Como Secondary College virtual school visit
AEF's Indonesian speaker, Bonnie Hermawan, recently spoke to Como Secondary College's Year 10 students currently completing the Certificate II in Applied Language (Indonesian) using Google Hangouts on an AEF virtual school visit.
It was great for the students to hear from someone new and [Bonnie] reinforced a lot of what we've been learning about in our "karir keren" (cool careers) topic of study.
– Penelope Coutas, Indonesian teacher, Como Secondary College
After the initial introductions (in Indonesian of course!), Bonnie prompted students to reflect on what they would like to do in the future and whether they feel their Indonesian could help in their career. Students responded mostly in Indonesian, using the vocabulary they had learnt in class. Among the group, there was a future engineer (insinyur), policeman (polisi), and teacher (guru).
Bonnie then shared with students how she had engaged with Indonesia starting with her ACICIS experience in Yogyakarta studying at Universitas Gadjah Mada and now through her work with Asia Education Foundation, all in Bahasa Indonesia. To test their listening skills, she asked students what they understood from her amazing stories about food, music and life in Indonesia.
'Students are expected to demonstrate both "social language" and "workplace language" as part of their Certificate II course. This interaction provided them with more information about workplaces/career opportunities and also the opportunity to practice "workplace language" before, during, and after the web conference', explained Penny.
Following the visit, students wrote thank you emails to Bonnie asking her questions about things she had mentioned, which enabled them to use their Indonesian writing skills in a professional context.
A number of students took part in a school tour to Indonesia last year during which they visited their sister school, Sekolah Alam Insan Mulia Surabaya (SAIMS). Teachers and students from SAIMS also just visited Como Secondary College.