God

Thursday, 8 December 2011

By Meilani Ristiana Limbong
Section C/2010

“I’m a part of God’s creatures and I don’t believe that world can works by themselves”
Kehidupan adalah sebuah proses yang berlangsung dengan sebuah maksud dan tujuan. Tanpa adanya tujuan manusia bagaikan sebuah boneka yang dapat dengan mudah tertiup angin. Tujuan setiap manusia bukan hanya untuk bernafas, beranak dan memenuhi bumi akan tetapi lebih dalam dapat gambarkan seperti sebuah lukisan sang masterpiece. Dan Ia adalah Tuhan, sang pencipta yang tahu apa dan mengapa manusia ada di dunia.  Aku percaya Tuhan dengan segenap hati dan pikiranku meski terkadang bermacam-macam pertanyaan menghantui dan menawarkan seonggok fakta yang membingungkan. Mengapa aku percaya Tuhan? Jawaban saya hanya satu karena Tuhan terlebih dahulu baik terhadap saya. Apakah takaran kebaikan Tuhan itu? Seluruh rangkaian peristiwa yang saya alami dalam hidup ini. Saya mampu bernafas dengan oksigen yang tersedia bahkan Tuhan itu baik saat saya harus kehilangan sesuatu dalam kehidupanku. Mungkin sebagian ahli antropolog menangkis suatu hal yang tak berbukti nyata nemun begitulah kepercayaan, keyakinan dalam hati atas sesuatu yang terkadang tak berpijak pada bumi.
Dalam kehidupan ke-Tuhanan saya memiliki apa yang sering disebut iman, sesuatu yang saya yakini dan percaya akan terjadi bahkan saat hal itu belum ada di depan mata. Kepercayaan saya pada Tuhan Yesus sebagai Tuhan adalah wujud iman saya. Saya tidak berkata bahwa Tuhan orang lain itu salah atau hanya saya yang layak memiliki Tuhan. Iman saya pada Yesus di sini adalah sebagai wujud penyembahan saya pada Tuhan. Setiap orang berhak menafsirkan Tuhan dalam persepsinya masing-masing. Ada yang menyebutnya Tuhan sebagai Allah, Tao, Brahma dan Dewa. Setiap individu memiliki kehendak bebas untuk menyembah Tuhannya masing-masing dengan cara yang beragam.
            Hidup di dalam Tuhan bukanlah menjadi jaminan untuk hidup tanpa masalah. Rabia (dalam saras, 2010) mengatakan bahwa kedekatan dengan Tuhan adalah suatu kesengsaraan. Di sini beliau mengatakan bahwa sudah menjadi sebuah konsekuensi dalam mencintai Tuhan untuk menerima kesengsaraan yang Ia ijinkan terjadi. Dalam perjalanan kehidupan tentu tidak mudah untuk senantiasa percya bahwa Tuhan itu ada. Selalu ada alasan untuk marah, benci, terluka dan kecewa bila hanya melihat dari kesengsaraan yang Ia berikan. Akan tetapi alangkah egoisnya saya yang tertawa bahagia bila kebahagian dating dan menganggap hal itu dating dengan sendirinya. Mungkin bisa dikatakan ada kemiripan antara saya dan Ibnu Rabia dalam melihat Tuhan sebagai sosok yang nyata melalui hal-hal yang Ia lakukan dalam hidup saya. Saya tidak pernah menyesal mengenal Tuhan melalui tata cara ibadah yang saya yakini, karena dari situlah saya mengenal siapa Tuhan dalam kehidupan saya.
            Dewasa ini beberapa antropolog memiliki persepsi yang menurut saya melenceng jauh dari kepercayaan. Salah satunya teori yang diungkapkan oleh Emile Durkheim mengenai agama hanyalah sebuah kesepakatan kelompok dimana diturunkan dari nenek moyang untuk menjaga kaharmonisan dan keselarasan dalam komunitas. Contoh lain adalah Sigmun Freud seorang dokter kejiwaan yang menyimpulkan agama sebagai suatu cara manusia untuk mendapatkan pemenuhan harapan yang menentramkan jiwanya. Masih banyak lagi antropolog yang notabene “membenci” agama dan berusaha mengungkap makna yang terkandung dalam agama. Menurut hemat saya orang – orang seperti ini perwakilan dari orang-orang yang mengalami kekecewaan di dalam Tuhan, mereka memilih untuk menjauh bahkan memisahkan diri disaat kesengsaraan diizinkan terjadi dalam kehidupan mereka.
                        Mengenal dan percaya Tuhan adalah sebuah pilihan bahkan kesediaan untuk menyembah Dia adalah sebuah komitmen dan bukan hanya rasa cinta mula-mula semata. Komitmen tidak akan mudah tersapu oleh intrik-intrik dunia, tidak akan mudah kecewa di saat tiada harapan. Komitmen adalah sebuah kesediaan untuk terus melihat jauh kedepan dengan harapan yang besar. Komitmen dalam menyembah Tuhan adalah wujud iman terbesar bagi saya. Bagi saya bukan seberapa banyak kebaikan yang sudah engkau lakukan, namun yang terpenting adalah seberapa besar engkau mengucapsyukur dan menerima badai yang Ia izinkan terjadi dalam hidup manusia. Kecewa itu penting karena kita bukanlah mahluk sempurna, namun bukan kekecewan yang seharusnya ditonjolkan sehingga menagkis segala ke-imanan kita. Kekecewaan terhadap manusia bahkan dunia seharusnya menjadi sebuah dorongan kuat untuk senantiasa melihat Tuhan sebagi sosok yang sempurna, yang tahu maksud dan tujuan hidup manusia di dalam dunia ini.
Resources :
Dewi, Saras. 2011. Kesengsaraan Demi Tuhan
image resource : www.google.com

