Semarang │(October 7, 2017) Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) at Universitas Muhammadiyah Semarang (Unimus) held a national seminar on Science and Education entitled “Improving Leaning Quality through Science and Technology Information-based Lesson Study to Create Technopreneurs, taking place in the hall of Unimus on Saturday, October 7, 2017. There were four national-level speakers, including Dr. Muhammad Nur, DEA (a lecturer of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science at Undip & an expert on plasma technology), Dr. Eny Winaryati, M.Pd (dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Unimus), Dr. Margo Yuwono., M.Si. (head of the Central Statistics Agency for Central Java area) and Prof. Dr. Kuncoro Dihardjo, M.T. (a professor at UNS). The seminar was officially opened by the dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Unimus before 375 participants from 5 provinces in Indonesia, consisting of teachers, lecturers, and students. The national seminar was held to contribute towards the development of knowledge as well as the improvement of learning quality and academic atmosphere.
A number of important points have been shared by the speakers. Prof. Dr Kuncoro Dihardjo, M.T. shared a host of strategies that can be applied of a campus to foster the technopreneurial spirits within the students. Meanwhile, Dr. Muhammad Nur, DEA stated that children or students need to be introduced to science and technology science the early age. “we also need to always attempt to make sure that science will always live in the soul of every child, as well as to make use of sciences to create products.” he said that every teacher or educator also needed to teach about critical thinking in children since the early ages. “If this way is chosen, the result will be good. Every educator also needs understand that education for the recent generation or Generation Y should have creativity, freedom, etc. matching the the characteristics of today’s generation. The role of education is only to give opportunities and challenges. Don’t treat today’s children in the same was as the treatment for generations in the past or at the time when the teachers were young,” added he. Furthermore, Muhammad Nur stated that there were 7 habits to have a creative thinking, including: thinking out the box, welcoming chance of intrusions, listening to depth mind, suspending judgement, doing stepping stone analogy), tolerating ambiguity, and ideas banking.
Dr. Eny Winaryati, M.Pd., in her speech before audience that included teachers of Aisyiyah playgroups and elementary schools in Central Java province stated that in educating children, lesson study needed to be applied, while Japan has been applying it for decades so that they could create high quality graduates in terms of technology and information mastery. “Teaching through lesson study is really suitable to 21st century learning and teaching for it can adjust to the demands of the 21st century students, who are typically multitasking, having the tendency to seek for any information online, and multimedia,” Dr. Eny Winaryati added.
There was also a session of scientific publishing of research results and community services conducted by lecturers and students. The national seminar was ended with a competition of scientific article writing on teaching and a innovative-creative teaching practice competition. 65 teachers and headmasters of Aisyiyah playgroups and elementary schools in central java participated in these competitions.
Reported by the Technical Unit of Public Relations and Protocol.
