HYPER MALL in Technology and Language Learning :)

            Voila! Welcome back to me. This is my third reflective journal. I have studied splendid and sophisticated material this week. This is a MALL.

            What’s on your mind while hearing this word? Taman Anggrek? Central Park? MOI? Or Pejaten Village? But wait guys mall here is not that kind of things that I mentioned above. MALL here is a shortened of Mobile Assisted Language Learning. Wow wow sounds coll right? Let move on to deep knowing about it.

            Alright, we are going to explore what’s inside this MALL, will Matahari or J-CO be there? (Please ignore it). MALL as Mobile Assisted Language Learning is used to support or encourage language learning (also language acquisition). Based on this explanation, mobile learning also means, “With only slight differences in emphasis, the “M-Learning”, “e-Education”, “distance education”, “open learning”, “virtual learning”, and “multimedia learning” have all been as synonyms (Nycz & Cohen, 2007 in Mobile Learning: Pilot Projects and Initiatives, Guy Retta, 2010).

            After reading that statement, I assume that mobile learning is learning activity that involve technology which provide distant learning, multimedia learning and don’t  use face to face method anymore. Another question comes to my mind, is it possible that our learning will be successful by using this? And how can? Well I will share the mobile learning tools right away.

            There are a lot of mobile learning sophisticated tools in this whole world buddy! But I will explain what I got about this. Okay the first one is PDA! What’s PDAs? PDAs is shortened of Personal Assistant’s Digital. Are you still confused? Well PDAs is kinds of smartphone (at that time). In language learning process, it’s used to be translator and others function (video, music etc). It also provides Internet Connection also Wi-Fi system, that can help us to access the materials or do conversation anytime anywhere we go. But I think the memory is not big to store all of our data and also the monitor is too small, makes me dizzy at all L.

            The second one is Mobile phone. I think in this globalization era everyone has mobile phone and maybe more than one Hahaha. I assume this is the most economic mobile learning tools. Some function that we can use from this tool is we can do mobile conversation like e-buddy, YM, video call etc. Also we can register to one mobile English club that will send each material every day.

            I-Phone and I-Pod will be the last. By comparing 2 previous tools, I state that these are the most sophisticated tool than others. Because both of this have really amazing program. The program is more complete than others. We also can browse to the some learning website on i-Tunes to download some materials. It looks so more sophisticated only by looking at the apple symbol on the behind.

            Overall, this is not impossible, remember not impossible to do mobile learning guys. We are as digital natives have to be familiar to this kind of things. Hopefully, it will be useful for you. Cheers! :D

           

Gonna explore Gona

One dawn on 8th January 1992 at around 04.00 am, there was a nebulous baby crying voice. The voice came from the maternity home. Go inside the home, the midwife said the baby girl was born. And finally, parents gave that girl named, Eka Gona Putri. Behind the names begins.

Alright, the name that appears in paragraph above is my name. Eka and Putri are common names. But how about Gona, it sounds uncommon right? Let me clear this matter out. First thing that you have to remember is Gona doesn’t mean that it relates to Gonna in English, or my parents expect me to become an expert in English -______-“. Story behind that name happened when my dad dreamt something weird. The detail is like this (jeng jeng:mendramatisir).

My dad who named Zaelani Widarta had a business which runs in oxygen distribution (oxygen for hospital and machine shop only).  Every oxygen tubes have to be painted by the number of this production. But one of the tubes, show the different numbers. It was really shocking him, that’s why he got closer to that tube, to see more clearly (maybe also because his eyes are minus -.-a). After then, he saw a sentence that was my name, Eka Gona Putri.

Eka means one or the first, and then Putri means girl or woman. Those words really matches with my condition at that time which I am the oldest or the first child (daughter) in my family. What about Gona? My parents still don’t know this meaning because they get it from dad’s dream. But they assumed (you may call it as their "alibi" haha) that this is compounding of their nick name which are Gozel and Naf (Zaelani and Nafsiah). Whatever the way they get those words to be my name, I am truly grateful of it and never thought to change my names :).

Time to time they said I have to be independent and good role model for my little brother. They aren't be as strict as when they taught my brother (It's not fair :( ). The more I was getting older, the more I became more mature. I represent my personalities and characters as a Sun Flower. Sun flower is considered as the tallest flower (Fyi it's not Rafflesia Arnoldi). It can’t grow up in the ordinary place. It looks very eye-catchy (color: yellow), also tough (because of the structure which has a strong stem and tall) and it always follows the sun all the time. 

Here I reflect to my recent life, I try to see anything from different perspectives. Because even the worst thing, it must be have a good thing inside. That’s why I love being around many people and getting good influences from them. Also I am as a woman, has to be independent girl, tough outside, cheerful, beautiful and warm-hearted inside like a sun flower. I state that I live for living other people’s life :D.

no ANALOG now DIGITAL :D

Voila! Welcome back to the TLL reflective journal! Let me share what I have got in these third and fourth sessions. Check this out.

In this third session which is done at September 29th 2011, Pak Teguh make it as the “debate session”. Class is divided into 2 groups. 1 group which support to the Language Lab development and another group support the Internet Connection development. And I belong to the first group. In this hot debate session, I hear some different perspective both those things. And it was really surprising me at all. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages as well, but I tend to support Language Lab development rather than the Internet Connection development, because I think language lab is more useful than internet connection. Another opinion is the Internet connection is quite difficult to be controlled by us as a teacher. In this globalization era, it seems that our students are very creative and tricky about this.

After debating, pak Teguh give us kinda assignment. This is group discussion and presentation. Each group has to discuss social website or social networking and find the relation to language learning process. They are facebook, twitter, google, skype and etc. My group (Kris, Martan, Natasha, Rindy and I) are going to present the use of skype in language learning on the next 4th session.

The fourth session comes, let’s rock this out! Martan, Kris, and I had presented out discussion about Skype use for language learning and we did very well. Hopefully, all of my friends understand it well like we understand all of their presentations. 

Next lesson that I got is about digital immigrant and digital native. Pak teguh said we belong to digital native, wow it sounds cool, right? Haha. Back to my personal experience, when I was in senior high school, I seldom used technologies, maybe because of that’s of part of my need. But when I worked and studied here in SSE, technology uses have been increasing rapidly. It seems that I can’t do a lot without technology. It became my urgent need right now.