Technology to teach listening and speaking

Thursday, 20 October 2011

by : Meilani RL


            Today technology becoming a part of learning process in order to make it interesting and easy to absorb by the students. Now teaching listening, speaking, writing and reading are not a scary things anymore like ten years ago, we can integrated them into one programme for example voice thread. But now we are going to talk about listening and speaking only, as we know that they usually related to the student’s life and for me it is a little bit difficult rather than writing or reading.
            In learning English we have some approaches that will help us to receive the materials, it means some method that success develop student’s listening skill. According to Kreshen hypothesis he said that listening has two approaches, they are natural approach and total physical response which focuses on comprehensible input and optimum affective state of the learner. Comprehensible here means students understand what they learn by the technology that provides them the picture, sound, description about the idea of listening. Not only have that with computer students easily repeated the materials until they really got it.
            The second approaches is optimum affective which has a lot of impact in student’s environment in learning second language, the teachers have to make a good situation where the students relax and comfort to learn. Based on Kreshen theory we know that the more students feel stress they will not get anything, so in here as a new generation of teacher our duty is make a new learning process involves the technology also the pedagogical. Even technology willincrease very fastas long as we live, we still need a teacher to guide it to make sure that students walk in the right track. I am proud to be a teacher with or without technology because no matter what, the great teacher is somebody who can teach her/his students in their own way in every condition.
images source : progresslistening.com
                        indigosoundworks.com

Micro Teaching

Friday, 14 October 2011

By meilani rl

            For this session I had learned about micro teaching, all of my friends had showed their lesson plan and the way they will teach their students. It was very interesting and made me realized that a teacher has to be creative and take a lot of responsibility in making lesson plan. The success or not learning objectivities depends on the success teacher made and did their lesson plan. From last session I started think that what should I do when I have to make lesson plan what method that will support my learning process. In the micro teaching all of the groups combine two or three methods to deliver the materials for example direct method and lecturing discussion or guided discover and group interaction.
            I was very happy when I knew I will teach senior high school but it is like nightmare for now. But it is a challenge for me to proof that I deserve to be a new generation of teacher, it just a little process on my way to the bright future. I feel that last session was prepared us for enter teacher’s assistant next week, I hope I will use all of things that I found in the class so it will be meaningful for my students. 

Learning with Mall

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

         by : Meilani Ristiana Limbong

      Teaching learning in the new era of technology required us to combine all of them into a system that support us in collaborative learning. In this session I was taught about mobile learning how these technologies provide some applications which makes learning easier. According to Kukulska and Shield (2008) mobile learning is undergoing rapid evolution, it means that the mobile learning is always develop by the creator in order to design a system to fulfil learner’s need. They are some mobile learning that currently used such as mobile phones, PDA, IPod, Mp3 player. Many people said that those technology has many advantages one of them are portable but in the other hand we also know that technology also has many disadvantages for example make people individualistic, need a lot of cost to provide it and etc.
            As a teacher we realized that we need that kind of technology but the most important thing is the content that we taught to them, how well we organized class and make them reach the learning objectivity. It means that our pedagogy and the technology must be balance and support each other. As a teacher you cannot always reliant to the technology, how about the teacher in the past or teacher in the isolated place, are they stop teaching because there are no technology provide them? No. you are the teacher it means you and your students are the centre of the learning process. But we lived in the world that always progress by the day so we have to increase our capability too. As we know with some of the technology we can combine some of the collaborative learning like speaking and listening, writing and multimedia or maybe with other major such us physic, biology and economic.
            The most important thing in this session was I have to be a multi teacher, I mean the capability to mix between those kind of technology and the pedagogy approach.


