New Technologies as Educational Resources for Teaching Cartography: A Case Study in Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

This work aimed to explore and measure the effectiveness of using geotechnologies to instigate students of elementary and secondary schools, in Guinea-Bissau, to learn more about the issues related to spatial representation. An educational methodology was developed and evaluated in order to provide educators and students with access to digital maps and satellites images. As part of the methodology, questionnaires were applied to teachers with the purpose of identifying and selecting the subjects that were part of the digital educational modules and the content of the databases to be used in Terraview GIS. To evaluate the instructional materials produced, the methodology was applied in four schools including an institute for teachers. The results pointed to the benefits of using new technologies as auxiliaries tools to traditional teaching, the insertion of geotechnologies in the schools activities has facilitated the understanding of the studied subjects, scale and geographic coordinates, thus providing a significant gain in students’ performance, which also contributed to the process of digital inclusion and in reducing the lack of teaching materials in Guinea-Bissau.