat pihak swasta yang membiayai guru-guru untuk datang ke daerah bencana, misalnya. Guru-guru yang menjadi relawan perlu diberikan beasiswa untuk bersekolah lebih lanjut paska pelayanannya di daerah bencana tersebut. Dengan demikian pranata sekolah akan berangsur-angsur pulih.

Yang paling penting dalam P3B bagi sekolah adalah membangun kurikulum yang yang adaptif. Seperti diungkapkan di atas, ukuran-ukuran normal tidak dapat diterapkan untuk pada sekolah-sekolah paska bencana. Pencapaian sekolah di daerah bencana bukan pada jumlah murid-murid yang masuk ke sekolah negeri lanjutannya. Ukuran kemajuan sekolah sebagai bagian dari kurikulum yang adaptif harus mampu berubah-ubah berangsur-angsur sesuai dengan perkembangan keadaan sekeliling paska bencana. Pada tahap awal, kurikulum yang dibangun ditujukan untuk membantu murid-murid mengatasi trauma. Tentunya ukuran kemajuan sekolah adalah jumlah murid yang telah mengatasi trauma-nya. Pada periode berikutnya, kurikulum perlu dikembangkan agar murid dapat menjadi bagian masyarakat yang membantu lingkungannya melewati masa trauma, dan seterusnya hingga keseluruhan sistem berjalan kembali menjadi normal.

Seperti pepatah, “Tidak ada hal baru di bawah matahari ini”, Bencana alam dan P3B tentunya bukan hal yang baru. Sesungguhnya kita hanya perlu sebuah langkah untuk memulai perjalanan kita yang panjang memulihkan sekolah di daerah bencana, dan P3B untuk sekolah adalah langkah itu.

Jaha Nababan, lulusan Boston University School of Education, adalah Fulbright Grantee dan Kelly Scholar yang mengajar di FISIP UI. Pernah mendesain P3B untuk sebuah perusahaan multinasional asing.

Revolutionizing technology in schools

2005-07-04T05:57:00.000-04:00

This is the earliest of my writing seasons. I wrote this a few months before i started this blog. Well, consider this as premium version of this blog because you are about to hear my very first thought about empowering schools in Indonesia.

Enjoy reading,
Jaha

Revolutionizing technology in schools

Every culture must negotiate with technology, especially schools. The school may try to deny its existence or to acquire technology blindly in the case. The struggle of negotiating with technology has been around for thousand of years. Neil Postman of New York University described about King Thamus of Upper Egypt who entertained Theuth, God of invention. Thamus entertained every Theuth's inventions except when Theuth invented writings for the Egyptians. Thamus was afraid that "those who acquire it, will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful." We all know that it is not true. We see that writings have revolutionized how knowledge is distributed.

It appears that school shares the same perception as Thamus had. Thomas Alva Edison once claimed that educational films would replace books in schools in the future. We are his future and we have not seen it happens, even in his homeland, America. Seymour Papert of Massachusetts Institute of Technology said similar things that computer would revolutionize schools. We will see it then.

To see how school perceives technology, we must go back in time to see what formed its perception. Indonesia does not have long educational technology history and therefore, let us learn from the American educational technology history. Larry Cuban of Stanford University did two research projects and wrote two books about how technology implementation at schools works. In his books - written in 1986 and 2001 - he consistently states how teacher feels about television and computers in schools. Cuban said that there is a cycle of technology implementation in schools. The cycle started with euphoria in implementing technology in schools. The next stage come in the cycle is the scientific credibility about how school can benefit from technology. But then there is growing frustration about technology because technology is imperfect. It cannot blend impeccably to life because it lacks of standard. At the final cycle, who gets all the blame? The teacher, who is the most important element in designing and operating the process in the implementation, gets the blame. However, they were left out when the decision of implementing the technology was made.

We can see the impact on Indonesia in terms of wasted financial resources; time; and disappointment. Look at our educational television. TPI who was founded in January 1991, betrayed it supporters such as PUSTEKKOM and the stake holders by changing its course into pursuing business goals rather than corporate social responsibility. TPI's inability to survive was because it was lacking of strategy to bring schools' interest in applying it in classrooms. TPI provided the product but forgot to teach the market how to use the product.

Now we see another trouble brewing in computer technology. When I was working at the first e-learning company in Indonesia, along with many APJII (Asosiasi Pengusaha Jasa Internet Indonesia - Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers) members and many other promoters, we did an internet awareness campaign for education. It is called Sumpah Internet Pemuda 2000. We encouraged the schools to build internet lab on their premises with a lot of promises that it is going to be beneficial to schools' educational objectives. The cost keeps flowing in maintaining this facility; however, there is no value added to school’s objectives. The teacher, who has never been asked whether the school needs those technologies, gets the blame. It was the biggest sin that the industry made to the school. We brought them product but we never tell them how to use it in the classroom.

When teacher develops resistance to technology, this can lead to school’s failure in negotiating with technology. We can overcome this by breaking the cycle of failure like what Cuban said in five steps.

First, we must come to a common understanding about what is technology and what is educational technology. If clothing is a product of technology, would you consider school uniform as educational technology? If technology is state of the art gadgetries, consequently we must we exclude books in educational technology. Technology is both product and process. Lesson plan is educational technology because it is a process that supports education.

Secondly, we need to identify the right technology for school's situation. In educational technology discipline this is called media selection. In order to help students reproduce the knowledge, student can use the old fashioned writing assignment or website development. The objectives determine the chosen media. Both media deliver the same result of knowledge reproduction. Old fashion writing assignment helps students in organizing train of thoughts while website development help students doing hyperthinking or non-linear thinking.

Rome was not built in a day; the third step is to devise an action plan to improve school technology literacy. In order to train students to be able to do hyperthinking, students must be able to organize their train of thoughts first. These two can even be broken down into several tasks. The action plan requires not only, lesson plan but also financial support plan.

The school may decide that it is best to understand logic of computer early. One of the many procedures that teacher can use is integrating information searching and processing in the classroom. In teaching about cleanliness to a pre-schooler, teacher may include activity of looking for that information and verifying it. This activity will vary in each education level. Challenge the teachers and the students to find more efficient way to search and process the information. Better technology means more efficient technology, isn’t it? Therefore, in the fourth action, school needs to devise a guided procedure for implementing technology on day to day basis at school for each level of education.

Lastly, but not the least, school must involve teachers from the very beginning of the decision making. Prior to teacher’s involvement, teacher must be empowered by building teacher’s awareness of their technology choice and its impact to the classroom. By making the teachers interested and involved in the school’s course of action, teachers’ participation can be higher. Therefore it will decrease resistance from teachers.

