Diponegoro University is trying to increase children’s interest in reading in Batang Regency through various programs, one of which is a radio tales production workshop held some time ago at the PSDKU Undip Batang Campus. This workshop is part of the community service of PSDKU Undip Batang Campus lecturers to the Omah Sinau community, Wonokerto Village, Bandar District, Batang Regency. Apart from the radio tales production workshop, several other programs, such as storytelling classes and discussions with the Omah Sinau community, have been carried out.
The leader of the Undip service team, Rintulebda A. Kaloka, revealed that efforts to increase reading interest must be done fun and improve children’s curiosity. Increasing reading interest must also involve various elements, especially from parents, children, and playmates to youth and the community in the environment.
“The production of Radio Tales invites young people in the village to be able to make children’s stories based on audio so that later they can be shared on the RT, RW, and village WhatsApp groups so that parents can listen to the stories to their children before going to sleep. The stories that are made must also comply with the prevailing norms and culture because currently, there is a lot of content that is not educational enough for children to learn on the YouTube platform,” he said.
“With content produced by the community in the village, children can be more interested in learning together in the community. Like in Batang, a community of Omah Sinau wants to invite students to learn to read and study together. We at Undip have also helped store storybooks in the library, so children are happy to know. So the interest in reading must start from the fun things. It doesn’t have to be reading that is too heavy. Then it also has to be supported by several other media such as the radio tales,” he added.
“Apart from focusing on children, we must also focus on young men and women in the village. For this reason, this workshop is expected to be a springboard for youth in the town to be more creative in creating content so that it can be shared on various social media platforms.
Omah Sinau manager, Slamet Nurchamid, said that having an activity like this triggers us to be more creative and able to adapt to technological advances so that youth in the village are not only consumers of content on social media but can also create content.
