The effect of the smart board usage on students' academic achievement and continuance of knowledge in science and technology lesson

In this study, in teaching the unit "Electricity in Our Lives" in the 7th grade science and technology lesson, the effect of use of smart board to the retention of the information that the students have learned has been examined compared to the 2005 Science and Technology curriculum. For this research; two classes were selected from 7th grade students as one of them was control group while the other one was the experimental group at Vali Aydın Arslan Secondary School in in Kastamonu Province. An achievement test of 25 questions was used as a means of collecting data related to the unit "Electricity in Our Lives". For 4 weeks, while, for the control group students, the unit "Electricity in Our Lives" has been studied according to the 2005 Science and Technology curriculum, the same unit has been studied supported by the smart board activities for the experimental group students. The achievement test, prepared to measure the equivalence of the groups in terms of knowledge, has been applied as the pre-test. After the application finished, the same test has been applied as the post-test to measure the achievement of both groups. Finally, in order to measure how much the information learned is recalled, the same test has been applied as the retention success test four weeks later and the resulting data has been analysed with SPSS 20 statistical software package and t-test has been used in the evaluation of the data. As a result of the data analysis obtained in this study which consists of quantitative data, a significant difference in favour of the experimental group was determined between the achievement of the experimental group in which the lessons were studied using the smart board and the control group. Furthermore, according to the results of the continuance test applied 4 weeks after the application finished, the rate of remembering of what they have learned among the students of the experimental group is higher than the students in the control group. In the light of the data obtained in this study; it has been figured out the use of smart boards in teaching the 7th grade secondary school students the unit "Electricity in Our Lives" increases the achievement and that the information that has been learned throughout this process remains longer in the memory.