Images sources :
http://www.bzst.com/2011/08/active-learning-going-mobile-in-india.html
http://stephaniemareeburgess.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

Models of teaching

Thursday, 6 October 2011

            At the fourth meeting I was taught about models of teaching that divided into four items they are direct method, guided discovery, lecturing discussion and group instruction. It was an interesting study to know what the effective way to teach my students is. Actually this lesson has same goals with another course that I had taken in language teaching methodology where I was taught about method of teaching too but they has different name. In PETA I know about guided discovery in other major I had silent way, when I realized about it I was asked my lecture and she said that it was depend on the book that written by different author.
            For me this course is important to us in preparation for teaching assistant. Although I am not going to teach now but it will help me to analyze my students what is the best method, should I use one of them or maybe combine them. I hope the more I learn about it the more I will apply it well, but for me now I prefer to guided discovery among all I was interested to the method because it contains some activity that need movement, games, discussion and team work. Consider I am a kinesthetic I really love teach my students in an active way.
That’s all for this time and keep fighting to be a best teacher.   
                           http://teachingmethods.org/teaching-methods-for-starters/

Digital Native and Digital Media

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

By : Meilani Rl
            “Facebook, YouTube, Webquest, Skype…. Are there support my teaching process?”

            At the third and fourth meeting I was taught about digital native and media, it was interesting that we talked about how some social network can help me as a teacher in learning process. I had some point that I never realized before through some my friend’s presentation I know that we can use it, yeah.. We can use Skype for distant learning, or even we can use Facebook to make some fun activity.
            As a teacher I hope that I can use the entire social network to grab my student’s interest, but in the other hand it has many disadvantages for example the link that is misuse. We cannot avoid the fact that now students have right to access everything in the computer even the forbidden things. So my duty now is how to make some creative lesson by the technology even make them aware to using it appropriately. Actually the students is not too hard to control like we think, as a teacher we are not supposed to control them all the time what we can do is make them think to the reality, what is the best for them, why some links are inappropriate to them and what kind of activities they allow to use. in brief explanation we have to make our students who they are and what are things that they will face in real world to help them decide the right decision.
            As people who live in the digital era, it can be a benefit or even some dangerous things for us, but whatever it is the most important thing is our mind set. We learn about life day by day and we have right to choice, so whatever it can be it depends on how we see a life. Even this is a digital era we still a human who has to make our own life goes properly.   
     
    images sources from www.gandaraall.blogspot.com 

My name is Mei

Monday, 3 October 2011

How long are your names? How many words it was taken? Did you bring your daddy’s name or is that Chinese name?”

            My name is Grace Meilani Ristiana Limbong, it is a long name though there are many long names is the world. I was born in Serpong, Jakarta in 1990 when the most favourite film “unyil” booming in that time. One part of my name was taken from the girl’s character whose name was Meilan, she was a talkative Chinese girl which live with her Grandpa. My mother loved that film very much and finally she gave me that name as symbol of the month and her favourite film.
            My second names are Ristiana based on my mother explanation it was a sweetener for me, she hopes that I will always be her sweet girl in every part on this life. For the last name it is a parent’s name from my father, he was born in batak’s tradition so he have to give his name on me, so my last name was showed that I had Batak’s culture. Actually I have a Baptist name and it has a long story why I had that name. I was on 17 years old when I got some trouble in my life, accidentally I realized that there were some cancer in my body and it made me so depressed. I thought that there no time anymore for me, but my mother and my friends always support me to face it. One year I was facing the big giant in my life and I came as a winner that’s way the priest gave me a name “Grace” because my life is only because  God’s grace.
            For me my name is describe me as a real person in this life, I always believe that we will be what we faith for. So I believe that my name are precious as me in my mother’s life, even if I have a chance to replace it I will not ever change my name. I love my names very much even tough many people misunderstanding with my name, they guess me a Chinese girl "mei-mei" or maybe they think that my names is too heavy for me. I love my name and I always use it whenever I will go around the world, I believe that someday I will be a great people and it will be my pride to show people what is my name.