The effect of geographic information system (GIS)in teaching social studies to the academic achievements and motivation of 7th grade students of primary education

This study is carried out with the aim of determining the effect of Geographic Information System (GIS) in teaching social studies to the academic achievements and motivation of 7th grade students of primary education. And also student?s GIS skills and reflection of students to the learning is determined. Qualitative and quantitative research models are both used. An experimental study is done to understand the effect of GIS on student?s academic achievements and motivation. As a research model, pre-final test control group model is used, and also a qualitative study done to understand student?s GIS skills and the reflection of students to learning. The study is applied in 2006-2007 academic year at autumn term on the students of Ankara Province, Yenimahalle District, Kent-Koop Primary Education School. Study is applied on two group, one of them is experiment group with 21 students and the other is control group with 23 students. At experiment group ?Our Country?s Population? is given for 3 weeks with the GIS materials which are prepared with ArcView 9.2. At control group in this period, the same subject is given with traditional learning methods. To the groups that take place in study, achievement and motivation scale is carried out as pre test before experimental processing and final test after processing. An observation is done to determine the students GIS skill and also openended questions asked to understand the reflection of students to learning. In the analysis of gained datum, t-test, frequency and percentage is used. Statistical processing is made at the SPSS 11.0 program. Whether the gained datum is meaningful or not is evaluated according to .05 significant levels. V At the end of the study, according to gained datum, following results are gained: before experimental processing, at the motivation of the students of experiment group that the GIS is carried out to them and the students of control group that the traditional learning method is carried out to them there isn?t meaningful difference about their motivation against to lesson but after the experimental processing at the motivation of students against social studies lesson there is a substantial difference in favor of experiment group. In lower problem about whether there is a substantial difference or not before and after the experimental processing between the achievement levels of students of control group and the students of experiment group, following results are achieved: according to gained finding in pre-processing application there isn?t substantial difference between the achievements of experiment group and control group; but after processing between the achievements of experiment group and control group there is a substantial difference statistically in favor of experiment group. The results of this study also showed that, at the experiment group 7th grade student?s using GIS skills is high and the reflection of students to learning is positive. The study is concluded in giving suggestions according to the results of the research.