Social Media Platforms for Education

Social media is rapidly shaping the world around us. In an environment where everything is directly linked to technology, it is difficult to separate how social interactions develop between people. The new technologies are also shaping the way people interact in a classroom. Although some people are skeptical of interacting on a social media environment for educational purposes, the new social media websites and applications allow people from all over the world to interact and feel connected.

Although the various social media platforms have different functions and purposes, they also have a number of structural features in common: content is user-generated or reposted from elsewhere; it is shared with others within a peer-to-peer community; and there is typically a crowd-sourced process of curation, evaluation, and commentary. (Boyd & Ellison, 2008)

People as using social media pages for exchanging information on school papers, sending each other peer-reviewed articles, and by working together on different research on school topics. I have colleagues from Spanish-speaking countries and I use social media to keep up with recent developments in the educational curriculum for Spanish-speaking students or science-related topics. I find it interesting how I can connect with people through a social media platform just by sharing a common interest. I believe it to be more reliable than other channels of communication such as emails or even yearly conferences. The advantage of social media pages is that things happen quickly and people usually reply faster than any other platform due to the urgent nature of how things tend to happen.

My main concern with these type of technologies is that students get bombarded with unnecessary information that is not school related. If there was a social media app such as Facebook or Instagram that was solely oriented to educational topics, it would not be concerning for teachers as our students would be focused on what was really important to them. I believe that there should be a sole social media page directed to education where students and teachers alike could interact and exchange information based on their areas of study or topics of interest.

The new technologies and social media applications are another way to spread God’s words. The Church is using social media to interact with its followers and to teach people about the rightful path in life. Social media has allowed the Church to reach countries and places where the word of God has not reached yet or where the political or social environment is not favorable for people to have a religious preference or faith. These new social media apps help the Church to spread God’s love throughout the world.

References:

Boyd, D. M.; Ellison, N. B. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2008): 210–230.