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"FATIH PROJECT Turkey has initiated FATIH Project with the aim enabling equal opportunities in education and improving technology in our schools for the efficient usage of ICT tools in the learning-teaching processes by appealing to more sense organs in all 620.000 schools that are in the preschool education, the primary education and the secondary education through providing tablets and LCD Smart Boards.

Yazar: CHP Parti Meclis Üyesi, 22. Ve 23. Dönem Milletvekili Prof. Dr. Osman Coşkunoğlu (07.02.2012/ Cumhuriyet)

The link to the pool that has been prepared for technology based educational materials for FATİH project. In this pool, teachers and students can send several educational materials that they created or they were using in classroom environment. They aim to extend the content with contributions of people who are actively in education in Turkey. However, it is obvious that the project needs professional e-content materials. Videos, pdf's are ok but multimedia based tools are needed.

Erdem, I wonder if there is any section on the website that include resources/guidelines for teachers. E.g. how to integrate those simulations in the classrooms.

Canan, I hope it will help, thank you, Hocam, there are just materials in the pool. I downloaded 10th grade math teacher guidelines released by Ministry of Education and started to read some sections. I saw that they offer recommendations like "using a dynamic math software, students do...". However, I don't know if they will handle the learning and usage of such software in in-service trainings. I wish I could bring more information about the system but they have not answered my CV and my sample work yet,

An exemplary z book application.Looks amazing. I must confess that we are far behind in our z-books in Fatih project. 

I wanted to share a very useful video website we can use in our classrooms. Very simple, colourful and enyoyable videos are found to use with students.

Canan, my students used this in their own classrooms in the US. Great resource. Thanks for sharing.

Canan, thanks for sharing. Recently I have been roaming on EBA (eğitim bilişim ağı) web site for FATİH project, and I realized that we really need such platforms with Turkish language. Also you can have a short look at what they are doing for FATİH project. I will post the link.

Derste bahsettiğim fatih projesi ve teknoloji entegrasyonu hakkındaki haber.

"impact of technology" part made me think that using technology in education is not valuable without how to use it. The project FATİH is generally taken a big step of using technology in state schools. "What is the cost?" "Are they necessary?" "Will our teachers use it?" are most asked questions. However, "How to use it?" is rare. Here with the word "use" I don't refer to running the devices. I mean the way technology be used in accordance to the educational objectives. As Chomsky says, without knowing what to do, using educational technology effectively is difficult.

There were several points that got my attention in this video. The first one was Chomsky's sentence saying that education had a value in itself. The purpose of it was to create "better" human beings, not bigger human capital for money. At this point, he opposed to idea that all generations should be given enough knowledge about math and science in order to increase people with scientific knowledge that will lead to more money income. Rather, education should foster the ideas of being independent in thoughts, being creative, having the ability and willingness to pursue one's own interest, and learning to learn on one's own. The second one was the analogy that Chomsky used. He made an analogy between technology and a hammer. He said that with a hammer you can either construct a building or smash a school down. This is about how you use the hammer, and it is the same with technology. Thus, it is more important that for what purpose we will use the technology than simply how to use technology. The last one was about achievement tests. Chomsky said that tests do not have so much value. You can pass a test after studying hard for about 3 weeks. Nevertheless, it does not mean that you will remember even the names of the topics that was covered in the exam after 3 weeks of the exam. That's why exploration, self learning, project-based learning and formative assessment is much more important and promising compared to achievement tests.

It says that children can learn with internet without any intervention from outside -like a teacher. When the topic is not defined, children can learn what they want. But for some specific topics, they at least need the very first idea -a question, sometimes even a pre-designed system of information and instruction. Are we too much interfering to students' learning process?

Such educational frameworks support the trend of shift from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. In the past, when we need to ask something, we asked to our elders- in school, to teachers. Now, we have an additional elder, the internet. It can answer almost anything. In that sense, the impact of the technology can not be ignored. The idea of providing internet access to places that is scarce in terms of teachers is reasonable - which also supports the idea of distance education. Besides, bringing technology is easier and cheaper than bringing a teacher with resources. However, we still need teachers as -cliche but vital term- "facilitators" and regulators in self-learning process. It is necessary for constructivism as well as child-driven education or for any other self-learning methods. Someone is needed for wrapping-up the knowledge gained, for assessing the results, for remedying circumstances that obstruct the learning process, for deciding goals or organizing goals to be attained, and for secure and heuristic browsing on the internet. In that sense, I support the idea of "self organized learning environments" as Mitra offers, but also I contend that there should be teachers around these environments for facilitating. In short, we should not quit important elements of education while trying to make it better.

I believe although computers and instructional softwares are amazing to enhance the effectiveness of instruction, they are not enough. They are always limited. It is impossible to load them all possible questions of students and their responses. Moreover, none of the computers or softwares would be able to fulfill students' emotional and motivational needs. There is also the uniqueness of the students; not all of the students would enjoy a computer-based education. Lastly, as a science educator when I think for my area; it is never the same to make an experiment on computer and in a laboratory. Students learn better when they are actively engaged in an experiment and seethe results with their eyes.

Turkish educational system is becoming more and more technological and innovative

Hope to see a similar result for Fatih project.

Here I think the most important phrase is "when used properly". "Peggy Johnson, Qualcomm's president of global market development, believes that the improvement comes because students using smartphones have easier access to information at any time of day or night. They are also able to keep in contact with their classmates and even their teachers, which helps them stay on top of everything that goes on in school." When students have enough motivation to allocate more time to use these devices for such activities stated above, the finding that their learning is increased can be supported. Here again we reach the conclusion: How to use technology is important, since it is just a tool, and can well be used as a toy instead of educational material.

Is this a case of learning or transfering the existing information without assimilating or accommodating into the classroom environment via technology? I think the meaning of learning is also changing. In near future, there will be no learning like we do I guess.