THE DEFINITIONS AND PREFERENCES OF SCIENCE TEACHER CANDIDATES CONCERNING WEB 2.0 TOOLS: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH STUDY

Web 2.0 tools are becoming more popular day by day and various Web 2.0 applications are encountered in both daily life and educational environments. Since Web 2.0 tools do not require any technical knowledge in terms of either usage facilities or content development, they are preferred by both professional and novice computer users. With the help of facilities like the access to the content in any time and place; reading, regulating and changing the content with any web browser; Web 2.0 applications have taken a lodge in educational environments. The current study investigates how senior students at a science teaching department in a university define Web 2.0 tools. Phenomenological research method has been adopted and the data related to Web 2.0 tools which were obtained through the definitions of teacher candidates have been analyzed. Results indicated that while the participants defined forum, wiki, blog and social web applications easily, they had difficulty in defining the social bookmarking and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) applications.