The
Rationale Currently in Indonesian senior secondary schools (SMU) there is a
strong desire to upgrade the quality of foreign language teaching and language
learning facilities . The minister for education has acknowledged the
importance of the Internet as one means of assisting communication and the the
development of education in Indonesia. However, because the current curriculum
provides litte time and opportunity for developing functional skills and the
national examinations (EBTANAS) do not effectively assess these skills the
teachers feel that they are unable to give the learning of these skills the
high priority they deserve (the current EBTANAS is a serious de-motivator). The design for the laboratory (below) was
determined mainly by taking into consideration the many factors pertaining to
the particular room available (width, length, lighting and doorways). I personally prefer to incorporate the library
into the the language laboratory planning because students currently have very
few opportunities to utilize the library (a key educational issue). The
master console is in the centre of the room and the cables are installed above
the floor (covered by plastic tape). All student units face the front and visibility
of the teacher from the rear half of the room is almost zero, but more
importantly the use of audio-visual aids is largely impractible. The provision of space for these activities in
the language laboratory is especially important because of the class sizes in
the normal classrooms (48) where there is virtually no chance of engaging in
these activities.
Next, remove the remote power switch which is usually affixed to the front of
the master console desk by two screws (visible in the photo). Review
student entry/exit aspects, teacher and student comfort and visibility, the
number and size of the spaces between the benches for student access (students
will need to move from the centre to the outside of the student units during class
activities).
The elbows should be of the type shown at the front of the picture on the left. Sometimes
the conduit will enter further into the elbow when the glue is applied so
re-check the length and adjust before the glue dries (very quickly!). If
you do not do this the fill material can get under the conduit and lift it up
causing the conduit to be too high for the covering cement and tile layers. The
natural gentle bends in the conduit can cause problems and you may have to
place weights on the conduit to hold it down in position while you are applying
the cement and tiles.
With the Tandberg system we are using we have the flexibility to make the
student unit closest to the console position 1 or position 24 as we desire. Therefore, whether the console is on the left
of the room or the right of the room (according to our preference) we can still
maintain conventional numbering of the student units. Two are located at the edge closest to us in
the photo and one is more in the centre of the printed circuit board (more
clearly seen in the photo below). Once the joint is made and soldered and has
cooled down you can slide the heat-shrink oveer the joint and by heating it
with a match or cigarette lighter it will shrink firmly over the jointBecause
our modified laboratory has twenty four (24) student positions it is important
that the four (4) student positions (first link unit) closest to the master
console are powered from one pair of the power supply terminals and the other
twenty (20) student positions (5 link units) are powered from the other pair of
power supply terminals.