Determining the digital citizenship levels of prospective teachers

In cyber societies, teachers, who will guide people that are defined as digital citizens (netizens), are expected to have technological skills as a priority. In line with this expectation, the purposes of this study are developing a reliable and valid scale that could assess the digital citizenship levels of pre-service teachers in Turkey, and examining pre-service teachers? scores regarding pre-determined variables.This screening model study was carried out in two stages during the 2010-2011 school year. In the first stage, validity and reliability of the measurement tool was established with the data collected from 1063 pre service teachers studying in Gaziosmanpaşa University, School of Education. Researcher developed a seven-dimensional scale with high reliability and validity scores which is also time efficient, economical, and easy to score.In the second stage of the study Digital Citizenship Scale scores of 2200 pre service teachers from Karadeniz Technical University Fatih School of Education are compared based on variables such as gender, age, family average income level to determine if there are significant differences between groups. There was a significant difference between the level of digital citizenship of genders and it was in favor of male pre-service teachers. Researcher believes that by encouraging and supporting female teachers for the use of digital media this difference can be reduced. According to Digital Citizenship Scale scores of the sample pre service teachers 0.36 % of them were placed at the extremely poor level while 33.32% placed in a very good level. As a result, training teachers with high digital citizenship levels will lead to proper use of technology later on. I believe that this study will give direction to future research because of the lack of studies both domestic and abroad at the time of this study.Key Words: Cybercitizen, Developing Scale, Digital Citizenship, Faculty of Education, Netizen, Prospective Teachers, Technology.