A Teacher's Guide to Social Media

Educators who use the Internet as a teaching resource know the incredible benefits the web can provide. Social media in the classroom has only recently been implemented, but the teachers who use these sites understand what a powerful tool it can be.

The Internet on its own offers countless opportunities for researching, sharing and hands-on learning. The Internet can even put unemployed teachers back to work. With so many free materials available to teachers, the Internet is the best way to engage modern students. Social media is a powerful tool when it comes to classroom learning. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and many more all offer resources for learning. These sites offer so many benefits, especially when it comes to encouraging kids to gain knowledge in a creative new way.

For example, a teacher can create a Facebook page for their classroom. Students can connect their own pages to this page. From there teachers and students can interact with one another in an entirely contemporary way. Post events, discuss books, take classroom polls and share informative materials. Social networks provides vast resources for learning. Students can follow their educators using Twitter. Their teachers can post reminders for homework assignments, educational resources and other valuable classroom information. Sites like Pinterest can be used to brainstorm project ideas. Students and educators can set up a community board where everyone can participate and share.

Again we post an infographic to enhance our post. This infographic from Online Colleges presents a teacher’s guide to social media, which includes some tips on using the major social platforms in the classroom, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube.

In our search we did find an useful eBook (http://abdullaheducationalwiki.pbworks.com/w/file/64982292/Teacher%27s%20Guide%20to%20Using%20Social%20Media.pdf)  about how teachers should use social media and internet in their classrooms, this eBook is uploaded in our wiki. 

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The Different Ways Social Media Impact Education

The Negative and Positive Ways Social Media Impact Education 

Social networking communities are here to stay. Facebook has over 500 million users, while Twitter has over 200 million. That’s not even counting blogs or YouTube video blogs. There’s no doubt that students are actively engaged in online communities, but what kind of effects are these sites having and how can parents counteract the bad and bolster the positive?

The Negative

1. Many students rely on the accessibility of information on social media specifically and the web in general to provide answers. That means a reduced focus on learning and retaining information.

2. The students' ability to concentrate on the task at hand is significantly reduced by the distractions that are brought about by YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.

3. The more time students spend on social sites, the less time they spend socializing in person. Because of the lack of body signals and other nonverbal cues, like tone and inflection, social networking sites are not an adequate replacement for face-to-face communication. Students who spend a great deal of time on social networking are less able to effectively communicate in person.

4. The popularity of social media, and the speed at which information is published, has created a lax attitude towards proper spelling and grammar. The reduces a student’s ability to effectively write without relying on a computer’s spell check feature.

5. The degree to which private information is available online and the anonymity the internet seems to provide has made students forget the need to filter the information they post. Many colleges and potential employers investigate an applicant’s social networking profiles before granting acceptance or interviews. Most students don’t constantly evaluate the content they’re publishing online, which can bring about negative consequences months or years down the road.

The Positive

1. Social networking has increased the rate and quality of collaboration for students. They are better able to communicate meeting times or share information quickly, which can increase productivity and help them learn how to work well in groups.

2. Social networking teaches students skills they’ll need to survive in the business world. Being able to create and maintain connections to many people in many industries is an integral part of developing a career or building a business.

3. By spending so much time working with new technologies, students develop more familiarity with computers and other electronic devices. With the increased focus on technology in education and business, this will help students build skills that will aid them throughout their lives.

4. The ease with which a student can customize their profile makes them more aware of basic aspects of design and layout that are not often taught in schools. Building resumes and personal websites, which are increasingly used as online portfolios, benefit greatly from the skills obtained by customizing the layout and designs of social networking profiles.

5. The ease and speed with which users can upload pictures, videos or stories has resulted in a greater amount of sharing of creative works. Being able to get instant feedback from friends and family on their creative outlets helps students refine and develop their artistic abilities and can provide much needed confidence or help them decide what career path they may want to pursue.

This infographic shows how college students use social media, this infographic illustrate how students and colleges alike are adapting to the behaviors brought about by the Internet.

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Social Media for Students and Job Seekers

Social Media Guide for Students and Job Seekers

In less than a decade, social media has rapidly integrated itself into the everyday lives of all us, but particularly young people. But what role should social media play when it comes to education or professional matters? and what are the risks?
This infographic from Online Degrees provides some social media guidelines for students and job seekers.

