Keterampilan Hidup: Memaknai Literacy (Melek Huruf) dengan Cara yang Baru (Grace Kempster)

DOSEN PENGAMPU Dr. Ani Cahyadi, M.Pd Dr. Ahmad Juhaidi, M.Pd.I

TUGAS TERSTRUKTUR Teknologi Informasi (IT) dalam PAI

Chapter 3

Skills for Life: New Meanings and Values for Literacies (Grace Kempster)

Atau

Keterampilan Hidup: Memaknai Literacy (Melek Huruf) dengan Cara yang Baru (Grace Kempster)

 

OLEH :

Susilawati

Latifah

PASCA SARJANA INSTITUT AGAMA ISLAM NEGERI ANTASARI

PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN AGAMA ISLAM

BANJARMASIN

2015

Chapter 3

Skills for Life: New Meanings and Values for Literacies (Grace Kempster)

This chapter asserts that the challenge for the new millennium is the reinvention

of education. Unless education and its meanings blossom into learning then

frankly it will not survive. These are exciting times where the bounds of formal

education are overspilling. Whichever current sector we work in, there is a

revolution where the learner is leading and old formulas of learning by rote or

from elders are being turned upside down.

It is a disquieting experience watching young people with technology. They

use it with familiarity and without thought, without the hype or hypertension of

other age groups. They know exactly what they want and seek knowledge

whether it is text or a still or moving image. Much reference is made in America

to something called mediacy - literacy applied to all media - being able to read

the text and the image and the moving image and the ability to secure

understanding through reading the pictures as well as text in a rich and organic

way.

The power of new technologies lies in the way in which they mirror the

organic and messy nature of human learning and thought. It is likely that the

readers of this book use word processing without thought. In writing this

chapter, I did not begin at the beginning but started at the end, weaving the

threads through afterwards, cutting and pasting, dotting about like a painter or

artist - mirroring the human mind where thought evolves and develops in nonlinear

ways.

What I see when I see a child at a computer is a seamlessness between the

way their young unfettered mind works and the glorious muddle of the Internet

with its hot links, relational databases and data mining filled with dead ends,

discoveries and things not yet understood.

Some may think it audacious for a professional librarian to comment on the

future of education but I would contend that libraries have always been in the

education business. They facilitate education for all those who have aged

beyond the reach of teachers and act as the university for the under fives. They

26 Theoretical Perspectives

provide opportunities for self-directed learning in the locality. Children do not

talk much about their library use. It is unmarked by exception, part of the fabric

of their daily lives. The evidence is with us: the growth of library use by children

has increased by 20 per cent over the last 10 years, making up 28 per cent of the

library market now.

In the summer of 1999 Essex Library Service ran the annual Big Summer

Read and the number of children taking part doubled across the county. Some

30,600 children aged 2-12 read, enjoyed and talked about 120,000 books to staff

- all in a context of freedom to choose, to join in, to learn because it is fun,

interesting or inspiring.

Research found that 86 per cent of teachers found the Big Summer Read had

a tangible impact on maintaining or improving literacy levels among children.

Libraries are the place where parents and carers, alienated or lacking confidence

about approaching schools ask about reading problems and how they can help

their child to learn. Be assured that libraries are not only used by readingconfident

successful children. The atmosphere, approach and diversity of use

and provision - the anonymity - is fiercely attractive to all, crossing socioeconomic

boundaries.

When the public library service established online@leeds, teachers queried

why centres with homework librarians were needed in both schools and

libraries. The evidence of regular use by children in their communities was there

but some just found it hard to believe that so many children from so many

schools found haven in their local library. The evidence of the achievement of

the year's targets in the first three months of the project amazed the sceptics.

We all have partial views of a child's world —joining them together will create

confident and seamless environments for learning.

In 1992, the Youth Libraries group held a national conference with the title

I have chosen for this chapter Skills for Life: New Meanings and Values of

Literacy. It covered all forms of literacy: aural, computer, the content of media

education, the needs of the child with disabilities and the multicultural

dimension - in reflecting on the conclusions of that conference there are many

resonances today. The vital nature of library services to the under fives where

the seeds of literacy are sown is celebrated with the many Bookstart initiatives

across the country. Books and reading are for babies. Literacy is a means not

an end in itself and experiences at the youngest age foster the drive and desire

to acquire, practise and retain this vital skill for life. Some experts suggest 50

per cent of a child's learning potential is developed before they are five years

old.

