The effect of journals that prospective teachers of information technologies have kept in the teaching practicum courses through blog on reflective thinking levels

This study aimed to determine the effect of journals that prospective teachers of information technologies kept during the teaching practicum courses through blogs, on reflective thinking levels.Both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods were used during the research. The study group of the research consisted of fourth grade students who are taking the ?Teaching Practicum? course from Computer Education and Instructional Technologies Department in the Spring Semester, 2010- 2011 at Faculty of Education, Uludağ University. There are 20 prospective teachers for the experimental group and 20 prospective teachers for the control group. The experimental group prepares their activity reports through blog media while the control group prepared their reports by pen and paper.The data of the research is gathered by means of the blogs prospective teachers wrote down, Reflective Thinking Questionnaire adapted in Turkish by the researcher and Blog Usage Survey developed by the researcher. Descriptive statistics, independent group t-test and Mann Whitney U test were applied in the analysis of quantitative data while descriptive analysis was applied in qualitative data.As a result of the analysis there is a statistically significant difference between the post-test critical thinking scores of the experimental and the control groups in favour of experimental group. However, there is not a significant difference between the groups on the posttest habitual action, understanding and reflective thinking scores.The qualitative analysis of blogs which have shown that prospective teachers wrote down their impressions about the teachers and other prospective teachers in the schools they went, at mostly understanding level while they wrote down their own activities at mostly reflection or critical reflection level. It has been revealed out that, students from experimental group considered blogging technology as a useful platform to share knowledge with their peers and to develope their perspectives by reading different point of views.