Postman was right. This negotiation process takes a lot to bet on. The school's failure to negotiate with technology will cause what Postman said "The surrender of culture to technology" when school is dictated by technology or what Cuban said about teacher's resistance. You choose, both are not favorable for us.

Jaha Nababan is Fulbright Grantee, Kelly-Cabot Scholar and graduated from Boston University School of Education.

UI must have a School of Education

2005-06-30T04:02:00.000-04:00

Indonesia is not a learning country. We refuse to produce more qualified teachers. We changed the Schools of Education into Universities. Why? just the mere fact that school of education has no selling points. No one wants to join IKIP. I assume IKIP has given up its excellence and chosen to be a small fish in a big pond. Therefore, it is a right time and right thing for the University of Indonesia (UI) to build a School of Education.

Bandung Institute of Technology has passed this chance by building School of Business and Management. No big University is trying to pick up the ball and keeping it playing on the field.

I uttered this crazy idea, a few months ago in Dikmenjur mailing list (dikmenjur@yahoogroups.com). As one of the lecturers in UI, I feel that building a School of Education is part of setting higher standard to education in UI.

I feel injected with more power by hearing my good friend, Totok A. Soefijanto, is returning back to Indonesia forgood. Maybe this is also a right time and right thing to do for me to relive this crazy idea.

If you are with me, please comment and share me your ideas. Together we can make it happen.

Brgds,
Jaha

Science died in Planetarium Jakarta

2005-06-01T12:03:00.000-04:00

Eversince I arrived in Indonesia, I try to introduce my daughter to many occupations. She became very interested in those occupations and made them her ideals. Once she wanted to a computer programmer, an animal tamer, and the last one was an artist. She is particularly keen in drawing. I took her to places where she could she what these people with those occupation did.

These days, my daughter dreams to be an astronauts, after we played as spaceship crews.

Today i visited Planetarium in Taman Ismail Marzuki. My plan was to prepare my beloved daughter's visit to the site. I was very excited when I entered the hall. I remember when I was in my elementary years visiting this place with my school mates. I wanted to be like Captain James Tiberius Kirk from Star Trek - The Original Series. I don't recall any disappointment. It was a mission completed satisfactorily.

I don't like being sarcastic but my impression of my today's visit was just like being sucked into a time machine. When I entered the hall, everything I had seen when I was a child was still there. Many of them are antiques and broken. Has science died after I left the building years ago?

I keep wondering....

May I be able to plan as funtastic trip as mine was for my daughter.

May the force be with us.
Live long and prosper.

Jahatnya Teknologi Terhadap Anak

2005-06-01T11:51:00.000-04:00

This one was published in Kompas (Kompas is the biggest newspaper in Indonesia - http://www.kompas.com) print edition on May 30th, 2005:

English Title: How cruel technology can be to your children.
Summary: Though the title is accusing technology of being negative, the content of the article is trying bring parents' awareness in letting their children adopting new technology.

Jahatnya Teknologi Terhadap Anak

Foto dan video dari telepon genggam yang beredar di internet meningkat jumlahnya. Hal ini menjadi wajar seiring telepon genggam berkamera dan video telah menyandang predikat “HP sejuta umat.” Sebagian besar dari “sejuta umat” itu adalah kalangan generasi muda – anak hingga berumur 18 tahun – yang merupakan pengadopsi awal (early adopter) dari berbagai produk teknologi. Sesuai dengan judul, tentunya materi visual yang beredar tersebut bukanlah materi yang pantas dilihat orang kebanyakan. Hal ini membuat anak menjadi tersangka utama sekaligus korban dari kasus-kasus ini.

Pelaku atau pun korban dalam kasus tersebut di atas, sesungguhnya hanyalah korban dari sisi negatif teknologi. Semua ini terjadi, secara tidak langsung, atas ijin orang tua yang membebaskan pengadopsian teknologi tanpa pendampingan. Banyak bukti sisi negatif teknologi yang tidak disadari beredar dihadapan orang tua. Sebuah bukti sempat direkam dalam kamera video di sebuah sekolah dasar negeri percontohan di Bogor. Pada hari Jum’at siang, sambil menunggu waktu sholat Jum’at bersama, sejumlah murid asyik bermain perang-perangan menggunakan crossbow (panah yang menggunakan pelatuk seperti pistol) yang terbuat dari kayu yang dijual di pagar sekolahan. Pada saat yang sama, di sekeliling murid-murid tersebut, guru-guru dan orang tua murid yang sedang menunggu terlihat tidak menyadari kejadian ini. Tidak ada satu pun orang dewasa yang memperhatikan bagaimana anak-anak itu berinteraksi dengan kawan-kawannya dan crossbow-nya. Murid-murid tersebut berkonspirasi, berstrategi dan menghayati permainan dengan menampilkan mimik muka para prajurit perang yang siap menghabisi lawan. Tidak ada suatu hal pun yang meng-orkestrasi semua gaya-gaya anak-anak itu kecuali alam bawah sadarnya yang sudah dibentuk oleh televisi. Bukti visual ini pun menangkap sebuah interaksi yang sangat mirip dengan acara-acara perburuan dan penyergapan terhadap para penjahat yang acap kali disiarkan di televisi.

Memang sebagian besar keluarga di Indonesia masih menempatkan televisi di ruang keluarga. Celakalah para orang tua yang menempatkan televisi di kamar anak-anaknya karena mereka telah meletakkan racun pikiran tepat di jantung sasaran. Salah satu dampak negatif televisi, adalah melatih anak untuk berpikir pendek dan bertahan berkonsentrasi dalam waktu yang singkat (short span of attention). Saat ini banyak kita jumpai anak-anak yang dicap malas belajar. Mungkin mereka bukan malas belajar. Otak mereka sudah tidak mampu menyerap bahan pelajaran dalam jangka waktu yang lebih lama dari jarak di antara dua spot iklan akibat pengkondisian oleh acara televisi.

Bila televisi begitu dahsyatnya, bagaimana dengan komputer? Saat ini jumlah penelitian bidang teknologi pendidikan yang menyatakan bahwa komputer memiliki dampak negatif terhadap pendidikan dan perkembangan anak sama banyaknya . Menurut Paul C. Saettler dari California State University, Sacramento, hasil tersebut muncul karena banyak penelitian yang membandingkan pendidikan yang konvensional dan yang berbantuan teknologi tidak pernah berhasil melakukan perbandingan setara karena banyaknya aspek yang tidak teramati. Satu hal yang pasti, interaksi anak dan komputer yang bersifat satu (orang) menghadap satu (mesin) mengakibatkan anak menjadi tidak cerdas secara sosial.

