FACEBOOK, a learning instrument

Oh look….everyone has a mobile phone, a Facebook account… it is the time to use that for educational purposes. With Facebook being a hot favourite among students, teachers, and librarians, the social media site has become somewhat of a platform, offering developers a way to create and share applications for education. This, of course, is great news for online education, as it provides all sorts of great tools designed to make learning and administration easier.
A high communicative value of Facebook translates into academic value and as an educator, Facebook often drawn to tools in popular use, assuming to co-opt them for academic purposes.
But Why Only ‘Facebook’
If you’re active and in practice of teaching, would you mind to share your experiences using Facebook at your school.
Guess, if one morning you find the creative use for Facebook in the classroom. With almost 55% of online teens use social networks and 55% have created online profiles, Facebook , a apart from being a common mode, it is the best medium to exchange text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities and services and exchanges of syllabus among students. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education.
Students use Facebook to represent their identity, and they fill out all sorts of information to that end. Schools have started delivering course schedules, majors, important notices and other on campus affiliations on Facebook. It also shows that “campus safe” identity to classmates and instructors, which helps to build conversations by introducing “primer” information, i.e. “I see you’re a member of the economics club, are you planning on being an economist?”
Students use facebook to talk about school all the time,an application just enables a students’ course information to be a part of those conversations. It also enables contact between faculty and classmates who are not “friends” with a student on Facebook. Faculty that have ventured on to Facebook have struggled with whether or not to be “friends”, and the safest bet with the least amount of line crossed is to not be friends.
If you are a Facebook member, do a search for “What College Best Suits Your Personality’ or Do you belong at a small or large school or An institute of higher learning or a party school, a quiz will let you know many answers that may be important within your peer group.
A Facebook event group is an application where students, faculty and everyone comes together and shares information on the event, viewing tips and meteors in general.
BTW, this event page was started by 2 high school seniors out of Maryland. They use a Facebook group page as an invitation to the event. They ask you to RSVP. 83,147 guests have confirmed their attendance, 19,823 might be attending and 21,287 have sent their regrets and won’t be in attendance. Try it and you’ll begin to see some of the benefits of social networking in education.
Let’s get to teaching and learning. We can see something like this as an engaging collaborative class project…hmmmmm…mind is off and running with this one.
Things have shifted and now Facebook , which is now coming up as a professional in education and there is no empirical evidence validate the use of Facebook in secondary or elementary education.
Even many schools have reexamined their policies and practices and explore ways in which they could use social networking for educational purposes and Facebook is one of them.
Moreover, Facebook is increasingly used as a communications and collaboration tool of choice in businesses and higher education. As such, it would be wise for schools, whose responsibility it is to prepare students to transition to adult life with the skills they need to succeed in both arenas, to reckon with it. Even electronic channels have supported the use on Facebook, where we quote the example of a private channel story from Missouri which highlighted a teacher’s viewpoint about using Facebook to reach reluctant students at the high school.
After some searching, Signity Solution came across some communities that advocated using Facebook in education and one such had examples, including using the Files and Questions modules that states , All assignments and other items get posted to the “Files” module and you can use the “Questions” module to send out questions to your students.
Few applications , where Facebook and Education goes hand and hand:
Check My Campus: An online community that allows college students to share photos and videos of campus life with high school students looking at colleges.
College Prowler: Research colleges and share your experience with friends.
College Toolkit: Search for schools, test your college IQ, and see others interested in the same colleges.
Connect at College: Connect with other Facebook users trying to find a college and those who’ve been to college who can give insight into their school.
SkoolPool: Talk about colleges with your friends and classmates.
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