ESSAY COMPETITION

OLEH :
JONNI HENDIKA HARIANJA
2193321029
PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS 2019 A
 The Use of ICT in Home Education : Is It Effective?

The world nowadays is facing a serious problem, Coronavirus Disease ( Covid-

19) which has affected all countries in the world. It gives a serious impact to human and
their lives especially the education aspect. It is even getting worse since the first time that
this virus was infected the people in Wuhan, China, In December 2019 and in February
2020, Mr. Joko Widodo, the President of the Republic of Indonesia has officially
announced that this virus has already infected Indonesia. Therefore, this situation make a
huge change in the educational system because the regulation that all countries have
applied which is social distancing in order to prevent the spread of this pandemic, as a
result according to UNESCO, there are more than 300 millions students in the world
must face this situation. For instance, the impact of this pandemic makes the learning
procces in school or college especially in Indonesia is now turned to home education or
study from home as the government has directed and it causes so many perspectives from
people. Even though this is a difficult situation we should know that this is the most
effective way to continue this educational process even though there are some strengths
and weaknesses from this system.
The benefits or strengths of this home education system gives us the opportunity
to study more practical, it takes less time, so we can use our time for other work, lower
cost, and also helping the students learn independently. This benefits can give a student
time to study whilst help the world to stop the coronavirus disease.
Firstly, the home education gives the students the opportunity to learn more
practically. Since the teacher and lecturers only teach from some digital learning
platforms such as Google Classroom, Zoom, Google Meet, Ruang guru, Quipper, the
online website of the university, even Whatsapp and other social media platform is used
to learn. The use of this technology eases the students and teacher to keep connecting to
students in this pandemic situation. The students also don’t need to submit their paper
manually, they can send it digitally to website so this is very practical.
Secondly, the benefit that the lecturers/ teachers and students get from this system
is the time they use in the teaching-learning process. In the face-to-face system, we take
so much time even seven to eight hours for students per day in school, and for university
students, they will take almost the same as the high school students, probably two to six
hours per day. Not only do they spend their time to campus, they also take time to go to
campus when they learn normally, it causes so many things for example students are late
because of the traffic congestion. In home education, students only need to prepare their
smartphone without taking so much time in preparing themselves to study. They also can
study as comfortable as possible, from bed, from kitchen as they feel comfortable. These
things it benefist students.
Thirdly, the benefit is the cost. Learning by using ICT supports the educational
system because we need a lower cost compared to the normal activity. Nowadays almost
even we can say all students already have smartphones where they can access internet,
website, or applications to support their learning process. They only need an internet data
or phone credit to support it or even some people are using wi-fi in their houses. If we
can calculate and compare to the face-to-face methods because in that system, they also
need internet data, they also need money for paying taxi/public transportation fare. If they
have many classes, thay have to stay in campus, and they will spend much money to buy
food for lunch,for instance. Using this methods also will help them to save their money.
The regulation of using ICT is implemented by all schools or universities in this
world, in the other hand, although there are a lot of strengths of this regulation, somehow
there are some weaknesses we can see from this online learning, such as: students feel
bored, there is limit in the process because not all applications or media are applicable,
less interaction between teacher/lectures with students, students with students, or
lectures/teachers with lectures/teachers. This becomes the challenge in online learing and
teaching.
To begin with, this online learning somehow make the students feel bored
because it happens all the time with the same way, repeateadly, they don’t feel free to
express themselves. This limitation sometimes make the students feel lazy to attend the
class, or they just attend without fully participating the learning process. It affected their
learning acquisition at the end but it happens to everybody.
To add, this kind of system also has limit in the realization because not all the
applications, or media and digital platforms are applicable for all the students even the
teachers/lectures as well. Sometimes the elder teachers do not understand how to use the
application while we know nowadays everything has been computerized. We can also
find some bad situation, for example, bad internet connection that will hamper the
process. It is commonly happened in this system.
Next is the social interactions between teachers/lectures and students, students
with students, or lectures/teachers with lectures/teachers. In the face-to-face system, we
can interact to people easily, asking them something, the lecturers can teach clearly,
giving a task, and easily set the learning methods. After this situation, everything has
changed. The students fell so difficult to interact with someone, or their lectures/teachers.
They find it hard to make a group discussion, the teacher will reset the task because the
students have limitation in doing their task because this social distancing. It often
happens. This less interaction can harm us because we are literally social beings.
The world nowadays is facing a serious challenge because of this pandemic. It
gives a serious impact to human and their lives especially the education aspect. We can
see some strengths and weaknesses of online learning. In summation this situation really
forces us to do this methods to keep continuing the learning process. Is it effective? Yes,
it is the most effective way we use to keep learning, and stopping the spread of Covid-19.