Seperti halnya televisi, meletakkan komputer ber-CDROM di dalam kamar anak sama bahayanya. Hal ini, di samping memungkin anak terlalu sibuk bermain game, komputer ber-CDROM memungkin masuknya VCD porno ke kamar anak tanpa sepengetahuan orang tua. Untuk keluarga yang memiliki lebih dari satu komputer di rumah, sangat disarankan untuk membangun jaringan komputer rumah di mana, hanya komputer pusat yang terletak di ruang publik yang memiliki CDROM agar pengaksesan CDROM ini dari kamar anak-anak dapat terawasi. Akhir-akhir ini dampaknya VCD porno bajakan sungguh meresahkan. Hal ini diakibatkan begitu mudahnya mendapatkan VCD bajakan dan memainkannya pada sebuah VCD player sehinngga anak balita pun mampu mengoperasikan untuk menyaksikan Teletubbies kesayangannya.

Begitu juga dengan internet, akses internet harus diletakan di ruang publik untuk mencegah anak menjadi korban predator pedofilia di internet atau perbuatan melanggar hukum yang tidak disadarinya, seperti berbagi file secara ilegal (illegal file sharing). Kita tidak bisa mencegah anak berinteraksi dengan internet karena di dalamnya banyak pula hal yang bermanfaat. Hasil penelitian terakhir pun menyatakan tak ada satu piranti lunak pun yang mampu menggantikan tugas orang tua mengawasi kegiatan anaknya di internet.

Tulisan ini tidak untuk mencegah atau menakut-nakuti orang tua agar membatasi interaksi anaknya dengan teknologi. Tulisan ini bermaksud mengajak orang tua untuk berperan aktif dalam melindungi anaknya dari sisi negatif teknologi. Perlindungan yang diberikan bukan dengan membuat anak menjadi sterile dari teknologi tetapi immune yaitu dengan memberikan pendampingan terhadap anak dalam berinteraksi dengan teknologi. Berikan anak sesuai dengan apa yang mereka butuhkan dan tidak berlebihan.

Seyogyanya orang tua tidak bersembunyi di balik ketidakmampuan meng-adopsi teknologi. Orang tua telah lebih banyak memakan asam garam hidup ini. Teknologi boleh berbeda, tetapi cara manusia menggunakannya masih sama. Dahulu, isyu mengenai seseorang berhubungan sex di luar nikah beredar dari mulut ke mulut. Biasanya beredar saat pasangan tersebut putus dan diedarkan oleh pihak yang sakit hati. Kini gosip itu beredar dalam rekaman video atau pun foto. Lebih parah lagi, internet memepercepat peredarannya. Sekali beredar di Internet, akan susah menghapusnya. Pencegahannya sungguh merupakan hal yang tidak berhubungan dengan teknologi sama sekali, yaitu pendampingan orang tua terhadap anak dalam interaksi anak dengan teknologi dan proses internalisasi nilai-nilai positif kepada anak-anak oleh orang tua.

Memang anak lebih cepat beradaptasi dengan teknologi, tetapi orang tua pun memiliki nilai lebih karena orang tua telah lebih dulu mengenyam berbagai pengalaman hidup. Kombinasi kedua hal ini akan menjamin proses mengadopsi teknologi dalam kehidupan keluarga menjadi lebih positif. Orang tua dan anak dapat meningkatkan kualitas waktu bersama dengan cara ini. Dengan demikian, orang tua akan mampu mencegah teknologi dan kejahatannya memisahkan keluarga yang dicintainya.

Jaha Nababan, Penerima Fulbright lulusan Boston University School of Education jurusan Educational Media and Technology, adalah penggiat teknologi pendidikan.

Coming Soon! My New Educational Video - Chaperoning Hearts to Sing Again

2005-05-15T02:38:00.000-04:00

This video is about National Commission for Child Protection and its program in Chaperoning Tsunami Victim Children in Aceh.

Content - English and Indonesian

Note: I will soon post it on the web when i get an access to high bandwidth.

My New Educational Video - Membawa Teknologi ke Sekolah (Bringing Technology to School)

2005-05-15T02:34:00.000-04:00

Right Click on the link above and "save target as"

To play, you need to download DivX player from www.divx.com

Content in Bahasa Indonesia.

Let technology restructures school book publishing industry

2005-05-15T02:28:00.000-04:00

Let technology restructures school book publishing industry

This article was written during my first week after returning to Indonesia. I was pondering on some recent educational policies in Indonesia.

No one wants to keep the bad apples. The school book publishing industry has been accused of manipulating school book policy at school by luring teachers with incentives. The spirit of the five-year-book plan (the plan) is to prevent us from keeping the bad apples in our education system.

In recent mass media campaign by Indonesian book publisher association, many observers found that the plan poses more disadvantages than advantages. The plan might result in five full years of collutive contract according to one Jakarta based radio talk show. Didn't we say we wanted to keep the bad apples away?

The plan requires paradigm shift to be applicable. The one like what Unidah Roshidi of State University of Jakarta (Universitas Negeri Jakarta - UNJ) mentioned in the same radio talk show. She said that books are not the only knowledge sources in the classroom. It is true in two folds. The first reason is because books utilization in the classroom is still ineffective and inefficient due to lack of lesson plan utilization. The students are learning from its surroundings, there would be plenty of things that can be brought into classroom as alternative to book. By improving teacher's skill in using lesson plan, teacher can smoothly integrate alternative material into classroom. Thus, at the end, school can lower its dependability to book publishers. A simple business point of view, should the buyer lower its dependability to its supplier, the buyer will gain more bargaining power towards its supplier, and that is the second fold.

Though school cannot completely omit its dependability to books, a lot of stake holders can help improving school bargaining power. School books must be made open source like Linux. There are a lot of Good Samaritan teachers who are willing to write high quality school books and make it available for free. Students of Boston University School of Education Master Degree Program are asked to write school books that correspond to Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and their subjects. They keep their works as portfolio. We can do better than that. We can make it more into group effort. The teachers or prospective teachers from Educational Universities can work in writing the school books. There are also many Good Samaritan Book Designers who are willing to design it and convert the raw material into an electronic book format or PDF format ready for printing and copying.

For distribution, Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association (APJII - Asosiasi Pengusaha Jasa Internet Indonesia) must be more than willing to host a web for this purpose where anyone can download these school books. Ministry of National Education can distribute this material in CDROM so that these soft copies of school books can also reach schools in remote area. This is plan is in accordance to one-school-one-computer program that was launched a few years back.

Student can copy the material using whatever output affordable to them. Rich students can print it in high resolution color printer, while less fortunate students can make a copy from the cheapest copy quality. With approximately six thousand rupiahs for one hundred and twenty pages per copy of these electronic book compare to seventeen thousand rupiahs per book, the less fortunate students can still get the same content.