The advent of the National Literacy Strategy and the Literacy Hour may have

inspired many worried parents. It was in the media and on their minds. Their

concern was that whatever their own life chances, their children would have a

better start in the educational stakes. Libraries have never been about books,

contrary to their physical emanations. They have always been about reading

experiences and impact. A young library reader expressed the fundamentals

Skills for Life 27

better than any librarian could when saying, 'My library's like a lighthouse - it

illuminates my mind ...'

And in that freedom to find out, be delighted and discover, meeting through

the intimate pages of a book, authors and illustrators living and long dead, we all

experience something tangible and virtual - connection and understanding

beyond the bounds of the realistic. We connect, we seek to understand and be

understood. In her novel Impossible Saints (1997), Michele Roberts describes

well this basic human need and right, a truly felt need and hunger. But this need

is not only fed by imaginative literature; readers bring inspiration, facts and a

host of assumptions to any reading experience. Books are not complete without

the reader - why else do we react so diversely and differently when sharing our

reading experiences? We leave pieces of ourselves between the book covers and

reveal ourselves, our situations and places in understanding and development.

So why is library use by the young blossoming and growing? Is it because of

failures in formal education? For some the answer must be yes. The straitjacket

of educational achievement and narrow pathways to success mean that early

disenchantment sets infringing alienation. However that is not the only answer.

For others the library is a place of freedom, finding out and reading beyond the

narrow bounds of the National Curriculum. A place and space that is unfettered

by judgements, where you make the choice to spend time, waste time, dip into

the difficult and the different, where you can extend and deepen your learning

and extend your educational success.

One uniqueness of libraries is their strength in diversity of meanings and

values. They are not confined by one function but can and do hold a cornucopia

of purpose for a diversity of people.

Another uniqueness of libraries lies in the combinations they make - people

do read fact with fiction, poems with biography and that choice in one place

makes them powerful connectors in joining up learning. We must move on from

the Books v. Technology debate - it is tedious and dated - we need to return to

the meanings and values of the reading experience whether page or screen,

image or text.

In July 1997 the Library and Information Commission published a groundbreaking

report called New Library: the People's Network. It was seminal for

many reasons, not least because it presented government with solutions to

joining up learning across the nation by looking at the content, connectivity and

competencies needed to translate the meanings and values of libraries in the

electronic age. Its vision will be realized - a public library network with

connections to the National Grid for Learning, a service operating in virtual and

actual worlds simultaneously, offering technology with the human touch. It is

the blueprint for library development and will impact on the lives and

opportunities of everyone.

Think for a moment what this means for you in your work and life - an

opportunity or a threat? Library staff are also being trained from NOF (New

Opportunities Fund) funds with the aim of everyone becoming confident and

28 Theoretical Perspectives

competent in using ICT. There will also be specialists with advanced training as

IT Managers, Net Navigators and Educators. There is a real opportunity in the

interests of the learner to merge the teaching and library professions, the

uniqueness of teachers transformed into learning facilitators and on offer to all

despite the tyranny of distance.

You may think that this is a David and Goliath situation - formal education is

vast and public libraries relatively minor - but you know what happened in that

particular story! Just because libraries and schools have existed for 150 years

does not give either the inalienable right to continue in existing shapes and

forms. The two areas need each other. Children spend so little of their lives in

school - to achieve the educational targets rigorously and clearly set by the

government, the need exists to create a complementary, not contradictory,

landscape either side of the formal learning day and to think in new ways about

learning. Children learn in schools because they have to - they learn in libraries

because they want to. The urge to know, understand and enjoy is the real

stimulus for literacy.

This chapter began with the contention that what we speak of now is a new

mediacy. That holds threats as the confines of the sequential page are blown

apart. Yet within that format the very young are to be found reading the pictures.

You cannot know about the fox in Rosie 's Walk unless you read the pictures; like

many picture books the whole experience is intermingled and deeply satisfying.

It is also liberating for many children as their critical faculties are extended in a

multimedia participative environment.

