Why Is social media Important in Education?

• By Pearl Holland
• 23-03-2022
• Social Media

Not only is it important for students to gain social media skills, but teachers and school administration also require training in order to employ the most effective approaches. It is increasingly important that you are able to integrate social media into your educational practices as a student, teacher, or administrator. If we look at the history of social media, we see that it's been primarily used from the get-go for educational purposes. In fact, without social media, where would many of us be able to connect with others who share our interests and hobbies?

The Power of social media in Education:

Every teacher or student knows the importance of social media. The former use it to broadcast their ideas. That is how they teach. The latter use it to learn, that is how they study. But the reasons why social networking is rooted in education go far beyond this base explanation. This article points out seven fundamental important reasons or benefits for the need to integrate social networking websites in academia.

Importance of Social Platforms for Teachers and Students:

1. One of the main benefits of networking sites in education is promoting active learning.
2. Social sites help students with their studies by providing easy access to information on almost any topic.
3. This can be done through its search engines such as Google and YouTube.
4. Google provides an extensive database for students who want to find out more about a particular topic.
5. YouTube is another great platform to watch videos on almost any topic including tutorials.
6. Social media platforms such as Facebook are being used by professors and teachers to provide additional resources and materials for their students.
7. Teachers can also use Facebook to notify their students about any important information relating to their classes.
8. Technological advances have made it possible for teachers and students to connect with each other anywhere in the world regardless of their physical location.
9. This has helped many young people, especially those that live far away.

The Importance of social media on Education in terms of benefits:

• Its importance can be seen by its uses for education in many different ways, such as:
• Sharing of activities and assignments
• Sharing feedback and ideas with people living at other ends of the world
• Sharing knowledge with others
• Collaborating with your fellow students on projects and assignments
• Conducting collaborative research on the Internet
• Finding new job opportunities

Teaching Tools:

• Most teachers prefer to use social media in their teaching as a supplementary tool.
• The learning management systems, such as Blackboard and Moodle, are still being used to upload assignments and lectures.
• And these are still the preferred way of getting information out to students.
• However, there is a growing trend where teachers are using networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to teach lessons or assign homework, which we already discussed.
• This is mainly because of the ease with which teachers can share content through these sites. They can also be used by students to engage with the content posted by the teacher(s).

They Support Curriculum:

• Social media sites are often seen as distractions for students and not many people take them seriously enough to include them in the curriculum.
• However, they offer a great opportunity for learning by allowing students to interact with experts from around the world on topics that interest them.
• For example, skype has been used successfully by many schools to connect students to experts from around the world on a particular topic of study.
• So, these sites are also useful as a medium for teaching certain subjects such as language or literature classes where students can engage in discussions about novels or movies, etc.

Helps in Collaboration:

• One of the best ways is to use it as a collaboration tool.
• Teachers and professors can utilize social networking to engage students through online discussions or create study groups using social platforms.
• Students can also use these tools to work on group projects, self-study with other students, and learn from each other.

Better Engagement:

• One of the biggest problems of distance education is low engagement levels.
• Many students in distance education courses do not feel connected to their professors or fellow classmates and thus do not take the course seriously.
• Sociable networking sites can be used to increase student engagement and make them feel more connected to each other and their professors by allowing them to interact more frequently and easily.
• Professors can start a blog, share updates on Twitter or Facebook or host a discussion on a forum with their students and answer any doubts they might have about the course or material being taught.
• This will help them maintain a friendly relationship with their students as well as help them understand how they are performing in class better.

Instant Feedback:

By using networking media sites to get feedback from your students on course content, assignments, projects, and more, you can gain insight into how well they are understanding what you're teaching them. Social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can also be used in innovative ways to communicate with your students through a medium they're already comfortable with.

Usage in Educational Sector Through Statistics:

Resource: Ed-Tech Review

Conclusion:

The higher the social media increase and importance, the more adept will be the students to get enrolled and approach the institution of study. They will motivate the entire system, become a change maker, so they can take the country towards progress. Thus, students are considered as an asset in education, and these sites bring them extensive knowledge.