Global Positioning Systems in Education - Research Paper Example

By overcoming the limitations of many existing navigation systems, GPS became attractive to a broad spectrum of users. It was initially used as a navigational aid by military ground, sea, and air forces. In more recent years, GPS has been used by civilians in many new ways, such as in automobile and boat navigation, hiking, emergency rescue, and precision agriculture and mining.In this project-based research, the researcher has interviewed real classroom students taking field notes of their responses to prepared questions by the researcher through the use of open-ended questions to obtain consistent attitude of children found in using GPS.

Collecting data through interviews has allowed more specific insights into child’s genuine experiences with GPS in the classroom and how they address individual student needs. If a correlation exists in collected data, then the information can be used as evidence to support whether or not children can use GPS.To achieve the objectives and find answers to the research questions, the researcher needed to find an appropriate research approach and method. To Ary, Jacob, and Razavieh (2000), the main divide in research method is made into two broad categories: quantitative and qualitative research.

They assert, “Quantitative method uses objectives measurement and statistical analysis of numeric data to understand and explain phenomena. It generally requires a well-controlled setting, qualitative method, in contrast, focuses on the understanding of social phenomena from the perspective of the human participants in the study” (2002)The researcher can combine both quantitative and qualitative methods of research as Hammersley (1996) argues but present research incorporates this investigation in the qualitative method as it focuses on the detailed analysis, interpretation, and discussion and it explores the social and cultural dimensions of the phenomena.

Keeping into view the research questions and the type of data, it can also be placed under the category of ethnographic studies since “the word ethnography means writing about people” (Somekh and Lewin, 2005), it is traditionally associated with the field of sociology and anthropology and aims at describing and analyzing practices and beliefs of cultures and communities.