Effective use of Social Media in Education

 

"Social Media can be used to build people up and tear down. It's not the tool the tool, but the user of the tool that makes difference"

 Jennifer Casa-Todd.

This blog is based on the talk of Andrew Mead, a guest speaker of our class, who shared his experience on the effective utilization of social media in classroom settings. In his talk Andrew highlighted that if we use it with due care and responsibly, social media is an important tool to use in our classroom to facilitate classroom instruction, collaboration and communication. 

Social media is an online interaction platform where people interact to build relationships, share and exchange ideas, information  and express their view. It contains a wide range of online communication platforms in which  blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, snapchat and youtube are some. Nowadays more than a billion individuals around the world are connected and networked together to create, collaborate , and contribute their knowledge and wisdom. Teenagers, especially students use social media as the most convenient social platform through which they share their own ideas, communicate and exchange information. The importance of social media for today's teens often elicits teachers to explore the added value of educational use of these media. Despite the importance of social media for today's school teens, it also brings drawbacks  to those who misuse it. As Jennifer Casa -Todd , mentioned it in her book entitled Social Leadia, if social media is used safely and responsibly both by teachers and students, it can make a real difference in  classroom context. In this regard teachers have a key responsibility to empower and mentor students to utilize the digital world in safe and responsible ways. 

What should be done to effectively utilize social media in classroom context? What are the things we should make our students aware of before using social media?

What is expected from our school system ?

                                            what is expected from teachers?

As a teacher we need to develop social media skills to empower and couch students on the safe and responsible use of social media. Facilitating  students with clear instruction-focused goals while adapting to their social  and educational needs. We need to be  purposefully present on social media, to support a group of students as an online community.

The growth and popularity of social media has created a new world of collaboration and

communication. Social media is an online interaction site where people interact to build, share

and change their idea and comments regarding any information. Social media contains a wide

range of online communications including blogs, company-sponsored discussion boards and

chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings websites and

forums, Internet discussion boards and forums, moblogs and Social Networking Sites (SNSs). In

short,

The growth and popularity of social media has created a new world of collaboration and

communication. Social media is an online interaction site where people interact to build, share

and change their idea and comments regarding any information. Social media contains a wide

range of online communications including blogs, company-sponsored discussion boards and

chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings websites and

forums, Internet discussion boards and forums, moblogs and Social Networking Sites (SNSs). In

short,