Attitudes of Students, Future Teachers, to the Importance of Using Media in Teaching

The media are introduced into teaching based on knowledge of theories of learning and teaching. A stimulating learning environment is important to ensure an appropriate learning culture, in this context a stimulating multimedia environment. An innovative approach to the teaching process implies a selection of appropriate teaching media, approaches, methods and teaching strategies, with regard to the defined outcomes and characteristics of individual media within the stimulating environment. In this paper the attitudes of students of the Faculty of Teacher Education in Rijeka to the use of digital media in the teaching process was examined, with an emphasis on self-assessment of the use of digital technology. Based on the assessment of their own ability to recognize different media, the results indicate that students choose media in accordance with the teaching content and that they believe their digital skills are sufficient for quality implementation of media in teaching. Student attitudes are that the lessons in which the media are used are more interesting. According to students' answers, the conclusion is that they believe that greater importance should be given to the use of digital media in the teaching process because they enable individualization of work, contribute to collaborative learning, game - based learning and project learning.