INTERNET IN SOCIAL STUDIES COURSE WITH 5th GRADE PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' POINT OF VIEW

Abstract

The Course of Social Studies is a course which helps students gain real-life skills and which includes various concepts, principles and generalizations. However, this feature of the course causes students to have negative perspectives for the course. Therefore, it is necessary to use technological facilities that could draw students' attention to the course. One of these facilities is the Internet. For effective use of the Internet, it is important to reveal students' perspectives for the course. In this respect, the present study occurred due to the need for determining students' views about the importance of the Internet in the course of Social Studies. For this reason, the purpose of the present study was to reveal students' views about the Internet and about its use in the course of Social Studies. The study was designed in the survey model, and the research data were collected from 93 students via an open-ended questionnaire. For the analysis of the data, the descriptive analysis technique was applied. As a result of the study, it was found out that the students considered the Internet as a facilitating, entertaining and informative tool for communication and that they were aware of its good and bad sides. In the study, it was also revealed that if the Internet was not available in in-school activities, various changes would occur in the course of Social Studies; that learning sources would be insufficient; or that the course would not change. In addition, it was also found out that when the Internet was not used in out-of-school activities, the course of Social Studies would not change; that there would be changes in learning sources and that there would be changes regarding the course.