Instructions with Technologies for Middle School Classrooms

Technology is very much part of language learning throughout the world at all different levels. It is very useful to the primary sector as much as in adult education. In middle classroom, technologies are ideally placed to help teachers working with learners, and learners working independently, to do the necessary ‘languaging’ that makes their language development possible. By technology, students are able to go through a process of creating and re-creating text until it is fully comprehensible to others and is accurate. Students can also create a draft, show it to others and, based on feedback, can make changes to improve the text. The tools can also help students by showing that the spelling or grammar needs work, too. Technology makes this much easier, and makes it more likely that learners will engage with the editing process to produce the highest-quality text that they can. This writing can then be displayed for others to look at and comment on.

Another area that technology supports very effectively is project work. Getting learners to do work about topics that are of interest to them, or topics that are taught in other parts of the curriculum is a great way to improve their skills. Technology makes this possible wherever you are in the world. Teachers and learners can go online to read or listen to material about different areas of interest, and can then write or speak about what they have discovered, telling others in the class or other classes elsewhere in the world.

Online Social Media Applications for Language Teaching and Learning

Online Social Media Application in Language Teaching

Recently, the use of online social media application for language teaching and learning has increase rapidly. Social Media, the so-called Social Network as referred to in the relationship among users, are growing types of digital media. They emerge in various forms that bring people together as communities. The Social Media have played vital role for decades. The statistics show that about 20.6 million out of 66.7 million the Social Media has already been integrated into an informal education system.

Social media applications create a new community where teachers and students do not have to communicate by means of the traditional face-to-face classroom environment. The brand-new changing way of teaching-learning environment definitely brings many impacts. Obviously, in terms of language learning, online classrooms have a single most important benefit over the traditional ones: native instructors. Though grammatical rules and basic vocabulary can be learnt from a non-native speaker very well, for natural speaking skills, presence of a native instructor is a most valuable thing.

As real-life communication is largely different from what students see in books, the online space and real foreign people can actually do much for student’s language proficiency improvement. Constant availability of social and language networks, as well as their general efficiency, drive learners into their simple web interfaces where there’s always somebody waiting to meet a new friend. 

Personally, I have used facebook and edmodo as online media in learning. They are very useful, especially to submit and check students’ work when learning process can not conduct in face-to-face. By those online media, teacher can not only check students’ assignment but also give them feedback directly. They are really helpful.

Blended Learning

Blended Learning

Blended learning is a learning methodology that using the way e-learning is being combined with traditional classroom methods and independent study to create a new, integrative teaching methodology. In other words, blended learning is a learning method which mix the traditional and online method. It has three primary components:

• In-person classroom activities facilitated by a trained educator.
• Online learning materials, often including pre-recorded lectures.
• Structured independent study time guided by the material in the lectures and skills developed during the classroom experience.

In traditional education, teacher gives material by the way of a lecture, while in a blended learning model lectures can be videotaped ahead of time, so the student can watch on their own time. The classroom time is more likely to be for structured exercises that emphasize the application of the curriculum to solve problems or work through tasks.

In blended learning, teacher acts as facilitator while students are more active because they can control over time, place, path, or pace. The facilitator support students with the skills and knowledge required to make the most of the online material and independent study time, guiding students toward the most meaningful experience possible. Facilitators focus on four key areas:

• Development of online and offline course content.
• Facilitation of communication with and among students, including the pedagogy of communicating content online without the contextual clues students would get in person.
• Guiding the learning experience of individual students, and customizing material wherever possible to strengthen the learning experience.
• Assessment and grading, not unlike the expectations for teachers within the traditional framework.

Blended learning can be grouped into six models:

1.      Face-to-face driver

Here, teacher delivers most of the curriculum. A physical teacher employs online learning in a technology lab or the back of the classroom.

2.      Online lab

In a brick-and-mortar location, an online platform delivers the entire course. Often, students who participate in an online lab program also take traditional courses.

3.      Rotation

In learning process, when students are given a course, they rotate on a fixed schedule between self-paced online learning and sitting in a classroom with face-to-face teacher.

4.      Self-blend

Here, students independently choose to take remote online courses to support their school’s traditional curriculum.

5.      Flex

In small group session, teacher provides on-site, as-needed support through in-person tutoring. An online platform delivers most of the curriculum.

6.      Online driver

Students work remotely and face-to-face check-in are either available or mandatory.

There are some advantages of applying Blended Learning in classroom because it provides:

1.      Integrated system

2.      High-quality dynamic content

3.      Analytics

4.      Automation

5.      Application that enhance students’ motivation

Global Education Network

Globalization era in the 21st century requires people to connect globally. The most effective and efficient way to be connected with people around the world is using technology. Technology has important roles in all fields including economic, political, social, and even education. In education, technology which is applied correctly will be very helpful because of advances in technology provide opportunities for people lives in remote areas in order to obtain the information, knowledge, and well-connected with people around the world.

