Education Essay Sample: Social Media in Education

Education uses social media applications to enhance communication and development of the
quality of education in various parts of education. Educators use blogs as a means of interaction
with students. This becomes practical and efficient when the educators post e-notes in the
respective blog. The answering of questions not understood during class time in these blogs
provides future reference for the students experiencing the problems of the same nature. The main
difference between a wiki and a blog is that a blog has only one author (Ziegler, 2007).

Another social bookmaking tool is Diigo. This social media tool is purely user friendly for educators
and learners since it can pool scholarly resources. It enables its users to get personalized
resources on any topic of interest. Wikis are also used as interactive platforms by education
systems across the world; their maintenance is conducted by collaborative efforts of site visitors.
Twitter is also another social tool used in interactions (Dixon, 2012). This application enhances
learners to interact with fellow students and their lecturers too. Teachers use Twitter appropriately
to enhance respond discussions after class.

Facebook as a social network has also changed the way teachers and students perceive learning.
Educators use this social media tool to interact freely with their learners. Considering that
Facebook has a remarkable feature to notify newsfeeds and upload photos, it is probably the most
convenient way to maintain a close relationship with students (Davidson & Goldberg, 2009). The
educators especially in the field of geography may use this as a way to send picture diagrams to
their students. This enhances clear understanding of the topics of concern for the students. There
are also so many other developing social interactive, tools used in education. They are
unquestionably necessary for they increase the contact between scholars and allow room for
discussion.

The Role of Social Media in Education

The role of social media in education cannot be ignored. This is because social media today plays
a key role in developing the quality of education and increasing the enrollment across the world.
First and foremost, social media act as a motivating tool which fosters student’s active
participation in education. For this reason, teachers should design their schemes of work and
schedules in ways that include time for interaction of students through the social media. Social
media also helps students to collaborate and contribute towards searching for solutions to global
issues. It profoundly influences the education quality of every nation whose students actively
participate in social media interactions (Junco, 2012). These students develop the ability to think
globally, and this is exceptionally beneficial to their individual career profiles. In fact, some
extraordinarily creative students are sometimes lucky to sell their ideas and projects to potential
private companies that need dynamic modes of operation all the time. A superb example may be
the existence of technical students whose creative ideas on issues such as mobile phone
applications are bought by mobile phone industries. For example, Nokia has previously bought
ideas and innovations from university students.

Social media also serves to expose students to various tools that contribute towards the rapid
growth of the educational process. The students should be taught the strength and weakness of
such educational tools and have the chance to use them at any time they feel like doing so. With
social media, the students can also perform group discussions in the form of chats. Such tools are
extremely relevant to the development of education. Social media are also instrumental in
developing the teaching techniques used by teachers. With social media development, it has been
possible for teachers to have online classes that are broadcasted via social networks such as
Skype (Carlson, 2005). Teachers may also consider recording their lectures in forms of videos and
upload them in social media sites such as Facebook or Youtube for Live streaming. This innovative
idea makes the work of the teacher exceptionally easy, especially because he/she does not have to
show up for revision of covered topics. The students only need to download the tutorials from
social media and use them for revision. In case they need clarification, they can replay the videos
for as long as they wish. Social media is extremely fundamental in the field of education.

Social media provides students with a limitless avenue for students to interact with their peers
across the world. This enhances some sense of balancing of the psychological perspectives of all
students across the world. Those who take education seriously challenge their peers who are
joking with issues concerning the issue of education. This distinction exists due to the primary
difference in the environment they live (Anderson, 2009). In addition, since learning is a social
activit,y the understanding of this fact is proven as a basic truth by social media in its quest to
develop education. The same way social media tools are used by some countries to collect opinion
polls during the election of presidents, it should also be used to collect opinions concerning
various schools of thoughts in areas such as education, criminology, ethics, sociology, psychology
among other field of study.