Abstract:

When it comes to technology integration in schools, the factors related to the teachers in schools are the main reasons whether it is successful or not. The efforts to support teachers about technology integration continues About this situation, Shulman (1996) points out that technology integration is the other component of teacher knowledge in his model. In this context, the design skills of a technology mediated learning environments is needed for prospective teachers to make their students gain 21st century skills. It is also needed for prospective teachers to gain experiences about how to design technology mediated learning experiences in their own learning experiences while they are in higher education. In other words, their learning experiences in higher education about teaching approaches become determinative in how to teach in their own classrooms. In this research, it is aimed to determine prospective teachers’ experiences about technology mediated learning and to determine their academic achievement level in this type of classrooms.

Prospective teachers learned behaviorist, cognitive and constructivist learning theories in a constructivist environment and they worked as a group which consists of 4 people in each team. The researcher’s roles in these activities are the facilitator and challenger. After each of the listed theories are taught with the activities, prospective teachers were expected to implement what they learnt about constructivist and behaviorist theories with a story which is created in a digital storytelling tool called toondoo.

This study was conducted with a 58 prospective teachers who took Special Teaching Methods I course. The participants are third grade students in Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT) department and this course is taken by them in fall semester of 2013-2014. 26 of prospective teachers is female (44.83 %) and 32 of them are male (55.17 %).

The data about the students’ academic achievement gathered with a multiple choice test and with an evaluation of students’ products which consists of digital stories developed in toondoo environment. These products evaluated with a digital storytelling evaluation rubric. Moreover, qualitative method is used to gather student’s experiences about toondoo system. Interviews and paper based group evaluation form is used.

According to the data gathered in this research, the average scores of students’ academic achievement is 61.40 and average of students’ products is 59.46. This illustrates that prospective students could not able to gather higher order thinking skills and this affects their achievement level. Moreover, some of the prospective students points out that they could able to learn theoretical knowledge more effectively and abiding.

Keywords:

Prospective teachers, digital storytelling, technology mediated learning environments, collaborative learning, technology integration.