Social Networking and Education

Social Networking and Education

With the ever increasing popularity of social networking sites and the tools available for us to collaborate from anywhere in the world, encapsulating social networking tools into learning is certainly much more of a possibility. Certain professors, as stated in the 2010 Pearson Social Media Survey, are now using social media in some capacity within their courses (http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2011/09/using-social-media-in-the-higher-education-classroom/). Social Media has been shown to help students struggling with course material, as well as be creative by using facilities such as YouTube. In the US, 59% of students who use social networking actually talked about education related topics online, with more then 50% about schoolwork. Also, 59% of school districts in the US actually say that staff members use social networking for educational reasons alone (http://blog.socialcast.com/education-2-0-social-networking-and-education/). The use of VLE’s, wikis, blogs, and even Skype can certainly enhance education.

Blogs have the ability for students to share knowledge of projects they have worked on, but also about experiences they wish to share online. Blogs can be used in the educational environment to place homework, and for staff to interact with their students. Students would use these blog services to showcase their work, and even get feedback from the other students through the use of the comment section available on the blog. Wiki’s emphasize more on the sharing and collaboration of knowledge which can added to and updated anytime. Private Social Networks can be set up for teacher-student collaboration, and can be used to enrich learning experiences. The Flat Classroom Project is a great example for seeing how social networking can be used in Education. Classroom 2.0, run within Ning, is another social-networking platform.

Social networking is now being used within the education sector today. Examples include using a Smartphone to send text messages to their teachers, 24 hours a day, when stuck on a particular area. Blogs are being utilised to help students struggling with a certain topic, for example algebra; the classmates step in with step by step instructions and even videos on solving the students problem. Skype is used to talk to classes in different countries such as Finland or Canada. Videos are sent from Florida to a set of British Colombia students. Virtual Worlds are being used to virtually describe and show places such as Venice, for example. What are your thoughts on using social media within the classroom? Do you think this will stimulate students more, or do you think that using social networking within education will not be the way to go?

References used:

http://blog.socialcast.com/education-2-0-social-networking-and-education/

http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2011/09/using-social-media-in-the-higher-education-classroom/

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/06/16/03networking.h03.html