Private School Teachers’ Views on Using Tablets in Education

Abstract

In this study, views of the 257 teachers, working at the Bahçeşehir Colleges located in Ankara, Kocaeli, Kayseri, Adana, Tokat, İzmir, Burhaniye and Edirne, about the use of tablet computers in education are tried to be identified. In the study, designed as a general survey model, data were collected with a questionnaire form composed of open-ended questions. At the questionnaire form, open ended questions were used to discover which applications were used by the teachers, their educational expectations from those applications, and if necessary training and required conditions about the educational activities on tablet computers are provided, whether they want to develop their own applications and/or course content on tablet computers or not. At the end of the study it was found that; the most popular applications used by the teachers on tablet computers were Keynote and iMovie, least popular was Human Organs, highly ranked expectations from the educational applications used were gaining students’ attention and active participation to the lesson, and low ranked were querying of students what they learned and discovery learning. Another result gained from the study was that the most demanded activity of teachers on tablet computers was writing letters, syllables and words, and least demanded was physical activities. Furthermore, the results of the study also showed that quizzes were the mostly intended activity on the tablet computers by teachers and followed by crosswords. In the study, another result was that most of the teachers requested proper training for themselves, however, only very few of them did not request for that.