The Investigation of Digital Literacy of Fifth Grade Secondary School Students

With the developments in information and communication Technologies, digital Technologies nearly became an indispensable part of our life. As in many fields, education benefits from digital technology as well. However, it is required for individuals to gain some skills to benefit from digital technologies much better. Digital literacy skill is one of the leading skills, too. That’s why; digital literacy skill has been introduced and involved in programs of instruction. One of these programs is 2018 Social Studies Curriculum. Based on this situation it is aimed at examining the digital literacy skills of 5th grade secondary students in terms of various variables. Correlational Survey Model, which is quantitative method, was used in the study. The sample of the study consists of a total of 742 5th grade students who study at 18 different secondary schools specified in Erzincan Province at the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic year. As data collection tool, ‘Personal Knowledge Form’ and ‘Digital Literacy Skill Scale’ was used. It was determined that students attending the study have high level of digital literacy skill scores in general according to results of the study. It was concluded that students’ digital literacy levels are different from one another significantly depending on; settlement, number of sibling, mother’s and father’s occupation, school report mark of Social Studies, whether there is computer or tablet at their homes, having internet connection at home and the frequency of connecting to the internet. However, it was cocncluded that students’ digital literacy level did not change significantly according to gender.