Technology has big contributions in education development through the global education system. New technologies provide ways to overcome the traditional barriers to global education and language learning. In global education system, teachers are using technology in their instruction to address global and multicultural education. Technology also can be instrumental in creating a global learning experiences because technology has the power to breakdown geographical, economical, language, and time-zone barriers. With technology, the learning process can be conducted everywhere, for example, we can gather around a screen in a small town and connect with a classroom in other city. It is quite effective and efficient. Moreover, a significant benefit to instant global communications is that students can improve their language skills through student-to-student conversations regardless of where they live. Therefore, teachers should technological literacy and creative in utilizing technological advances, in addition to supporting students' learning process, as well as to expand its relationship with people all over the world.

Finally, Robinhood chose the right door, the lady’s door. He and the lady pretended to be married and went away to other kingdom.the princes was very sad . she cried all night waitinag for Robin. Her father was glad.

In the other Kingdom named Atena, there was chaos, Robin tried to save it. The King crowned him to be a leader of soldiers. He was lucky because it was not easy to be a leader of soldier Athena.

One day athena citzens were robbed by Persias. There were 10 person, 4 died and 6 could run away and reported to the king. The King got angry because it was not the first time Persia’s made trouble.

“what is it? It’s the second time they made problem. Let’s take a revenge and make them regret !”. king announced the attack to all citizens. He decide to take revenge which was lead by robin.

That was Robin’s expected time to kill the Persia’s King and married his daugther. On the bottle field he succeed to kill the king. Unfortunately, the princes was angry because of her father death. She refuse to marry him. Robin was very disappointed because hes effort was useless.

He was hurt and decided to kill himself by drinking poison. The princess regretted when she knew that Robin and the Lady just pretended to be married. Finally the persias chose her to be a queen and she decided to be a queen without a spouse.

The Process of Writing

The Process of Writing

                Writing is an interesting hobby if you have a willingness to try. It will be more pleasant if you try to write anything you like. Everyone has different hobby, so write your own story in English as your new hobby. It will make you more creative, increase your vocabulary, improve your grammar and the other advantages.  Then, I liked to write, especially short story, but I couldn’t finish until the end. I lacked of ideas, so some of my writing is not perfect. Since my lecturer told me about the process of writing, I feel it is easier to write because there are some steps that we must follow.

                The first step is Brainstorming. In this step, we have to collect the ideas and make important points. From each point, there are sub points that make it more specific. It is efficient to make our writing still in context and not too broad. It is also the important thing that will make our writing well-structured.

                The second step is drafting. It is a step to organize the points in brainstorming. From those points, we should arrange them to be a good paragraph and then make paragraphs to be a good writing. We should be careful in using grammar, capital letter, punctuation, and diction. Read it repeatedly to make sure that it is right and easy to be understood.

                The third step is finalizing. When we have finished making brainstorming and drafting, the next step is checking our writing. Don’t forget to read it carefully and check the using of grammar, capital letter, punctuation, and diction. Avoid confusing sentences.

                The last step is proofreading.  Ask a proofreader to check our writing. It is important because everyone has different perspective to our writing. We don’t have to be confident that our writing is perfect without other perception because our writing is not only for ourselves but it is also read by others, so this step can minimize our mistakes.

                This writing process really makes me easier in writing. We don’t need to be confused continuing our writing because the important points have been made, so start your writing and follow those steps.

               

               

Semarang State University

                Semarang State University (SSU) is the fourth most favorite campus in Indonesia, according to Kompas. SSU is located in Semarang, the capital city of Central Java, Indonesia. It has eight faculties. They are the faculty of education science, the faculty of languages and arts, the faculty of mathematics and natural science, the faculty of engineering, the faculty of sport science, the faculty of economics and the faculty of law. The students body is approximately 40.000 students enrolled in those eight faculties.

            SSU is known as the conservation university in Indonesia. It includes environment conservation, cultural conservation, and moral conservation. The environment conservation is the effort to preserve and protect the environment in order to prevent the damage. It has been realized by planting a lot of trees around SSU, make the biopori hole, paperless, go to campus by foot, the prohibition to throw away the rubbish everywhere, etc. Eventually, the environment becomes green and less pollution. It makes SSU is colder than the other parts of Semarang city. In addition to the environment, there is the cultural conservation. It is the efforts to preserve the culture and bring it to the younger generation in order to prevent the extinction. SSU often hold various cultural performances involving students such as 24-hour traditional dancing, a puppet show, sinden idol and the other traditional entertainments. In some faculties, the students are required to wear batik on certain days. It teaches young people to love and use the domestic products. The most important is moral conservation. It is realized by providing the character education towards a healthy, superior, and prosperous campus. The students are expected to have good morals such as wearing the proper clothes, have the good attitude, etc.