Could it be that the threat we all feel is that with the learner leading, it is

unclear where the power lies? Stephen Heppell's vision of the future is one

where the role of the teacher turned learning facilitator becomes one of tool kit

provider for the learning journey; providing a tool kit of skills for use on ipsitive

learning journeys, as well as markers of progress and development. In this there

is a real convergence of purpose. Librarians have long been concerned about

information handling skills enabling people to make their own judgements and

choices - education with a light touch; expertise in assaying information and

offering choices, all neutral, highly skilled and tempered with non-invasive

interpersonal skills - and totally on the side of the learner. New alliances must

be formed to deliver real learning, not competing but connecting and

complementing.

Teachers no longer have inalienable rights to control learning, because the

learner is in charge and will make choices. The pick and mix learning of the next

century will widen the gap between those who have daily use of books with

technology in the home and those who do not. Libraries are the solution not the

problem and unless we all work together in win-win alliances the threat is that

the learning disadvantaged will upset the applecart of prosperity for us all.

The agenda is transforming information into knowledge in the hope that this

leads to understanding, tolerance and fulfilment for all. The danger is that the

next generation will operate more effectively in the virtual rather than the real

world, cocooned as they are in bedrooms across the country and able, unlike life,

to turn it off if control is lost. Computer access and expertise is becoming a badge

of status and success; a new social class is emerging which is clearly defined by

whether one has easy access to the revolution behind closed screens or not,

where the relationship to the flashing cursor means more than the relationship

with people.

It is a bitter-sweet revolution with wonders and woes. The hope is that when

we look back at the latter half of the last century we did not miss the chance to

connect - to influence together and to make a real difference to the lives of all, to

join up thinking.

Library services across the country are fitting themselves for the future - not

just in upskilling to use ICT but to develop expertise in education and lifelong

learning, creating, if they do not already have them, children's specialists,

learning specialists, information choreographers and reader-development roles

for key staff. Being a librarian will never be the same again, with excitement,

energy and enthusiasm unleashed among many. Public libraries want to be wired

up not because it is cool or fashionable but because they know what to do with

technology and will be as effective in organizing and assaying information and

imagination in the electronic age as they are in the actual age. The role of the

library is fundamentally the same in both ages: powerful connectors for learning

and understanding in an increasingly complex and hybrid environment.

In researching for this chapter, I found that while there is much coverage of

the wiring up of other nations for the Information Age, in particular Singapore

and America, there is in fact little current research in public libraries' ICT

provision and its management for children (Denham et a/., 1997). I know that

much of the current development is happening so fast that authoritative

evaluation is not yet in place but it needs to be.

There is a blossoming of websites which are both imaginative and

participative such as the virtual world of Stories on the Web to the singularly

zany Fiction Cafe for blind teenagers which speaks your dishes of the day. In

Essex, there are CD-ROMs targeted for homework support in all 74 libraries,

with the New Library Network ensuring 10 Internet connections in small

libraries and 40 in medium to large ones, all linked to the National Grid for

Learning. Homework clubs are increasingly being successfully established in

libraries although the NOF guidelines make that process complicated. Public

libraries do not have a problem in working with local schools but they are

frustrated by the lack of forward thinking to recognize them as obvious places

for out of hours learning - open and most used at weekends and during school

holidays.

The exciting aspect is the way enabling technologies can engender respect

and acknowledgement of other literacies, especially for the oral tradition of

storytelling of no less value in an attempt to communicate than the written word.

One comment from Desmond Spiers, himself profoundly deaf, expresses the

feelings of many: 'Unless you can speak, you are not considered literate.' I love

Skills for Life 29 29

30 Theoretical Perspectives

the anonymity and egalitarianism of the Internet- no one knows you are deaf on

e-mail - for many it is truly liberating.

Finally and fundamentally, literacies have to be about power and are

entwined with one's identity, true expression. This is a momentous time; there

has never before been such potential for the liberating impact of literacies and

potency of threat for those without the threshold literacies. The focus of libraries

clearly is on the motivation to read and the stimulus to continue to practise the

skills of literacy across all media.

