The effect of pre-service teachers' blog usage on computer academic achievement

Thanks to fast technological developments, the construction and functionality of the Educational Institutions have been changed. For that reason, these institutions need to well - qualified teachers in order to educate qualified people. With the rapid development of technology, education and technology are used together to train qualified teachers. In this way, lessons and tasks are taught more permanently and clearly. In this process, the most important factor belongs to the teachers. In Turkey, there are Educational faculties to educate teachers. In this research the effect of weblog (blog) usage on success in investigated among Uludag University Faculty of Education first grade students in computer classes. Quantitative data in the research is gathered by means of pre-tests and final-tests and the qualitative data is gathered by means of semi-structured interview and observation forms. 328 teacher trainees are involved in the research sampling. The usage of the weblogs has the same amount of effect among the Physical Education teaching, psychological counselling and guidence, primary school teaching and Turkish language teaching departments. In addition, between the control and experiment groups there is significant difference about success among male candidates. But a significant difference is observed among female candidates. In experimental group, when academic success is considered, there is no sigficant difference between male and female candidates. According to the qualitative research results 3 important results are handled. First of them, the Computer courses studied in secondary school affect students attitude to computers. The other, the attitude to computers indicates difference according to gender. And finally, teacher trainees cannot use the information learnt in the Basic Information Technologies classes efficiently in their professional lives.