Introduction: What is Social Media?

Boyd & Ellison (2007): An online social network site is a web based service that allows individuals to: construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system

What is Social Media?

(Mayfield, 2008) Social media can best be understood as a group of new online media, which allows its users to share most or all of the following characteristics:

Participation social media encourages contributions and feedback from

everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between media and audience.

Openness most social media services are open to feedback and participation.
They encourage voting, comments, and the sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers accessing and making use of content password-protected content is frowned on.

What is Social Media?

Conversation whereas traditional media is about broadcast (content
transmitted or distributed to audience), social media is better seen as a two-way conversation.

Community social media allows to form quickly and communicate effectively.

Communities share common interests.

Connectedness most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness,

making use of links to other sites, resources and people.

 Members of the net generation use the web differently, they network differently, and they learn differently. When they start at university, traditional values on how to develop knowledge collide with their values. Many of the teaching techniques that have worked for decades do not work anymore. (Ulbrich et al., 2011, as mentioned in Selwyn, 2011)

Introduction: Should it be used in Teaching & Learning?

According to Comscore (2009), as cited in Greenhow (2009), Facebook is comprised of 200 million unique users worldwide and the number of students who are using this social networking site is significant.
Alexander (2008) states that young learners who are not yet in middle schools and will be future college students are already participating in online social networks, utilizing digital media there and starting to create digital content. This shows that using Facebook in assisting the teaching and learning processes of both the teachers and students is relevant and crucial in todays world.

Conclusion
Selwyn, N. (2012): The future generations of students are those who know nothing other than a life with the internet, having been born into a world woven from cabled, wired or wireless connectivity (Bauman, 2010).

A new breed of learners are being produced thus educators of todays world need to improvise their teaching practices in order to become pertinent and be able to cater to various students needs with regards to the technology specifically Facebook.
Facebook provides an alternative to the traditional lecture format, creating an online classroom community and increasing teacher-student and student-student interaction. (Muoz & Towner, 2009).

REFERENCES
Alexander, B. (2008) Social Networking in Higher Education, in Katz, R. (Ed.) (2008) The Tower and the Cloud, EduCause: available at http://www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud Greenhow, C. (2009). Social network sites and education: Emerging research within CSCL. In OMalley, C. et al. (Ed.) (2009), CSCL'09 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - Volume 1 (pp.454-458). International Society of the Learning Sciences . Mayfield, A. (2008). What is social media? Retrieved from http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/What_is_Social_Media_iCrossing_ebook.pdf Muoz, C.L. & Towner, T.L. (2009). Opening Facebook: How to use Facebook in the college classroom. Paper presented at the 2009 Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education conference in Charleston, South Carolina. Retrieved from http://www46.homepage.villanova.edu/john.immerwahr/TP101/Facebook.pdf Selwyn, N. (2012). Social media in higher education. Retrieved from http://www.educationarena.com/pdf/sample/sample-essay-selwyn.pdf