Project Project Pop. For Teachers of Indonesian

What is Project Project Pop? Tamara and I have been working on PPP for over a year now.  First of all, you need to know who Project Pop are before you can understand Project Project Pop.  Potong cerita, Project Pop is an Indonesian comedy band. If you want the full history, read their website or wait till Project Project Pop comes out. Secondly, you need to know that Tamara and I are highschool Indonesian teachers who are bored silly with boring textbooks (I'll probably get sued if I put hyperlinks to what not to use here, won't I? I do like and reccommend the Bagus Sekali  series, published by Heinemann) and we find we get a lot more job satisfaction when our learners are actually interested in what we're trying to teach them.  :)  So one thing we do is use popular music to teach Indonesian language and culture. Thirdly, we have lives outside of school.  Or we try to have lives, and we assume that other teachers would like to have lives too, and not spend all their time developing great resources.  So we jumped on the idea of publishing a multimedia teaching resource based on the album PopOK by Project Pop.  With the help of the inestimable Fairy Mahdzan, we wrote to Bapak Handri, explaining our motivation "Kami merasa penerbitan bahan pengajaran ini dapat memperluas jumlah fans PP di Australia, dan yang lebih penting lagi, dapat meningkatkan pengertian orang Australia tentang Indonesia melalui lagu sepertinya lagu �Dangdut is the Music of My Country�.  Seterusnya, kami berharap juga bahwa penerbitan bahan pengajaran ini dapat mempromosikan citra Indonesia yang lebih positif dan lebih ringan (light-hearted) daripada yang diumumkan lewat media massa di Australia". And goodness knows, we need that post-Schappelle, post-Bali Bombing and Post-Timor, don't we boys and girls?  After an initial positive email response from Pak Handri back in February, ("saya sangat sangat sangat tertarik dengan apa yanglaura jelaskan.. dan saya yakin project pop yang lain juga akan setertarik saya..") a frustrated attempt to meet up "somewhere in Java" in April, we're still trying to get in contact again. Jam karet, ya?  To be fair, the band have been extremely busy releasing their latest fabulous album, Pop Circus  (or just Google it).  But it would be nice to know if we will actually be able to publish it...  Agustus - yay, just had an email from Mas Odie... ada kemajuan sedikit... :)

So did you actually say what Project Project Pop was? Ok, so I got carried away... Project Project Pop is (or is hopefully going to be if we ever manage to get permission from the Band) a 2 CD set - 1 Audio CD of the PopOK album, and 1 CDROM.  The CDROM will have for each song in MS Office file form (so you can adapt as you wish): Transcription and translation (buat para guru yang bahasa Indonesianya belum sempurna) Cultural notes and background (buat yang belum sempat tinggal di Indonesia, dan yang sudah lama di sana sehingga enggak sadar apa yang 'aneh' menurut orang Australi) Multi-level tasks suitable for Years 7-12  - see example Various learning activities - worksheets, puzzles, listening exercises, games... Notes on linguistic features, bahasa prokem, etc. There will be some general reading materials, hopefully some IT tasks (like my LOTE and Office presentations from MLTAWA and ASILE), some specific  'how to' s, and other ideas on using music to teach language. I've already put some Hot Potatoes online... I would love to hear any feedback regarding this so just click below!

PS: Tamara's also done some ground-breaking work on how to use music in the LOTE classroom. We're kind enough to give you her first draft free of charge here: Step 1: blow dust off CD Player Step 2: Look for button which says P.L.A.Y. Press using any finger you like. You will hear music coming from the box (CD player). Don't worry. This is quite normal.  But seriously, we're really hoping this will be something useful, dynamic and interesting. If you'd like to be kept in touch, hit the guest book (link above). Katrina Hayes has done some fabulous cartoons for our "Ikuti Gaya Kami" worksheet... trims ya kak katrin!

Links Fairy's write up of "Dangdut is the Music of My Country" video clip:  http://fairy.mahdzan.com/story/198.asp   I also found musica-studios' website useful for information. http://www.musica-studios.co.id