EXPERIENCES OF TEACHING EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) is a core subject in pre-service teacher training. This course not only teaches students how to choose adequate educational software and how to use it in the classroom, but also teach them how to design and develop simple educational software. As these teachers will teach in Hungarian schools, and in some school subjects there are only few educational sotfs. in Hungarian, it is important that they know has to develop their own electronic lessons if they want to use CAL in their classroom. This research was carried out during CAL classes for students with Psychology and Special,Pedagogy specialization. During these classes students were asked to develop a short educational software using Microsoft PowerPoint. As they don't know any programming, I considered that PowerPoint can be used for this purpose even if the technological solutions are limited in this program. Interactivity can be assured using animations and links, but for this the developer has to be creative. Because the use of the developing software is simple, students didn't spend time with learning the program they have to use, they could more focus on the content and didactical approaches. The main purpose of this research is to analyze educational softwares made by pre-service teachers with Psychology and Special Pedagogy specialization during CAL classes. These softwares are analyzed using a criteria system developed by the researcher. Based on the research results we have formulated some conclusions which could help in redesigning the CAL course in order to get higher quality outputs from students.