Diana Herawati, an English teacher at the SMA 1 Senior High School in Pasuruan, East Java, is busy supervising her students surf the Internet.
She says the computer and Internet facilities at the Teachers Learning Center (TLC) has greatly helped her in her job.
The center, which was opened on April 15 by the Pasuruan regency administration in cooperation with the Sampoerna School of Education, aims to enhance the quality of teaching standards.
Hundreds of teachers in Pasuruan have taken advantage of the facilities in the center. Data from teacher’s forum Klub Guru Indonesia showed that of every 100 teachers in Java, only 5 percent owned a laptop or computer and had access to the Internet.
“I give the students assignments to make friends around the world through social networking sites,” Diana told The Jakarta Post.
She said the students scored higher marks and were more enthusiastic during English lessons.
“This is part of my teaching innovation. Before the TLC was established, I had to shell out my own money to pay for Internet access at Internet cafés. But because of the TLC, I can monitor the students’ activities on the Internet for free,” she said.
Diana said she also used the Internet to meet teachers across the country and read blogs written by colleagues relating their experiences in teaching and research.
She said the experiences served as a reference to further innovate in teaching.
Diana said she also made use of other facilities at the TLC, such as the library, the teaching management training and other supporting training programs.
The National Education Ministry’s Director General for Education Standard and Teaching Improvement Baedhowi said his office had made efforts to improve the standard of teachers in Indonesia since 2005, through certification programs, including the US$200 million Better Education through Reformed Management and Universal Teacher Upgrading grant program from the Dutch government and World Bank.
“The TLC supports the government program aimed at upgrading teachers’ competence and qualification across the country by 2015,” Baedhowi said.
Ministry data showed that almost 60 percent of the 2.6 million teachers in Indonesia did not meet required standards, even though the improvement programs were implemented in 2006.
Sampoerna said it plans to build more TLC programs in Karawang regency, West Java, and in Surabaya. Sampoerna says its programs, which have been running for three years, will eventually be used by 90 school principals and 2,270 teachers in the three areas.
