Becoming an Excellent Teacher in the Online Era

In March 2017, Tiominar, a teacher of SDN 115520 Sidodadi, Kecamatan Pangkatan, Kabupaten Labuhanbatu, North Sumatra shared teaching tips on her Facebook page. Mrs. Timi, which is her nickname, shared outside-the-classroom teaching tips that she gained from the Tanoto Foundation’s teacher quality improvement trainings.

It turned out that many responded to the tips, one of which was a teacher in Timika, Papua. Conversations were held in the social media which were then continued via the phone. The tips shared by Mrs. Timi were actually adopted by that teacher from Papua to be applied in his/her school.

This story proves that technology can be a tool to spread a teaching method to teachers throughout the archipelago.

Tanoto Foundation, a philanthropic institution in the field of education, tries to apply technology as an effort to improve the quality of education. Tanoto Foundation works together with Ruangguru, a technology-based education services and content provider, for disseminating teacher training modules across Indonesia.

The approach is through the creation of contents, which contain Tanoto Foundation’s training materials, and uploading them to Ruangguru’s applications so that they can be accessed by teachers wherever their locations are.

Technology with online network opens opportunities for teachers to share knowledge and skills in teaching. To be able to learn from each other, one of the keys is to keep improving one’s capability and competence as a teacher.

Here are three things one can do to improve one’s skills and competence as a teacher:

1. Participating in trainings to increase personal competence
Participating in teacher trainings is one of the best ways to improve one’s quality. There are quite a lot of teacher trainings available, both organized by the government as well as family philanthropic institutions such as the Tanoto Foundation.

You can search information about teacher trainings from government agencies, colleagues of the same profession, as well as from the internet. When an opportunity opens up for you, you should immediately register because the quota for participants is usually limited.

2. Sharing knowledge with fellow teachers
Each teacher will have different knowledge and experience. Share your experience and knowledge frequently with your peers. As the saying goes, knowledge divided will not diminish, instead it will only grow further.

There are many ways that can be used to share knowledge. In a modern time like this, you can share your knowledge both through physical as well as online meetings. You can share knowledge through the social media and also through the creation of a peer group in the instant messaging application. All these ways can be done easily and economically.

3. Testing one’s competence

Every time you have attended a training session, you need to know how much your capability has improved. One way to know one’s capability is by participating in teacher contests such as teaching contests, writing competitions, and competitions related to self-competence. From these contests, you can measure how much progress has been made.