The influence of applications and activities based on gis in the teaching of social studies on student's succes and attitudes to the socail studies

This study concerns the usage of GIS in social studies lessons at primary schools. Therefore, firstly, we will give information about systematic of Geographic Information Systems. Secondly, we will focus on the necessity of the usage of GIS in social studies lessons. The usage of GIS in social studies lessons will provide lessons more lively and conduce lessons on pupils? memory. In this study both quantitative and qualitative methods are used together. At the analysis of quantitative data standart deviation ?ANOVA? is used and qualitative data are explicated by descriptive analysis method.The study is applied to 33 students from experiment group and 35 from control group, totally 68 students. During the research one group is taught by activities based on GIS, the other one is taught by traditional methods. The control group is never interfered. The results are evaluated at ANOVA and then commented. In the quantitative part of the study open ended and semi-constructive questions are asked to the students. And the results are evaluated at descriptive analysis method. Although the average of true answers given by experiment and control group in success pre-test are close to each other, it is concluded from final test that average of true answers given by experiment group is higher than average of true answers given by control group. Similarly, it is seen that attitude of experiment group is more positive than attitude of control group in the attitude scale of social studies and computer applied on both groups. When the results of qualitative data of the research it is confirmed that the students enjoyed much more from activities with GIS, they got across more easily with each other during applications, they are more successive to find information sources, they attained skills of analysis and synthesis and skills of map making and commenting at the end of applications. And most important one is it is confirmed that the students are more successive on learning the subjects thanks to this programme. At the end it is possible to conclude that the activities and applications based on GIS much more increased the success of the students in social studies than traditional methods. Besides, it has positive effect on the students? attitude to use computer and on social studies.