Abstract:

From December 2020 till February 2021, twenty-one pre-service teachers at the School of Primary Education of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki attended a series of workshops in the form of webinars in the context of an academic course named “Digital applications for primary education”. The purpose of the webinars was to train pre-service teachers in the design and development of interactive e-books about the nature of science. Initially, pre-service teachers completed a pre-test in the form of an online questionnaire. This questionnaire attempted to explore their previous experience with interactive e-books, their online habits, criteria for selecting interactive e-books and their willingness to create their own interactive e-books. After that, the first webinar started, where pre-service teachers interacted with an interactive e-book, named “The stolen ladder”, which highlights aspects of the nature of science. This interactive e-book is part of a homonymous printed book for kids, which is commercially available in Greece. At the end of the first webinar, pre-service teachers completed an evaluation questionnaire of the above interactive e-book. During the second and third webinars that followed in the form of workshops, pre-service teachers learned about and interacted with digital tools for the design and development of interactive e-books (Book Creator and E-me). Four weeks time was given to pre-service teachers to prepare their own interactive e-books about the nature of science. In the fourth webinar, pre-service teachers presented the progress of the development of their own interactive e-books. In the end, post-tests in the form of online questionnaires were distributed exploring their perceptions of the process of creating their own interactive e-books. Finally, interviews took place after the intervention concerning the overall experience of the participants in these workshops. Data analysis reveals encouraging information about the ways pre-service teachers could use interactive e-books about the nature of science.

Keywords:

Nature of science, interactive e-books, pre-service teachers.