January 1996 — Features

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Use of Computers at High Schools in Turkey

Dr. Omer A. Yedekcioglu, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey

In the CES project, 53 schools located in different regions of Turkey are to use specially equipped facilities for teaching and learning. It is also expected that a computer-mediated communication network linking these schools will provide a technological and pedagogical edge.

Initial aims of Department of Information Technology in Education (DITE), which is running the CES Project, relate to evaluation, maintenance, curriculum and training. The ultimate goal is increased interaction among schools through services like e-mail and computer conferencing, plus access to online databases and electronic bulletin boards. These aims are summarised:[6]

Evaluation and Maintenance Goals and Functions:

  • Exchange e-mail about problems and solutions found during implementation. Send formal evaluation forms to teachers and administrators to complete and return.
  • Monitor CES implementation via e-mail questionnaires and online meetings.
  • Maintain a help-desk by e-mail to help schools solve technical problems.

Curriculum Goals and Functions:

  • Cooperative project work among national schools and schools abroad.
  • Teacher and student access to multimedia resources.
  • Establish student news and information bulletin boards.

Training Goals and Functions:

  • Teacher training via distance learning.
  • Provide links among educators at all levels for professional development.
  • Distribute news and information from DITE in the form of a bulletin.

To achieve these goals, the 53 CES schools are being equipped with necessary hardware and software. The PCs in a CES laboratory at each school are locally networked (LAN) as interconnected with the others by a wide area network (WAN), which also provides access to Internet. Such a network should provide the basis for collaborative learning and research, for world-wide communication to enrich the curriculum and supply online help for teachers, for data collection and numerous other opportunities.

Current Situation

Today it is estimated that just over 800 high schools (Table 1) have computer labs, representing only about 15% of the total number of schools. Over 5,000 teachers have taken inservice training from universities. There are 1,000 trained teacher trainers and 100,000 computer-literate teachers, although the latter is hard to verify.[7]