The idea of making video lessons was first floated by a group of local teachers who had returned from a month-long study tour in South Korea. The teachers were inspired by Korean tutors who utilized digital technology in their day-to-day teaching.
ovita, a 35-year-old Javanese language teacher, walked into a makeshift recording studio tucked in a corner of a library at SMP 23 state junior high school in Surabaya, East Java. It was a simple room – not quite soundproof, but it would suffice for the tasks at hand, that is to feed student’s smartphones with school lessons in the style of millennials.
The studio equipment comprised only a smartphone, a microphone and a sheet of fabric used as a green screen. Novita was set to record a video lesson on Macapat, a classic Javanese poem. As the camera began recording, she broke down the poem, analyzing its characters and the literary genre it belongs to.
Novita and her colleagues are among the first school teachers in the region to reinvent their classrooms digitally – a move stipulated in the Surabaya Education Agency’s official program for the 2019-2020 period. Teachers of various subjects are obligated to record video lessons in accordance with the program.
Outside the studio, several of her colleagues pored through textbooks and magazines on Javanese literature as they waited for their turn to record their lessons. Seminal Javanese texts such as Jayabaya and Penjebar Semangat were scattered all around them.
“We upload the video lessons to YouTube for our students to then watch and study,” said Topan, the head of Surabaya Regional Language Teacher Forum.
The idea of making video lessons was first floated by a group of local teachers who had returned from a month-long study tour in South Korea. The teachers were inspired by Korean tutors who utilized digital technology in their day-to-day teaching.
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