TEMPO.CO, Yogyakarta - A number of students with special needs from State Special Schools (SLB) 2, Bantul Regency, Yogyakarta managed to win 1st place as well as Best Design winner in the 2023 Regional Cloud Computing Club Competition (C4) Special Region of Yogyakarta.

The students aged 15-16 years designed a cloud computing-based website platform titled Ruang Cahaya N2Ba (N2Ba Light Room) that displays the work of their school's photography community.

The deaf students are Aurel Lintang Rizki Ardetya, Muhammad Ghifari Saefulloh Al Aziz and Winahyu Nisa Puspitanungrum. "We made this work based on our desire to be able to continue to channel our hobby of photography," said Aurel through sign language, which was translated by his teacher in Yogyakarta on Tuesday, February 14, 2023.

The hobby of photography requires a large enough storage space. Departing from this, the students also created their own space to document their work so that it is timeless. Even though they have limitations in communicating, the students are patient in sharing assignments, arranging one by one the parts of the platform they will build, and are committed to completing it.

Aurel said that at first they did not understand what cloud computing or static websites were. They then had the opportunity to learn about this through a training entitled Laptops for Builders which was held by the DI Yogyakarta Sports Youth Education Agency (Dikpora), the Sagasitas Foundation, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Indonesia in 2022.

The training is held up to three times which contains material on web design, content development, and the basics of cloud computing. From there, they were challenged and decided to take part in a competition held by AWS Indonesia for the category of children with special needs throughout DIY.

Unexpectedly, even though they just understood the basics of cloud computing, they won the competition. "From this achievement we are interested in learning more about cloud computing, for example what if it is developed for making a trading site," said Muhammad Ghifari Saefulloh, Aurel's colleague at SLB Negeri 2 Bantul.

The supervising teacher of SLB Negeri 2 Yogyakarta, Immanudin Yudhistira, said the that students with special needs were enthusiastic about learning something new, which they could not find in the curriculum.

"From something outside the curriculum, students are interested because it can channel their talents and interests, such as about design, photography, programming," he said.

Andrew Sklar, Director of AWS Training and Certification Asia Pacific and Japan in a cloud computing training session at Madrasah Aliyah Negeri (MAN) 1 Yogyakarta City said that this cloud computing training has been held in Indonesia since 2020 or in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic hitting the world.

"The training is to help students find their interest in technology, learn skills that were previously inaccessible, and things that have never started," said Sklar, who said the training had reached more than 300,000 students in Indonesia.

PRIBADI WICAKSONO (CONTRIBUTOR)

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