Social Media in Basic Skills Train the trainers

In Turkey, to be a teacher in public schools, you have to have 180 hours ICT course certificate at the university. As a teacher you are supposed to know the computer and other units of it. As the technology has been growing very fast, teachers and their teaching methods should be renewed and equipped by these technological tools in order to motive their students to learn. Young teachers are used to using these ICT tools in their classrooms, but old generation of teachers reject to learn them since they think that when they pass through the magical gate of Virtual World, they will work so hard to keep up with the crazy growing technology and it is better to say «No» at first and keep going with traditional teaching materials and methods.

In Turkey, most of the teachers and trainers are not competent of using Social Media and Web 2 Tools for teaching, so they do not use them in the classroom efficiently. Among all the social media tools, Facebook which provides the opportunities for its members to share the videos, pictures, news, comments, everything about their lifes and thoughts is the most famous one in Turkey. With this tool, users can comment on or critize the things they do not like or appreciate and share the news which they like. In this sense facebook is a platform where the user can discover himself and make the others discover him as well.

In the World there are 500 million Facebook users and 24 million are from Turkey.(TUİK 2010) When we categorize the aims of being Online in Turkey(in urban and in rural) 1.Sending 72, ,9 2.Writing onFacebook, Twitter, Chat, MSN, Skype 64,2 65,0 60,4 3.Reading newspaper, magazine online and dowloading news 58,8 58,8 58,9 4.Getting information about the things you would like to purchase 55,7 55,7 45,6 5.Downloading music, film, video, etc 51,2 51,1 51,5 6.Getting information about health 47,3 48,6 40,8 7.Talking through telephone or vide conferance on internet 47,1 48,3 41,0 8.Listening and watching television and radio online 41,1 42,1 36,1 9.Search for information 37,1 38,1 32,1 10.Internet banking 16,8 17,8 11,3 11.Looking or applying for a job 10,2 10,5 8,9 12.Online education 6,3 6,7 4,5 (TUİK Survey on ICT 2010)

There are 18,142,000 Turkish internet users and 79.6% of this number which is 14,443,000 people are social media users. They spend their time being online for Instant messaging (MSN, Gtalk, vb..) 25.9% Social networks (Facebook, Friend Feed, Twitter, etc) 9.9% Games 6.9% s 4.6% News/information 4.1% Multimedia 2.7% Search 2.5% Newspaper 2.3% Others 41.3%, (Total internet use 100.0%)

These figures tell us that Social Media is a very important part of individuals and companies with its huge impact on them. Why Social Media? Because it is: current and fast more extensive than printed media interactive easy to use and to reach more people To use this technology effectively, and to catch up with it well, learners need to get used to it so the teachers as well. Besides private attemps of the teachers who would like to develop their ICT skills and learn more about Social Media and other tools through courses in and out of the counrty, Education Ministry provides in-service courses for the teachers every year which are generaly 3 months and contains the topics like Secure internet use, new IC technology and Web 2.0 tools, Social Media tools in teaching, etc. to make the teachers well equipped with the knowledge of new technology and make them use this technology in their teaching process with the balance of their students needs and motivations. (INTEL Teacher Mixed Programme)

Teachers are also need training about Social Media and Web 2.0 tools since the biggest project ever of the Education Ministry has been started this year. “Movement of Enhancing Opportunities and Improving Technology”, abbreviated as FATIH, is a significant educational investments of Turkey. FATIH Project proposes that “Smart Class” project is put into practice in all schools around Turkey. With this project, schools and classes will be equipped with the latest information technologies and turned into computerized education classes (Smart Class). The equipment will include smart boards in classrooms and PC tablets will be given to students. FATIH project is planned to be completed in 4 years and will cost approximately 3- 4 billion USD. So the teachers should know how to use this technology and guide the students to use it efficiently. In the beginning of this year all teachers of children or adult were given 30 hours online courses in the schools about the use of smartboards and Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. Of course it was not enogh but it was a good start for the further steps.

Thank you… -Tekkeköy İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü-