Benefit from the virtual museum as an educational tool in social studies lessons

Museums are places that are frequently used as an educational enviroment in social studies course. They provide very important experience for students to configure the informatian, real objects and the connections they make. Despite all the benefits and being a part of the activity programme, it is quite difficult to make frequent museum visits. Virtual museums, that come up from the meeting of growing technology and changing understanding of museology, remove the risks of real museum visits. Virtual museums, that provide the opportunity to visit a museum without leaving the classroom, are used bey teacher in recent years. In this research , it is tried to be identified under which conditions the use of virtual museums are more efficent. The aim of this study is to englihten thevirtual museums' beceming an educational appliance. The social studies course in frame of the activity programme prepared by the researcher , is carried out by using virtual museum applications. The students are asked to evaluate the programme and the activities during and at the end of the programme. The practice stage of the research has been carried on, in izmir Aliağa Toki Secondary School, in the second semester of 2014-2015 educational year in the class of 8-B that consists of 19 students, 9 boys and 10 girls. During data collection, the lessons were recorded with a video camera. Also research documents have been analysed with worksheats and activity evalvation forms. At the very last part of the research , same meetings have been done with the students by the technique of half-structured meeting and these meetings have been recorded by the researcher. At the analysis of the recordings,the descriptive anaysis methot was used. At the result of there search, it has been found out that the objectives set by the activty programme prepared with the help of virtual museum applications were realized with success; the students like drawing sketches, writing poems, creating objects from the dough, writing stories, creating virtual museum and group works, they feel them selves like in a real museum during the lessons, the activities being carried an have brought dynamism to the lessons and the students them selves can create their own virtual museums. KEYWORDS Virtual Museum, Social Studies, Activity Programme.