Every year, groups of end users - teachers and students - can give input for upgrade and a new group of writers and book designers can work voluntarily to modify it. Within five years, these free publications can be reviewed for its suitability towards changes due to the most current demand in education. This is the competitive edge that cannot be match by the school book publisher, that these electronic books are peer reviewed.

This group's effort can empower school and increase school's bargaining power towards books publishers. This effort has many advantages. It can cater whatever economies of scale then it will drive the price down. Even if this effort is completely funded by government, the capital required is still low. Adding this variable to school book publishing industry will increase industrial rivalry. Especially since this electronic book's distribution saves up a lot of warehousing and supply chain cost, all in all, these surely will increase school's bargaining power towards school book publishing industry. At the end of the day, government can provide supporting national policy as additional to the coming Five-year-book plan. This policy shall not kill the book publishing industry; it will drive them to be more efficient and forget about luring teachers with incentives.

What we are facing is a tricky situation. It is sure that the Five-year-book plan has its advantages and disadvantages. However, we must start take that first step into a thousand mile journey. This first step and many more steps in the future will keep the bad apples away.

Catatan Pinggir Dunia Pendidikan Indonesia

2005-05-15T02:23:00.000-04:00

Due to request by some of my Indonesian Friends, I am going to start posting my articles in Bahasa Indonesia too.

Catatan Pinggir Dunia Pendidikan Indonesia

(Some Side Notes on Indonesian Education System) - this article was written on Indonesian National Education Day.

Orang miskin dilarang sekolah bersama orang kaya. Kementerian Pendidikan Nasional (Diknas) seolah tanggap atas kritik Eko Prasetyo dalam bukunya “Orang Miskin Dilarang Sekolah”. Eko Prasetyo membuka bukunya dengan menceritakan sulitnya mendapatkan sekolah murah bagi buah hatinya. Masih di dalam bab yang sama Eko ternyata juga menyebutkan adanya sekolah murah untuk anak tukang pasir tetangganya. Permasalahannya, apakah warga kelas menengah yang diwakili Eko mau menempatkan anaknya di sekolah beriuran tujuh ribu lima ratus rupiah sebulan.

Sekolah memang telah terkotak-kotak berdasarkan kemampuan ekonomi dari orang tua. Kurang bijak bila menjawab permasalahan ketersediaan bangku sekolah untuk seluruh lapisan masyarakat dengan pengkastaan sekolah. Seharusnya peningkatan kualitas pendidikan di sekolah milik pemerintah dan penyediaan akses pembiayaannya bagi seluruh lapisan masyarakat diutamakan. Sehingga Gendhuk atau Butet bisa menuntut ilmu hingga ke negeri Cina bila mereka memiliki potensi meski orang tua mereka tidak mampu.

Manusia sudah lahir berbeda. Paska kejatuhan Soeharto, bangsa ini banyak didera permasalahan prasangka etnis. Kamanto Sunarto dari Universitas Indonesia menyatakan bahwa pendidikan multikultural kurang disukai oleh penguasa karena dianggap sebagai ancaman bagi kestabilan politik, ekonomi dan negara. Keputusan pemerintah untuk memisahkan si kaya dan si miskin di sekolahan merupakan kebijakan kontra produktif dengan Bhineka Tunggal Ika. Ahmad Bukhori Muslim, penerima beasiswa Fulbright di Boston University, mengungkapkan pentingnya mengajarkan perbedaan kepada anak-anak. Pendidikan ini, Bukhori menekankan, sebaiknya dimulai dari rumah. Upaya ini perlu didukung dengan adanya kurikulum yang bermuatan multikultural di sekolah untuk memperkuat dampaknya. Tujuan pendidikan multikultural, menurut Kamanto, diantaranya bertujuan agar siswa mampu berfungsi dalam berbagai latar belakang budaya. Kamanto juga menyatakan bahwa menerapkan pendidikan multikultural di sekolah membutuhkan perombakan total sistem pendidikan. Hal ini merupakan salah satu catatan permasalahan pendidikan di Indonesia.

Catatan lain adalah upaya pemerintah untuk mengurangi beban orang tua dalam urusan membeli buku pelajaran dengan kebijakan Buku Lima Tahun. Kebijakan ini perlu ditambal karena kebijakan ini, di samping membatasi sumber pengetahuan bagi murid, menyisakan ruang buat kolusi yang lebih permanen selama lima tahun. Membuat buku menjadi opensource akan mampu menambal kebolongannya. Pemerintah perlu memulai format awal buku opensource yang dibangun oleh para relawan pendidikan. Buku ini dapat dimodifikasi oleh guru sekolah dan atau relawan lokal agar isinya tetap dinamis mengikuti perkembangan jaman. Buku opensource akan lebih murah bagi orang tua murid karena biaya foto kopi lebih rendah dari membeli buku.

Hasil awal dan pengembangan Buku opensource dapat disimpan di situs Diknas untuk diakses masyarakat pendidikan. Dengan demikian kebijakan Buku Lima Tahun yang didukung Buku Opensource akan memiliki nuansa teknologi pendidikan yang kurang diperhatikan di Indonesia. Upaya menerapkan teknologi di dunia pendidikan di Indonesia pun baru pada pemahaman sempit membawa perangkat keras dan koneksi internet ke sekolahan. Belum ada upaya untuk melatih sekolah mendisain kegiatan yang mengintegrasikan teknologi tersebut kedalam kegiatan belajar mengajar. Memahami bagaimana media dan teknologi berproduksi dikaitkan dengan kurikulum berbasis kompentesi adalah salah satu contoh pengintegrasianya. Akibatnya sekolah merasakan adanya laboratorium internet sebagai sumber pembiayaan dengan tingkat pengembalian investasi,berupa output pendidikan bukan finansial, yang rendah.

Penerapan teknologi informasi di sekolah mengulangi sejarah Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia yang gagal membawa teknologi televisi pendidikan ke ruang kelas. Kesalahan keduanya terletak pada, dan ini menjadi catatan berikutnya, kurangnya melibatkan guru pada perencanaan pemanfaatan teknologi ini di kelas. Akibatnya, seperti yang diungkapkan Larry Cuban dari Stanford University, adalah cercaan terhadap guru yang gagal memanfaatkan teknologi. Nasib guru-guru yang berdedikasi ini sangat malang karena tidak dilibatkan dalam perencanaan dan masih dicaci pula.

