INCREASING INTEREST OF STUDENTS IN CHEMISTRY TROUGH SELF-DEPENDENT STUDIES BY USING MODERN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

It can be observed that student's interest in chemistry has a tendency to decrease in the schools of Latvia. As information technologies in the world develop possibilities to use computer and Internet in everyday life are increasing. Internet is becoming an integral part of daily life not only for adults, but also for school children. It should be mentioned, that appropriate information technology equipment is lacking in many natural science classrooms of schools in Latvia. Schools are trying to solve these situations by equipping chemistry classrooms with at least one computer and projector. Therefore, teachers have a chance to obtain skills for working with IT. The use of Internet and IT is stimulating factor to raise students' interest in chemistry, therefore a method was developed which is based on enhancing students' interest in chemistry by using Internet and IT at home. Under students' extracurricular activities students search for information about a chemistry topic in Internet and prepare a presentation on it. Student's attention and thoughts are concentrated on chemistry at full scale. The obtained information, impressions and memories are long term and enable to maintain interest in students. The students' finished work is evoking interest in chemistry and a motivated attitude is formed against the subject, accomplished work and mainly against oneself. The method takes into consideration individual personal traits and expressions of students. Since the self-dependant work of students is fulfilling educational and developmental function it is also recommended to be used for teaching other school subjects.