Teacher Opinions Regarding the Impact of Educational Software on Reading Skills of First Graders
Hatice Degirmenci

Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate teacher opinions on the impact of educational software used for reading instruction. It is designed as a qualitative research. The study group consists of 8 classroom teachers. Data is collected as semi-structured interviews, and analyzed by content analysis. According to the qualitative results of the study, teachers have positive opinion on educational software. Teachers listed the advantages of educational softwares as; they are beneficial to students, draw students' attention, enrich learning environment, support teachers, help saving time, and improves active student participation and access. They mentioned that educational softwares lose their effectiveness when used frequently, caused technical problems, pasify teacher, and open to misuse as some disadvantages. Teachers stated that general difficulties encountered in the process of instructing reading include in the areas of reading comprehension, combining syllables, feeling sounds, hyphenation, creating syllables, erroneous reading, slow reading, and changing sounds based on the letters. For solving these problems, they stated that educational softwares are helpful especially in hyphenation, feeling sounds, correct reading, reading comprehension, and fast reading.

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