An action research on the development of digital citizenship and digital literacy skills of 7th grade middle school students

Digital citizenship includes taking correct and conscious actions on the internet and ensuring that these actions are in accordance with rights and responsibilities, ethical rules, and demonstrating participation and production activities through technology. Digital literacy is based on using technology effectively in many areas with a critical perspective. While digital citizenship is based on benefiting by using the opportunities of technology in accordance with its purpose, digital literacy, which is a sub-dimension of digital citizenship, deals with the skills of using technology. This study aims to examine the digital literacy and digital citizenship skills of 7th grade middle school students and to obtain information about students' skill development by implementing activities. It also aims to offer a new perspective to the studies and researchers in this field. The research was conducted with action research, one of the qualitative research designs. For this purpose, the study was conducted with 26 students at the 7th grade level. Criterion sampling was preferred from purposeful sampling. The 7th grade was preferred because of the gains of the curriculum, students' use of technology and the last grade in which the social studies course is taught. In the data collection process, the applications in which students actively participated were recorded with a video camera. All lesson processes were recorded with a voice recorder. The products during the activities were concretized by taking photographs. Then, the data obtained were transcribed and subjected to content analysis. As a result of the activities implemented in the research, it was observed that students' digital literacy and digital citizenship skills improved.