The influence of google earth software on the success of teaching geographical topics for the 6th grade students

The main purpose of the study is to measure the influence of Google Earth on the success of teaching 6th grade Geography topics in the Social Studies lesson. Two objectives included in the unit 'Life on Earth' in the 6th grade Social Sciences programme are tried to be taught with the assistance of the programme Google Earth. How to make use of the Google Earth programme to teach students these two objectives is clarified in the study. It is observed in the findings of this study that Google Earth is effective in teaching these objectives. The number of studies regarding the influence of Google Earth on teaching is limited. Therefore, this study is significant in terms of providing references for this research topic. The students studying at 6th grade in Şebinkarahisar (a province of Giresun) comprises the universe of the research. 49 students studying at 6th grade of Istiklal Secondary School in Şebinkarahisar comprise the sample of the study. In this research, pre-test- teaching- post-test method is applied. In the first stage of the experimental research, a 37-question achievement test which is capable of measuring the objective behaviours aimed to be taught is applied. 5 of these questions are open-ended questionnaire items, the other 32 questions are multiple choice test questions. In order to measure the validity, the multiple choice questions in achievement test are entered into the SPSS programme and Cronbach's Alpha internal coefficient of consistence is calculated. Depending on the result, 12 questions are excluded from the test. After 12 questions are excluded, 25 questions remained and these questions are conducted to the 49 students as pre-test and post-test. The gathered data are entered to SPSS package programme, and t-test and MH test analysis are applied. Therefore, the differences between them are identified and the findings are interpreted. Then the frequencies and percentages are calculated. Significant differences occured in the data gathered at the end of the research. These findings prove that the experimental research is successful. In addition, the study presents some sugesstions on how to make use of the programme Google Earth and the reasons of these suggestions are explained in the research.