Inti dari chapter 3 diatas yaitu

Keterampilan Hidup: Memaknai Literacy (Melek Huruf) dengan Cara yang Baru (Grace Kempster)

Menarik melihat bagaimana anak muda berinteraksi dengan teknologi. Mereka belajar apa saja, baik teks atau gambar bergerak. Di Amerika, hal ini disebut

mediacy – melek media—kemampuan membaca teks, gambar, dan gambar bergerak dan kemampuan memahaminya dengan alami.

Kekuatan teknologi adalah ia merefleksikan sifat belajar dan berpikir manusia yang berevolusi dan berkembang secara non linier.

Pada Juli 1997, Komisi Perpustakaan dan Informasi mempublikasikan laporan yang disebut New Library: the People's Network. Laporan ini menyampaikan visi jaringan perpustakaan publik yang terhubung dengan National Grid for Learning, sebuah layanan yang beroperasi di dunia virtual maupun dunia nyata secara bersamaan, dengan menawarkan teknologi untuk dinikmati masyarakat.

Guru tidak lagi memiliki hak mengontrol pembelajaran karena pelajar lah yang kini berhak membuat pilihan dan menentukan yang terbaik bagi mereka. Pembelajaran yang mencampurkan buku teks dengan teknologi dewasa ini bisa menciptakan kesenjangan bagi siswa yang memiliki kedua fasilitas itu di rumah dengan yang tidak. Maka perpustakaan adalah solusi bagi masalah ini.

Akses terhadap komputer dan penguasaan komputer kini merupakan penanda status dan kesuksesan. Kelas sosial kini ditentukan oleh kemudahan mengakses revolusi dibalik layar, dimana saat kita menggerakkan kursor, kita semakin mudah untuk membangun hubungan dengan orang lain.

Layanan perpustakaan di seluruh negeri sekarang mempersiapkan diri untuk masa depan—tidak hanya menggunakan ICT tapi juga mengembangkan keahlian dalam pendidikan, pembelajaran seumur hidup, penciptaan, ahli anak, ahli pembelajaran, koreografi informasi, dan peran pengembangan pembaca bagi staf kunci.

Perpustakaan kini terhubung ke internet bukan karena hal ini dianggap keren dan sesuai zaman tapi karena mereka tahu harus akan lebih efektif mengatur dan menyimpan informasi dan imaginasi dalam benda elektronik.

Peran perpustakaan pada dasarnya sama, dulu maupun sekarang: ia adalah penghubung yang kuat dalam pembelajaran dan pemahaman di lingkungan yang berkembang dan kompleks.

Ada banyak website menarik yang imaginatif dan partisipatif seperti dunia virtual

Stories on the Web hingga Fiction Cafe untuk komunitas anak muda yang buta, yang membahas tentang menu makanan dalam satu hari. Dalam Essex, ada banyak CD-ROM yang bertujuan membantu pekerjaan rumah di 74 perpustakaan. Jaringan Perpustakaan Baru memiliki 10 koneksi internet di perpustakaan-perpustakaan kecil dan 40 koneksi internet di perpustakaan besar, yang semuanya tersambung ke National Grid for Learning. Klub PR (pekerjaan rumah) kini sukses didirikan di perpustakaan-perpustakaan meskipun prosesnya rumit.

Perpustakaan tak memiliki masalah dalam bekerjasama dengan sekolah lokal tapi mereka frustasi dengan publik yang tidak menganggap mereka sebagai tempat belajar tanpa batasan jam—yang selalu terbuka saat akhir pekan maupun libur sekolah.

Literacy, pada intinya adalah tentang kekuatan dan ekspresi identitas seseorang. Kini perpustakaan harus beradaptasi dengan zaman. Fokus perpustakaan sesungguhnya adalah pada motivasi membaca dan rangsangan untuk terus mempraktikkan keterampilan membaca media apapun.

INTINYA: Karena sekarang teknologi berkembang pesat, masyarakat terutama anak-anak muda sudah sangat akrab dengan teknologi, perpustakaan akhirnya beradaptasi dengan kemajuan teknologi. Jadi perpustakaan kini tidak melulu berisi rak-rak buku yang hanya bisa diakses dengan datang langsung kesana, tapi juga memiliki katalog online yang bisa diakses dari mana saja tanpa harus datang ke perpustakaan.