Saat Kamanto berbicara mengenai perombakan total, mungkin adanya bencana secara berturut-turut menandakan perlunya kita merombak total banyak hal dalam keseharian kita, dalam hal ini masalah pendidikan. Salah satunya adalah ukuran pencapaian sekolah. SDN Johar 16 Petang di Jakarta Pusat yang seratus persen diisi oleh para pengamen dan pedagang asongan cilik, tentunya tidak akan pernah berhasil apabila diukur dengan jumlah siswa yang diterima di SMP Negeri. “... membangkitkan motivasi untuk selalu datang ke sekolah saja susah,...” demikian ungkap kepala sekolahnya. Sekolah seperti SDN Johar 16 Petang akan menjadi bintang bila ukurannya adalah turunnya jumlah murid yang terlibat kriminal. Sebagai catatan, tentunya banyak sekolah dengan permasalahan yang berbeda-beda yang tidak dapat diukur dengan standar yang sama.

Seyogyanya, upaya perombakan total diwarnai dengan semangat memberdayakan sekolah dan bersifat evolusi daripada revolusi. Lain halnya pada daerah bencana yang memungkinkan perombakan total. Pada dasarnya daerah bencana memiliki kebutuhan pendidikan yang berbeda, kurikulum yang adaptif adalah salah satunya. Kurikulum yang adaptif setidaknya dibagi dalam tiga tahapan. Tahap pertama adalah kurikulum yang membantu mengatasi trauma. Tahap kedua, kurikulum perlu diadaptasi agar siswa mampu membantu lingkungan mengatasi trauma. Tahap ketiga adalah kurikulum baru yang berfungsi penuh seperti kondisi normal.

Daerah bencana juga membutuhkan pembangunan pranata sekolah yang hancur. Dalam membangun kembali fasilitas sekolah, perlu diperhatikan isu-isu baru yang berkembang di dunia seperti isu mengenai “Rute Aman ke Sekolah” yang dicanangkan WHO pada April 2004 serta akses yang sama bagi murid cacat fisik dan perempuan.

Catatan terakhir, meski bukan akhir dari daftar panjang permasalahan pendidikan, adalah mengenai kesiapan sekolah menghadapi bencana. Sebagai perbandingan, dunia bisnis siap dengan prosedur Perencanaan Pemulihan Paska Bencana (P3B) agar aktifitasnya tak terputus. Diknas, dalam hal ini nampak tidak memiliki perencanaan penanganan pemulihan sekolah paska bencana. Memang kedatangan bencana tidak dapat diramalkan, tetapi dampaknya dapat diukur dan diramalkan, sehingga P3B dapat dibuat dan akan mempermudah pemulihan pendidikan di daerah bencana. P3B ini seyogya memasukkan aspek-aspek yang diuraikan di atas. Semoga tulisan ini menjadi pemicu langkah-langkah kita berikutnya.

Bloggings, educative online journals for all

2005-02-25T05:30:00.000-05:00

This article appeared in The Jakarta Post, Feb 21, 2005

Bloggings, educative online journals for all

Jaha Nababan, Contributor, Jakarta

Blogging is not bragging.

Information written in a blog is maintained as free usable knowledge. That statement contradicts what Roy Suryo, an Indonesian information and communication technology (ICT) expert, said in a monthly business magazine.
He said he intentionally did not create a blog or a personal homepage -- he probably meant personal website -- because he did not need one. This ICT expert could not have seen Bernie Dodge's personal blog.

"Blog" derives from the word "weblog". A blog is an online journal. Blogs allow their users to become self-publishing authors on the web without needing to have any web development skills.
A lot of teenagers use blogs to create online diaries that they can share among friends. That is how blogging gained its popularity. Unfortunately, blogs have become an online "bragging arena".

Bernie Dodge of San Diego State University is the father of Webquest. This is considered to be an American Educational Technology breakthrough. It is an online portal where teachers all over America can post their web lessons.
Webquest allows other teachers to review the posted web lessons and rate them before using the web lessons in the classroom.

Bernie Dodge, as the leading pioneer of Webquest and similar research, established his blog to get comments from his readers and colleagues on the views he shared. Bernie's readers can observe his train of thought through his blog.

Currently, there are many classroom projects that make use of blogs. Students are asked to create online journals on class projects they are doing. The journals are shared among classmates. Classmates can review and add more information by commenting on the blog. The blog becomes the owner's means to harnessing valuable information from colleagues.
A blog has more advantages than a personal website. It is easier to create and maintain a blog than a website. By employing a well thought-out lesson plan, blogs can be used to encourage students to manage information.

Students are required to look for information and verify its validity prior to publishing. Blogs also encourage students to organize thoughts and improve their writing skills. These are the keys to maintaining the loyalty of blog readers.

There are currently many add-ons that can improve a blog. These require little knowledge about HTML hypertext markup language, a simple web-programming language.
Having add-ons in the blog can improve interaction within it. Many blog owners are always looking for ways to improve a blog's utility by adding more add-ons. Blog owners improve their HTML skills along with the improvements in their blog site.

It is the nature of a journal that a blog can be used to track the development of information or train of thought of a particular blog owner.
By tracking the development of a student's thoughts in his or her journal, the teacher can guide the student through the learning process. In order to use the blog in this way, the teacher must devise a proper lesson plan that allows collaboration between students.

The research projects mentioned above are trying to find the best formula for such lesson plans. Experimenting with a blog is relatively easy for teachers because of two things.
The first is the easy nature of a blog that can be adopted by teachers. Second, the output of a blog is in written format. This is a familiar format for many teachers.

As mentioned above, blogs have been used for bragging. Yes, like other inventions, blogging has side-effects. The growth of technology allows the conversion of old-fashioned habits into new forms.

First there were books; then came the e-book. However, it is not necessarily true that conventional diaries will be followed by e-diaries.
To blog is certainly not to produce an online diary. Parents should also know the nature of blogging and how to use it to educate children. Children sharing private stories online may come to harm as there are many adults preying on children online.

Life is a journey; there is so much to be discovered. Parents should encourage children to embark on a journey of discovery and write it down in a blog. Let technology be a part of the shared moments of parents and children.

Otherwise, like a knife, it will cut you off from your loved ones.

Jaha Nababan (jaha@fulbrightweb.org), a Fulbright grantee and Kelly scholar, is a Boston University School of Education graduate in educational media and technology. He is currently teaching at FISIP Universitas Indonesia.

