Internet for communication & collaboration

The startling recent development of the Internet in Indonesia has considerable advantages for Indonesian teachers. This is because the Internet allows teachers who geographically dispersed to communicate and collaborate each other. This is particularly important for Indonesia because it has many islands and the travel as well as communication (via phone) are often difficult or unaffordable

There has been many teachers in Indonesia using e-mail as a means of communication. Although the exact number of teachers using this tool is unknown, the significant increased is indicated by the number of subscriber in several educational mailing lists. For example, a mailing list of Indonesian Education ICT Network or Jardiknas, established April 2006 have 11,230 members in less than two years. Their members are teachers, ICT consultants, administrators, school principal, and educators. About at the same time, another group for teachers called "Smart Teacher" was established and have more than 200 members by the end of 2007. Yet another mailing list called Teachers and Educators or "Tendik" was established in June 2007, and this has more than 3,ooo subscribers in only 6 months. Among these three groups, Jardiknas and Tendik have a very extensive communication. Its message history told us that the average posting of Jardiknas 530 posting permonth (during August 2007 - January 2008), while Tendik was 168 postings permanoth (June 2007 - January 2008). It appeares to me that this number was influenced by the ICT training conducted in most districts accross Indonesia where teachers would learn about e-mail.

Through my participations in several educational mailing lists of Indonesia in the last three years, I discovered several types of the content of teachers communications, such as teacher's expectation of facilities, sharing the challenges they have been facing; asking questions about ICT and teaching approaches, their reactions to the current policy, reporting the ICT training, and so on. Through these mailing lists and several other online groups, I several times posted my ideas about teaching, my reflection on education of Indonesia, as well as communicating my blogs. As a result, I received many emails from teachers, introducing them selves and communicating their teaching context. I have been surprised knowing many teachers from many different areas (including teachers from distant villages). I have been impressed knowing many teachers through online who appears having curiosity and willingness to learn further, trying to maintain communication with me in their limited situation (e.g accessing the Internet in the cafe that far from their town; having time at night to go to cafe since busy time teaching during the day). Further result of this situation, I found a challenge to reply all emails from different teachers. Therefore, I decided to make a mailing list and invited them to join this online group. My intention was to connect each other and to share benefits among us. However, This was still a challenge for me to involve them in a learning community and also I sometimes found that they were more convinient to communicate through my personal emails and not to groups. In summary, I have discovered many advantages of this email communication as well as the challenges. In other words that email could be either a really useful tool or a new challenge for teachers.

A further result of the email communications, leading us to have face to face seminars in different areas in Indonesia (Jakarta, Bandung, South Sulawesi) organised by members of our online group. Another more exciting result was conducting a teleconference using free voice Internet protocol (youtobe) where I and another expert from The University of Queensland being the distant facilitators. The participant were teachers in one Kabupaten including school principals, consultants, and the local goverment staff. This collaboration (seminars and teleconferences) were imposibble to do without the Internet and without the enthusiasm from several teachers who are seeing the Internet as an opportunity for learning.

Another starlting phenomena is the unprecendented growth of blog in Indonesian language. Many teachers has uptaked this tool for communication even for collaboration. After visiting hundreds Indonesian blog created by teachers (including mathematics teachers), I discovered that the range of their blog's features are varied, from a very personal to a more formal, from talking a specific subject matter to a more general mathematics topic. Some are included about teaching approaches, assessment strategies, syllabus, mathematical tests and solutions for preparation of national examination. Some blogs also provide many useful links such as education department links. They often made links with other teachers' blogs. The blog facilities enable them to give feedback or commented each other. Therefore, through blog, teachers have a new site to give their voice, to express their ideas, as well as to develop their virtual community.

To these two phenomena, it is a question, to what extend the new communication and collaboration tools helps them to improve ther teaching practices. It is undeniable that having access to the Internet could mean requiring more times to use the Internet in which will reduce the time for their teaching preparation. It is an important question how these teachers could maintain the balance between time for teaching tasks and time for interact with so many new networks or to write for blog. How these early adopters use this tool for improving their professionalism.This needs a research in Indonesia. However, several findings from this ethnographic study as well as previous research should provide some valuable lessons to address those questions.