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Social Media is helping change the face of education

It is a fact universally acknowledged that Internet has  radically changed the way we perceive of the world. Reality has been supplanted by virtual reality and geographical borders have dissolved to give birth to a highly interwired world where the information travels both poles in a matter of a click. This drastic change brought about by Internet has touched upon every facet of our life and most important of all on education.

Education has exponentially developed over the past two decades to engulf new forms and methods that no one would have ever anticipated before. Gone are the days when students used to attend school with backpacks full of weighty books, pens, and pads. Now a single laptop can hold in its memory what the whole school library has of books and documents. Free writing and drawing software are available on every gadget and with just the use of ones finger , students can draw intuitively and share their productions in real time. This educational revolution has transformed the old traditional ways of teaching and learning and before we know it there emerged a second revolution that started with the introduction of web 2.0 tools in 2004. Now we started talking about social computing and social learning.

Social networking presents a huge opportunity for schools, universities and other educational organisations to reach out and connect with students and prospective students. But how can schools and universities go about using social media in a pedagogical way and what are its benefits on both students and teachers ?

Students benefit from social networking in several ways such as :

• They develop the 21st century skills needed for a successful career after school
• They nurture a positive attitude towards the use of technology not only in their education but in their life as a whole
• It allows them to share and exchange school assignments and projects
• It lets them stay updated about their schools news
• It gives a quick instant access to their classroom updates
• It teaches them responsibility
• It creates engagement which helps students learn better
• It encourages collaboration and team work for students
• It fosters communicative skills and develops inter-personal relationships
• It helps students develop critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and global participation

This infographic shows how students use Social Media for their education:

Social networking benefits not only students but also provides new opportunities for communication amongst teachers and educators.

Here are more benefits social networking offers for teachers and educators :

• Social networking helps teachers huddle professionally
• It provides them with their own " voice "
• It also encourages collaboration in dealing with everyday issues that teachers face in their work
• It allows for sharing of content and best practice in a friendly environment
• It exposes teachers to the possibilities offered by web 2.0 technologies
• It helps teachers develop a solid life-long learning policy
• It offers a great space for sharing experiences, collaborating, researching and updating one knowledge
• From a cultural perspective, social networking  can be a vehicle for world peace and inter-cultural understanding through the promotion of cross-cultural dialogue.
• Social networking helps teachers stay engaged in education

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What is Social Media?

Social Media

Social Media is the future of communication, a countless array of internet based tools and platforms that increase and enhance the sharing of information. This new form of media makes the transfer of text, photos, audio, video, and information in general increasingly fluid among internet users. Social Media has relevance not only for regular internet users, but business as well.

Social media embraces web-based and mobile-based technologies to facilitate interactive communication between organisations, communities and individuals. 

Platforms like Myspace, Facebook, and Linkedin have created online communities where people can share as much or as little personal information as they desire with other members. The result is an enormous amount of information that can be easily shared, searched, promoted, disputed, and created.

This social media map provides a visual summary of some of the most common types of social media platforms, and their purposes. 

Characteristics of social media

Online platforms that enable users to:

• create, share, adapt and reuse content engage in digital dialogue and collaboration
• create linkages, groups and communities
• have peer-to-peer contact
• have social interactions with other users
• create and maintain their own user
• profiles and IDs

Online platforms:

• are largely public, but walled gardens exist within some platforms
• are accessible 24/7 from a range of devices and locations
• generally expose users to an unknown audience

Content on a social media platform is:

• discoverable
• community moderated
• persistent
• subject to conditions of use

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Goals of Social Media in Education

Goals of Social Media Use in Education

Colleges and universities are clamoring for the attention of today’s college students who are always connected. But with heavy competition from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, the attention of millennials can be hard to keep. With that, it is no surprise that colleges and universities have embraced social media as a means to engage students.

When it comes to reaching a target audience, social media trumps traditional media: one in three schools find social media more efficient. In using social media, the primary goals are to engage alumni and maintain the college’s brand image.

For colleges and universities, Facebook reigns supreme as the social network most successful at meeting goals.

Are colleges successful when it comes to using social media? Sixty-five percent of colleges would say they are “somewhat successful.” A confident 2 percent of colleges would consider their social media strategies a “model of success.”

Check out the full infographic below to learn more about how colleges use social media.

Do you think schools are effectively utilizing social media for their own needs?

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