CLASSROOM INDONESIA:
INTRODUCTION

Ravana (Ramayana story cloth)

This website uses three frames to organize and present information about Indonesia for school teachers. The main menu, containing broad categories on Indonesia such as culture, history, and geography, is located in the left frame on your monitor. This menu does not change. However, if you click on a category in the main menu it will either download a sub-menu in the frame on the right side of the screen, or download information directly onto your center frame. For example, if you click on the category 'People' you will see information downloaded in the center frame. But if you click on 'Culture' you will see a menu in the right frame consisting of sub-categories like Architecture, Wayang, and Music. You will need to click on the items in this sub-menu to obtain further information on them. This information will then appear in the center frame. Items in the main menu which have a star () next to them indicate topics which might be of special interest to young children as well.

Acknowledgements

The Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, as recipient of US Department of Education Title Vl funds, is an area studies National Resource Center. Because of this, the SEAP strives to present outreach services to a wide range of audiences that include the general public, schools, businesses, and the media throughout the calendar and academic year. Within this context, teacher training programs are a high priority and "Classroom Indonesia" reflects SEAP's effort to reach a greater number of individuals in the U.S. and abroad. Outreach develops and implements a number of presentation-format programs for educators each year. These programs examine a broad range of contemporary issues and themes such as migration, democratization, globalization, gender and emerging economies which characterize the current state of affairs throughout insular and island SE Asia. In conjunction with these efforts, we loan local and regional K-12 educators a number of multipurpose study kits to use in their classrooms. These boxed kits include a variety of material culture and household objects, audio-visual materials, books, maps, games, and a teacher resource manual that contains background information on the country and various lessons. These materials, many of which are authored by SEAP faculty and graduate students, are used in teacher training sessions and in the classroom as instructional aids to be used as part of the social studies curriculum. With the understanding that these materials can only travel a finite number of miles from the university, we have created this website teaching resource as an extension of our efforts.

Classroom Indonesia is a work in progress. We expect to add additional materials and images to enhance this learning resource.

The Program recognizes the efforts of SEAP alumnus Siddharth Chandra (C.U. Ph.D. in economics, 1997) and Madhur Chandra who authored and designed both study kit and website resources in the summer of 1997. Their knowledge, expertise, enthusiasm, and steadfast timing were integral to the success of this project. Information about wayang was contributed by Ph.D. in the history of art, Jan Mrazek. Likewise, we benefitted from the guidance of two Ithaca educators, Roberta Wallitt and Duane Diviney, who suggested ways to structure the delivery of the materials and oversee their readability and user friendliness, and also contributed materials. Outreach would like to extend its thanks to the SEAP faculty for their support of Outreach especially, Dr. Martin Hatch, who edited this project; SEAP Director and Associate Director John Wolff and Thak Chaloemtiarana, and Associate Professor Keith Taylor, who encouraged and supported this effort; George Kahin and Ben Anderson for use of their collection of textiles and cultural objects; and Marie Baldwin, SEAP Outreach's work-study student, who has helped greatly in the final stage of editing to bring this information on-line.

Penny Dietrich
Coordinator of Outreach

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