How Turkish Middle School Students Use the Internet to Study Social Studies

Abstract

The Internet has become one of the most common educational tools used by teachers and students in social studies education worldwide. Although there are extensive studies on how the Internet is used by teachers as an instructional tool in social studies classes, less work has been done to explain how students themselves use and interact with Internet sources to study for social studies classes. The purpose of this research is to investigate how Turkish middle school students use the Internet to study and do their social studies homework. Fifty-seven middle school students completed an open ended questionnaire in one of Northern TurkeyÕs larger cities. The results show that this group of Turkish middle school students use the Internet extensively, both to gather information for their homework and for non-academic purposes such as playing games, using social media and downloading music and films.