Abstract:

The 21st Century and the Fourth Industry Revolution (4IR) bring with them new challenges to all aspects of our life, including how we do education and learning, and language learning in particular. In conjunction of this situation, most of Indonesian schools are now in a critical dilemma of the current practice of forbidding students to bring mobile devices to the classroom and expecting to optimize their uses for the students learning. However, the fear is far bigger than the courage to take risks of taking initiatives to solve the dilemma. As a response to this situation, the writer introduced to the teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) in the schools, SMELT I 4.0 DE (Synergetic Multilayered English Language Teaching in Industry 4.0 and Disruptive Era), in which ICTC, the focus of this paper, is one of its layers. This paper is presenting some of the results of an initial stage of a longitudinal study of the model, starting January 2018. The data for this paper’s purpose were collected through observations, interviews, assessments, and document analysis, and it was found that ICTC helped develop students’ learning motivation, engagement, and achievement as well as their character development. Based on the findings, some recommendations are presented at the end of the paper.

Keywords:

Fourth Industry Revolution, ICT Cultivation, SMELT I 4.0 DE, and ICTC.