Abstract

As the technology integration becomes the new normal together with the effect of COVID-19 that forced educational institutions to carry out all or most of the educational practices online, students at all levels have been required to adapt this process quickly. The use of technology has already been common in daily life of these learners which didn’t necessarily mean that they would easily benefit from online learning. That’s why this study investigates if personal factors like gender, grade, having a PC/tablet computer, using social media, and playing online games all of which are supposed to be common in the daily life of secondary school students in Turkey bring differences in terms of technology literacy that might affect the success of adapting and benefiting from the more technology integrated education. In this survey study, the data was collected from 148 secondary school students in Aksaray city of Turkey. The results show that the sample have mostly intermediate to high level of technology literacy level while gender, grade and having a PC/tablet computer variables do not put any significant difference in terms of technology literacy. It is important to note that using social media brings meaningfully better technology literacy and participants who play online games have significantly higher technology literacy in terms of communication. Accordingly, it can be suggested that secondary school students should be encouraged to use the social media and play online games, of course within the monitoring of families and teachers.