Aceh's Pain in Exchange for Trust

2005-01-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

This article appeared in The Jakarta Post's OpEd, Jan 10, 2005

"How can we trust you with our donations?" said a woman in Boston Common Park on New Year's Eve. Such a question put us, Indonesian students who were distributing the flyers about the disaster in Aceh on that night, into short silence.
We were pondering what we had done wrong. We didn't do that corruption and neither did the nearly one hundred thousand victims who died in that catastrophe. This is really a tragic irony. I read on the news that many countries offered debt relief to Indonesia. Deja vu, once again the Acehnese people help us with their blood and tears just like when they bought us our first airplane that flew us to our independence.
To understand what we are facing up front, try the following. Try Google to look for these keywords; "tectonic map", "volcanic map", and "epicenters map". The epicenters map from NASA describes that almost 80 percent of the Indonesian Archipelago is covered by dots of epicenters. This map is a compilation of epicenter data from 1963 to 1998. Another map shows, this is no secret for many Indonesians who have gone through nine years of compulsory early education, that Indonesia is surrounded by many tectonic cracks and sits on the area where three volcanic strains meet.
Surprise, surprise, we don't have any strong center for the study of earthquakes. Try Google on that one too, if you don't buy my words. I am not trying to blame it on our ignorance. My point is, no matter how prepared we are, this thing may happen again because we are sitting on a natural time bomb. If we betray the trust of the international community today, the tears of two hundred and fifty million people in Indonesia will not be able to bring back the betrayed trust.
I believe that many people expect the that Indonesian government will take this opportunity to clear its name by being transparent and accountable. President Susilo can set the new standard of good governance for a better Indonesia by publishing the audited spending of all donations.
The Indonesian government must provide a link in its embassies' websites to report such fraud, publish the audited report of donation usage and provide online donation access. If Indonesia fails to gain international trust, no one will want to conduct any business with Indonesia, help or support us. We will be a country in exile.
Last but not least, we must not forget about the trust from the people in Aceh. Our history is written with their blood and tears too. Many of us care about Aceh. Helping them to recover is actually helping us to welcome our brothers and sisters home. We need to bury all the pain that has set us apart and build bridges between us to once again be a Bhineka Tunggal Ika, diverse but united nation.
Indonesians abroad are gathering to lend a hand. We tried to be good ambassadors for our country. May the recent Tsunami Summit in Jakarta be the place for us to regain trust from the international community.

Volunteerism Mailing List for Indonesians Abroad

2005-01-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

Calling all Indonesians abroad.

Please join our mailing list to coordinate our volunteer activities to help Indonesia overcoming catastrophe.

We expect that this mailing list can be used to share successfull program that other can follow or notify unsuccessfull one to prevent other from repeating the same mistake.

Start Small, Start Smart, Start Now.

Best Regards,
Jaha Nababaan,
listadmin

2004-12-03T23:36:00.000-05:00

This is my second album cover. Still no songs. I have told you I am not a good musician. Bathroom is my concert hall and my empty room is my music studio.

Bicycling with my camera along Charles River

2004-11-14T02:56:00.000-05:00

These photographs were really my rewards of the day

It was one summer day, perfect sun, and perfect mood. Look at these ducks. They were going home in harmony.

But then they got confused. "Now.. where shall we go?"

Finally, I was happy with the catches of the day and off course very tired. I rode bicycle from Allston along Commonwealth Avenue all the way to Boston Water Front. I went back going through bicycle track along Charles River and North Harvard Street where I stopped to take this picture.

A little time with a lot of creativity

2004-11-14T02:53:00.000-05:00

It was the first snow i saw in Boston. It wasn't just snowing. It was storming for three days. This little snowman picture was created using a toothpick, a rubber band, a piece of screw, the cap of my cough medicine, several dents from my window and my Nokia3650.

Indonesian Educational Technology in Indonesian Grad Forum

2004-11-14T02:48:00.000-05:00

I was delivering speech about Indonesian Educational Technology in Indonesian Grad Forum, Boston, MIT, Fall2003

The Semidevildemigod

2004-11-14T02:45:00.000-05:00

This picture was taken in Government Center during "Taste of Boston 2004"

Places at the table - Influences in Educational Media and Technology

2004-11-14T01:40:00.000-05:00

This seri of 7 pictures is a caption of Educational software that I am working on. The title of the software is "Places at the table - Influences in Educational Media and Technology". In the software, the setting is a formal dinner among influential people in EM&T. The student is going to organize the dinner by identifying the invitees to the dinner and proposing a subject to discuss during the dinner.

This software consists of two process. The first one is how the software is presented before the learner in order to help the student structuring the information. The first process is intended to support the process in the classroom. The second one is the classroom process. The second process is supposed to help the students producing new knowledge by sharing in class what they have understood so far. This approach is based on Saettlers remark that product must support the process.
The software is used at the last session of EM550 class - Introduction to Educational Media and Technology. By this time, student must already finish reading all the course material and complete Saettler's book. The instructor must assign the student to use the software before coming to the class and bring the printed output of the activities from the software.

In order to do so, student will be doing three subcategories of activities before inviting the guests and deciding the topic of discussion. The first subcategory will be a lesson in some basics concepts and several lessons to fill in information in the timeline. The first subcategory lessons are laid out in the following frameworks. Student will be given the objectives and instruction of the lesson. It is then followed by motivating strategy. The motivating strategy can be in the form of quotation, video, or illustration. The motivating strategy is an approach based on Weber methodology in order to prepare the student to go about the presentation. The next activity, student will be presented by two questions for each information in the timeline presentation. The first question will recollect student's memory about that information.

The second question will be asking the student to make more value of that information by commenting or choosing the right comment. All these interaction will be recorded in the timeline for later analysis by the students.

By the time the student finishes the first subcategory, the student will be challenged to simulate pattern by making connection among information by using arrows in the second subcategory activity. Student can name the connecting arrow with keyword that reminds the student of what that arrow represents.

In the last category, students will be given some problems to review the whole activities. In this last activity, student will be asked to recognize the influential people in the influential field in EM&T by making the list of invitees using summative problems. At the end of the third subcategory, students will be presented with the most important element that often be left behind and neglected in developing EM&T, who is the teacher.

Classroom Process
At this point, student will already be refreshed with key information which was presented through out courses. Refreshing students with key information is one of the objectives of the software especially for the students who have taken the course. Student will bring his/her pre-conception about the pattern in his/her mind and a printed visual aid to help him/her sharing it with the rest of the class.
With that in mind, the classroom activity will mainly about sharing and making inferences from the information shared by classmate. The following is the process format.
The objective of the classroom discussion is that to make students aware of changing perception and definition towards technology through out history. How the perception and definition change also transform the approach and implementation of technology in the classroom. This transformation is called paradigm. The student should be able to identify the pattern of the paradigm and be able to predict the future paradigm.
After being presented with the objective, the student will be presented with motivating strategy. In the software, the student will be notified that the real dinner is this class, therefore in this motivating stage; student will be asked what they will talk about if they are among the invitees. The instructor will elicit student’s timeline in this discussion at this stage.
Then students will work in pairs (or in groups) to share their timelines. Each group or pair will be asked to come up 5-10 statements that summarize the groups understanding about their timelines and write it down in the white board.
Based on the writings on the white board, student will be asked to draw conclusions by answering the following questions which are geared by the instructor:

What was the very first description of technology (Thames)? How it is changed over the periods? What is student’s definition of technology?

