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1. Description of Our Team
We are students in SMAN 10 Malang-Sampoerna Academy who concern to Arts and Culture of Indonesia. Naasa is 17 years old. He comes from Ponorogo, so he contributed to the exploration of Ponorogo culture. Last year, he went to New Zealand for cultural exchange. In our team, he acts as graphic designer or everything related to technology. He is also traditional music enthusiasts, so we know a lot about traditional music from him. Fitriyanty is 16 years old. She comes from Tenggarong. She acts as the leader for this project. She contributed to the traditional dances for this project, because she loves dancing. Besides, she has a talent to introduce our culture because she often becomes a guide for foreign guests in cultural recognition. Athirah is 17 years old. She comes from Surabaya. In the end of this year, she’ll go to USA for cultural exchange. She has a lot of knowledge about Indonesian culture. Athirah likes to bring camera everywhere, so she act as a photographer for documenting cultural event. Yusnita is 17 years old. She comes from Malang. Last year, she joined international event for writers and readers festival which also discuss about traditional literature of Indonesia. She often writes articles and fiction especially about culture, so she writes most of the content in our website. One of our coaches is Ms. Novika. She also loves dancing and likes to tell us about the legend of Indonesian region. She advice us how to obtain the information and build a good website, cause she likes to write in her own blog. Ms. Rizqi is also our coach who has ever visited several foreign countries for introducing Indonesian culture. She is an English teacher, so she teaches us how to express our idea and make a good writing in English.
2. Summary of Our Project
The title of our project is “Bhineka Tunggal Ika¦ Unity in Diversity”. Bhineka Tunggal Ika is Indonesia’s motto means Unity in Diversity. Indonesia as an archipelago country has thousand of different tribes that we want to promote it to the world. We hope as we learn more about each other through art, music, dance, and philosophy we can transcend boundaries of nationality, race, and beliefs. While sharing ideas and culture, we believe it contributes to International understanding and mutual respect that will build better relationship in the world. Besides, together with all component of our school and all other interested people, we organized “English and Leadership Camp” which one of the activity are dialogue, intercultural exchange and networking about “The Different of West and Indonesia”. To strengthen understanding about our topic, we also made an event called “International Night”. Also, we are trying to preserve Indonesia culture so it will not be faded slowly as a side effect of globalization by having culture as our “Learning to Live” program to make it familiar with youth and also community service that we did continuously every Saturday to preserve our diverse art and culture heritage. Exchanges in the field of culture can play an important role in enabling people to overcome mistrust and prejudice and build peace. The power and importance of culture and the arts in fostering mutual understanding among peoples and societies lead us to this step. The premise is simple: That artistic expression has the power to open people's hearts to one another and make evident of our shared humanity.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:4-6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:2-3
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
When the first time I heard the students decided to join the competition, I was overwhelmed. Not only because I like their ideas on working on something related to culture, but also their passion to make Indonesia widely known all around the world for its culture, not else. First thing first after deciding the topic, they become confused on how to present it. After several times tried, finally they finalized their ideas and concept. I felt relieved that they were able to do it independently and came to me with their concept of content and web. Mostly, the problems were about time management. Everyone in the team has their own activities after school, so putting everyone into a meeting was very difficult. However, we managed it quite well by having continuous communication, either texting or sending email. The whole process has been very fun and educating. The students learn a lot about synergize their energy and ideas, think win-win and listen to others. They will keep on doing the best thing, I believe, as it is their nature calling. To be a future leaders who preserve their culture.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
We make this website to demonstrate Indonesia’s commitment in advancing the social culture cooperation and International affairs of various countries in the world. We also have an objective to encourage better understanding amongst people around the world about diverse art and cultural heritage. Finally, the website aims to cultivate a cultural of cooperation, emerging from indirect contact and sharing of cultures amongst people in the world, leading to thriving diplomatic relations in the region and worldwide. As students and teachers, by joining in Doors to Diplomacy we learn that diversity creates new colour for our life. Working together for several months has made us understand each other very well. We learned how to react on different ideas or comment. We learned how to synergize our energy and thoughts. We listened very well, we learned cooperatively and collaboratively. Those have made us better person. We become more mature and more effective. Thanks to the project.
6. How did your activities and research for this Doors to Diplomacy Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Bhinneka Tunggal Ika or Unity in Diversity is the title of our project. The Unity that we hope is not only for different region in Indonesia, but also for different country so it becomes our international relations. We would like to introduce our culture to make a better relationship or lead us to Doors to Diplomacy. For doing this project, we have to understand our culture deeply, explore it, and make others to do something like us. The activities that we do for this project support our school program and curriculum called Community Service. For doing this project, automatically we do our school program that wants us to interact with communities by doing valuable activities without any fees. We go to kindergarten or elementary school, then teach the students about Indonesian culture and how to explore it simply. We also go to cultural center such as Indonesian Ceramic Industry, traditional mask business then ask them how to introduce Indonesian culture through their business, so we learned a new skill from that activity. It supports the school curriculum in Business Studies subject and our school program called YEP (Youth Entrepreneurship Program). For collecting photos and videos, we went to some places and saw arts exhibition or another cultural event, so we learned the other region’s culture. Not only that. We got our photo directly through activities that held by school related with preserving culture and cultural understanding. Using internet somehow gives more advantages in teaching and learning process. We connect to the world easily and learn what we can’t learn merely from class or experience. It becomes very effective once the students find out on how to use internet effectively for improving themselves. School has provided a good internet connection to be used, thus the world seems so small when we are connected. It makes everything easier not only for teachers but also students.
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