New Media Literacy Skills of Middle School Students in Turkey: Students Are Ready, Are the Schools?

In this descriptive research conducted on middle school students in Istanbul, Turkey, we report the results of two cross-sectional surveys which measured the New Media Literacy (NML) skills (Jenkins et al. 2006) and perceived technology abilities, and individual interviews regarding the content of computer classes and technology instruction. The results of the survey showed that the students were generally highly competent in the measured NML skills as well as using computers and the Internet. Through the interviews, however, students reported that the school computer classes taught only basic computer skills and procedures of productivity software, if not left free to play games. In the light of the findings, and previous research (Gungor & Akcaoglu 2010), in this paper, we report our initial findings and suggest how the computer classes can be modified to meet the demands of the changing world and the youth that has already caught up with, and in many respects, surpassed it.