When was the first implementation of technology in classroom? How it is changed over the periods?

What is paradigm? Can the students see any paradigm shifts in their timeline?

Based on the pattern that changes the paradigm, what is students’ prediction toward the future paradigm in EM&T?

Conclusion
By asking the student to play with the software before coming to the class, students will be ready to discuss more about the pattern. Their minds have been engaged by the activity in the software. The visual aid will have the student by giving visual cues to what they have learnt from the software. They can use it to share it with other student and evaluate whether there is similarity in the patterns they created. They can add each other and finally make conclusion out of it.

Another Educational Television?

2004-11-02T01:32:00.000-05:00

Television is the best technology for delivering messages. It can transfer sound and moving pictures into its viewer’s mind almost instantly. The logic then, this medium must be good for learning purposes. Television is so powerful that, in the advent of television in the mid-1960s, Marshall McLuhan correctly described television as the message when he said “the medium is the message” (1967). Television as an entertainment medium has been proved, but television as an educational tool has not. Nevertheless, according to the Jakarta Post on Oct 13, 2004, Indonesia is launching a government educational television broadcast which is called Televisi Edukasi (TVE).
This breakthrough is an antithesis of today’s condition. We are having a lot of junk material in our television screen, for example. So, TVE perceived as the right thing to do. However, it is worthy to asking: Is it truly the right course of action to answer the challenge of Indonesian today’s media situation? What is the real challenge that an educational television is facing in the future. This article is trying to explain the challenge in the future based on historical pattern.
Should we have another state-run TV station, when TVRI is on the brinks of bankruptcy (The Jakarta Post, December 29, 2003)? This situation shall not be a hindrance of doing a good deed in Indonesian Educational Media and Technology history. However, this is a sign that building another state-run educational television must be taken into consideration seriously. For sure TVE does not want to be written in the history in the same class with the Televisi Pendidikan Indonesia (TPI) as failure.
TVE will be operated by PUSTEKKOM (Kompas, October 13, 2004). After being left behind by TPI, PUSTEKKOM was left with a lot of educational TV programs that PUSTEKKOM produced for TPI on subcontract basis. I believe one of the reasons TVE is launched is because TVE can take the advantages of these abundance material and millions-of-dollar idle equipments. However, relying on old paradigm; such as advertisement and production house business model; or just merely making a good use of idle resources may lead TVE to the same bitterness of failure. The stake is especially high for TVE to operate an educational television that is aiming to educational institution market such as universities and schools because The University of Indonesia is also planning to build an educational television station. This television broadcast, which will be called TVUI, is aiming from the same market.
So let us see what happened to TPI. TPI was founded in January 1991. It was aiming for educational institution such as formal schools; and distance learning audience from the Universitas Terbuka (UT – Indonesian Open Learning University). TPI was supported by many institutions in the same field such UT, PUSTEKKOM (Pusat Teknologi Komunikasi dan Informasi Pendidikan – Center for Educational Information, Communication and Technology) and SEAMEO SEAMOLEC (South East Asia Ministers of Education Organization – Open Learning Center) in developing the content and technology. TPI was struggling for several years before it finally changed its course of action to pursue commercial objectives and leaving its allies behind.
According to Paul Saettler, educators have struggled for recognition to secure the channels for educational broadcasting. Frieda Hennock was the first person who was able to force the government to issue 10% of the broadcast license for education in 1952. She was succeeded because she was also supported by educators who were willing to testify for her. The US government continued to support the educational television movement through National Defense Act 1958. The first direct aided fund was signed by President John F. Kennedy in the Communication Act in 1962.
The first non-experimental Educational Television was founded in Iowa State University as early as 1954, however, in 1952; there was an urge demand for an educational television network which was proposed by the Penn State College (now University). The first educational network was developed in Alabama and succeeded in raising standard of instruction throughout the state. Due to the raising needs of distribution and suitable programs, Public Broadcast Service (PBS) was built in 1967. PBS does not produce any programs; it interconnects several major production centers.
Several successes followed in the following years have led the governor of American Samoa, H. Rex Lee, to build an Instructional Television Station in 1964. Many teachers were sent to American Samoa to become TV Tutors. Of all huge investment made for this effort, American Samoa Instructional Television failed because it did not listen to the history and previous research projects on instructional television.
What can we learn from above information? First of all that what happened to TPI was historical De Ja Vue. It is similar to what happened to American Samoa. Further more, Saettler mentions that many University TVs have been reported stagnancy in their effort to maintain sustainability. TVE (and TVUI too) may be doomed to repeat the same mistake as pointed out in American Public broadcast history. Surprisingly that TV tutor model has been around for long and it also the reason of failure for the American Samoa Instructional Television. So what works then? Throughout his book, Saettler mentions that many educational technology’s failures were caused by focusing more on the product rather than process. Especially in American Samoa case, the television program was not followed up by in class activities.
John Dewey, said that, learning process must allow learners to discover and construct knowledge. Indonesian students have shown their capability in doing so. In recent independent educational television project in July 2004, several SMUN70 students created a fifteen minutes educational video on Osteoporosis. It is reported that they learnt better about the subject by doing this project.
To create process in adopting television in the classroom requires bigger support from the government to include it in the curriculum. Government support is not the only key success factor, as we can also learn from American history that the movement was initiated from the educators, we need more educators’ initiative because in order to make TVE’s efforts come to a full cycle. Television is a powerful medium as McLuhan noted, making it full cycle in the hands of the right people will enhance its impact.

Buying Cellphones for advance users

2004-08-29T00:39:00.000-04:00

I lost my cellphone when I had my vacation in Jakarta. So here I am hunting for new cellphone.
One thing that I regret... I should've bought it in Indonesia. It is the heaven for cellphone aficionados. The latest model at the cheapest price, man alive... you can never find these combinations every where.

