Social Networking Technologies in Edcuation

“At some point, we’re going to have to get our brains around what it means to participate in an online community or “social network” the way our kid are beginning to do if we really want to help them do it well.” – (Richardson, 2010, p. 132)

Social networking technology is all around us and being used for personal and business communications. Education is finally starting to see the potential for social networking for both educators and students. There are many social networking technologies out there and it can be intimidating to try and figure them all out, so instead let’s just focus on two for now.

Facebook

Facebook is an amazing platform for social networking on personal and business levels. Through Facebook you can share ideas, articles, videos, pictures, and so much more. I follow many education-related pages on Facebook like Edutopia and Educause, both of which share education-related information and link together educators of all levels to share knowledge and experiences. Facebook allows you to group the people you follow into groups so you can share information about more than one topic to those specifically interested in it. Posts on Facebook can also be left public so anyone can see them by coming across your page or the page of a friend, or because it was shared. Facebook also has a chat feature that works on computers and mobile devices that work like texting.

I would use Facebook to bring up world events that pertained to the learning. The ability to connect learning to real events strengthens the learning so why not use it to help bring real events into the class? The other way I would use Facebook in class would be to have a private page for the class where they could share about themselves and make friends and connections with their classmates. Making the page private would hopefully help the shyest students to come forward and give the platform a try without as much fear of being judged or mocked for their abilities.

Twitter

The days of waiting for answers are behind us now because of the Internet. Even in education, students are wanting instant answers. Online students of all ages typically chose this medium to work with busy lives. When students or educators need answers quickly, Twitter can provide them with a ‘room’ through the use of hashtags to ask their question to the class and faculty and get answers fast. While Twitter and Facebook have much in common in that they are both used to share links, articles, videos, and the like, Twitter was specifically designed to be a conversation via text. Twitter only allows for 140 characters per entry and as such is perfect for quick back-and-forth conversations between like-minded groups.

Twitter is perfect for quickly notifying students and faculty of changes to schedules, reminders of assignments due, and checking up on each other for group assignments or if absent from class. I would use Twitter in all of these ways for my classes including notifying corrections to links or clarifications that all would benefit from.

The differences

While Twitter and Facebook have many of the same features, they tend to be used differently. I think of Facebook as the gathering around the table for a holiday meal, it is where friends and family relax and just pass time including playing games and sharing pictures. Twitter is more like a conversation that can take place in real time. A good example of this ‘real time’ usage of Twitter would be following the presidential debates. People use Twitter to comment on the debates as they are happening and even to ask questions that the candidates might be asked. Twitter has been the information source of choice for many incidents across the world as the recent Paris attack, school shootings, and breaking news. Both have their place in education depending on their intended use.

If there are still doubts as to the need to embrace these technologies, it is worth noting that in 2005 the Pew Research Center started a social media usage poll and found about 7% of adults used this technology (Perrin, 2015). In comparison, the same poll shows that by 2015 65% of adults use social media now. That is an increase of 58% in 10 years and it is only increasing. In the future, that number will increase dramatically as roughly 90% of young adults ages 18-29 use these technologies regularly now. With these numbers, it is safe to say that social technologies are not going anywhere and so we had better learn and teach the best ways to add them to our education.

References

Perrin, A. (2015). Social Media Usage: 2005-2015. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.