Telekom University, in cooperation with the Indonesian teacher school Dompet Dhuafa (SGI DD), organized a program to develop digital skills for teachers. This program aims to promote digital literacy in underdeveloped border and outermost regions (3T) in Indonesia.

Internet users in Indonesia continue to increase. According to the APJII Internet Survey Report, the increase in Internet users in the second quarter of 2020 reached 8.9 percent (25.5 million people) over the previous year.

In fact, Indonesia’s population growth was only 1.03 percent over the same period. In this way, the Internet penetration in Indonesia is 73.7 percent, or it reaches 196.7 million people out of Indonesia’s total population of 267 million people.

Unfortunately, Internet penetration in Indonesia is not matched by a high index of information and communication technology development.ICT development index). Indonesia ranks 114th in the world or the second lowest in the G20 after India. One of the sub-indices ICT development with the lowest score is digital literacy (BPS, 2019).

This problem causes various negative effects such as the spread of hoax massive, plagiarism, Cyber ​​bullyingto deceive. People living in 3T areas are more prone to negative impacts due to lack of access to new knowledge, lack of exposure to the functions of education, information, and positive cultural transformation. Even if the spread of digital media continues to decline in almost all corners of the country.

Providing knowledge of digital literacy to people in 3T areas is one way to overcome the negative effects of digital media. On this basis, teachers in the 3T areas play an important role as trainers to impart knowledge about digital literacy to their students who are future successors of the nation.

The problem is that these teachers do not yet have sufficient digital skills. For this reason, the Telekom University’s Community Service Team, consisting of lecturers for communication studies, has carried out a digital literacy education program for teachers in cooperation with the Indonesian teacher school Dompet Dhuafa (SGI DD).

To date, SGI DD has over 7,000 trained teachers in every corner of Indonesia. The target partners of this program are teachers supported by the SGI DD Regional Coordinator of South Sumatra.

After a four-month intensive program from August to November 2021, the effect of the digital skills of the participants has increased significantly. Based on the results of the FGD, it was found that teachers after the digital literacy teacher training program had better critical skills in viewing, selecting and sorting content in digital media.

One of the participants, Asep Irama, admitted that he did not immediately share the news he received on social media after going through the training program. “I checked first. Besides, I don’t watch either Play online as something negative. Now I can see that you can learn a lot from these games, ”he said.

It was different from RA Mustika, another participant. He was concerned about the future of the teaching profession considering that study materials are now available on the internet. But after realizing that the transfer of grades from teachers to their students cannot be replaced by digital content, he no longer worries. This shows that fear of the digital world is reduced when we understand it.

Because of the significant impact of this program, it was selected as one of the not-for-profit programs to receive funding from the Research Results Community Service Program and the Colleges’ PTS Prototype.

This support is part of the MBKM, which provides a function for the academic community to develop their skills and abilities. For this reason, this educational program continues with Digital Literacy Practice: Making Digital Learning Media Podcasts for Teachers, which will take place on December 21, 2021.

The target partners are still the same, namely the SGI DD South Sumatra teachers. The follow-up program is designed in the form of training courses for the content creation of teaching materials with podcast media. The teachers were asked to create interesting teaching materials on the subjects taught and then to share them in podcasts.

“We hope that teachers can continue this podcast program as alternative learning fun for students,” said Clara Novita Anggraini, head of the Community Service Team at Telekom University Communication Science.

Clara hopes the podcast practice can learn more about the positive functions of digital media.