Advance users, what is you priority reason in buying a cellphone?
I notice that the more advance you are in using a cellphone the less feature you require in your cellphone. You need your cellphone to be able to cope with your mobile lifestyle so to speak. Beside talking, you need your cellphone to have wide varieties of connectivity. You need to be able to connect to internet and/or other devices such as your PocketPC or Laptop. Your laptop or your PocketPC needs to be able to dial your cellphone as modem or gateway to your GPRS services (if you are among the early adopters, you may consider cellphones with UMTS/EDGE technology) for your internet connection need.
I do not believe in smartphone unless it uses the stylus. Why? Have you tried editing your paper in smartphone with a small regular keypad that requires you to press the button 3 times to get the vowel I, O and twice to get the vowel E and U. Thumbing down the letters in a Smartphone with QWERTY keypad does not do any good either.
If you have read Gary Hammel and CK Prahalad about how computer and communication merged. They drew the infallible graphic to describe the how computer and communication merged however, they should have known that time flies so that graphic continues too. After merging, the arching lines continue to separate. Why? Cellphone or mobile phone will serve the purpose of communicating, not computing, in which it will continue to become voice communication and gateway for data communication. Connectivity will be very important.

Now you find the cellphone of your dream, is that it? Have you forgotten something?
Offcourse there are other things that you need to consider. What web services can you get from, not only that brand but also, your particular type of cellphone. Cellphone manufacturers now provide you with a lot of webservices such as additional software downloads.
Moreover about software downloads, try google software for your particular type of cellphone. See the variant of the softwares available on the market. You may be able to predict where this type of cellphone is going. Is it going to satisfy people of your crowd or else?

trivia
People use the term cellphone in USA, mobile phone in Europe and Handphone in Indonesia for this type of communication device.

note: this is an unfinished writing. it's already late here in Boston. I must get some sleep. Worry not. Return, I must.

2004-08-15T19:32:00.000-04:00

My family and me

Educational Video Production at school to empower schools in Indonesia; is it possible?

2004-08-15T12:14:00.000-04:00

I spent 31 days in Indonesia for my summer vacation. I had the chance to do little experiment on educational video. Here is my little report ( I guess I may call it 'report' :D)

(updated version)
48 hours Educational Video Project

Brief:
The name explains the activity. The whole production period must be equal or less than 48 hours. Since this is a new things to Indonesian schools, the brief introduction lessons are given and also included in the production period. The idea behind 48 hours is to make this educational video production as low as possible so that schools do not hesitate to adopt the idea. The time and efforts must be equal to doing occasional extra curricular activities. It is expected that there should be no budget constraint even if this activity is done once a month by the school.

The ideas was inspired by 48 hours movie festival here at Boston (http://www.48hourfilm.com/) which I heard from my pal Brad Kay-Goodman. There is no educational movie genre in this festival, may be it is about time to start one.

Tools:
Sony DCR-HC85 mini dv, Windows Movie Maker, Sony VAIO PCG-FRV28 laptop, tripod, and YAMAHA Jupiter for transportation :).

Target Audience:
Senior High School Student ( equals to grade 11-12)

Activities:
The students are given brief lessons in the handling the camera; instructional design; video design and story boarding; and video editing using Windows Movie Maker. Afterwards, students do the video production and present the result in front of their friends in a classroom setting as usability testing.

Report:
At first the experiment was planned to be conducted 48 hours all through weekends. However, the situation had changed the plan. It was rather difficult to arrange time for the whole students involved in this project in such a short notice. Therefore, we did it for 2-3 hours everyday except on the shooting days which took approximately 6-7 hours a day.

The schedule was not the only plan that was changed. The brief lessons were changed too. The lessons were planned to be given in classroom settings, due to the same reason with the scheduling, the settings were changed into hands-on lesson setting. There is an advantage about this change, the students got into understanding quickly.

During the shooting days, many problems arised due to the limitation from equipment and situation. Student enjoyed solving the problem and managed to come up with solutions themselves.

The usability testing was canceled because I had to fly back to Boston. I must lower my target due to this time constraint. The new target is to study what the production team learn from the activity and to study the feasibility of that activity.

Evaluation:
1. Cost wise, it is feasible to do this at school. Minimum equipments that is required to have this at school are a low end camcorder (USD300.-), Mediocre Desktop Computer with Windows Movie Maker (USD 400.-). Production cost was approximately USD25.- It was used for transport, meals during shooting, several blank cd and a mini dv cassette.

2. The time spent was approximately 23 hours. 2-3 hours a day in 5 days and 6-7 hours during weekends. The students felt that they didn't invest more effort and time in doing the project. It is especially because they had such a great time doing it.

3. Student must be given a brief hands-on lesson on educational movie script writing. The students need to know what information must be emphasized in the script so that the learner can understand that the information is important in the video. This is an input from Totok Soefijanto.

4. Students mentioned that they learned better about the subject by making the movie. Beside learning the subject or movie production, the students also learned about other things such as problem solving, information gathering, information filtering, and team work.

5. Further study on the usage of this video in classroom setting is needed to see how the learner benefit from the activity.

6. The study of the same activity with teacher being involved in the team is needed. This study must also include the integration of this activity into intra curriculum.

Some of the students participating in this project had the experience in doing video assignment from their teacher at school. However the teacher didn't give clear direction and they didn't get any grades. In that assignment, the objective of that activity was not communicated well. The integration to intra curriculum was loose. Those weaknesses made that assignment seemed to be a waste of students' resources. They still enjoyed it though. If this activity were designed and planned well, it could enhance the student's learning experience.

Is this activity comparable to making group paper and presentation? One thing for sure, the time and efforts spent were relatively equal amount. This group of students enjoyed doing the project. Others may enjoy it too.

The investment cost for the school to implement this activity is considerably less than building a full fledge internet lab that has been a hype in Indonesia for the past few years. Especially in Indonesia where internet is still expensive and resource consuming. This does not mean that I do not endorse internet implementation at school. It is just that we have to take one step at a time when the blind still leads the blind in internet usage at schools. Educational technology is not only about internet. It's in the process rather than in product.

2004-06-29T01:58:00.000-04:00

Wonderland, MA, early Spring2004

2004-06-29T01:54:00.000-04:00

I used to dream of becoming a rockstar.

2004-06-29T01:50:00.001-04:00

It's me as a student here in the US

2004-06-29T01:50:00.000-04:00

It's me before I was a student in the US

My first posting, I wonder what knowledge to share today

2004-05-05T21:16:00.000-04:00

Today is the last day of my spring2004 semester at Boston University School of Education.

I have a handful of freetime in my hands therefore I decided to create this blog. I once disagreed of blogging. Why would anyone read about what I did today? Why would I want to tell everyone what I did today? It seems ridiculous for me. Until I read Bernie Dodge's blog (Bernie is the father of webquest), I found the purpose of blogging.

Blogging is not bragging :)

I spend many of my time, here in united states, surfing for new knowledge. Why don't I share with whoever want to read it. Hey, you may also share whatever new knowledge you discover.

Looking forward to exchange with you.
Best Regards,
J