Social Media

1. What group did you join in diigo and why?

I joined a group named Google in Education in Diigo. I believe Google applications have a strong potential application in formal learning environments. If I talk about especially Google+, using Google+ initiates the classroom integration in a way that provides communication, project management, and full collaboration. To use its communication feature, teachers can publish test and due dates, clarify learning targets, review complicated topics, and offer extension activities for Gifted Learners. Thanks to “Google+’s project management quality, educators can distribute rubrics, clarify due dates, share critical handouts or disseminate multimedia content. As for its last educational feature, it is full collaboration. By using Google+, learners can collaboratively brainstorm a problem. With using it groups can compete against one another in a way that saying “circles” in a public forum.

 I think I can get lots of ideas from this group about why and how teachers should use Google applications in their teaching processes. I can find the using ways of Google+, Google docs, and other Google applications in education from this group.  Moreover, I can keep following innovative ways of using Google apps thanks to joining this group in order to keep myself updated. That’s why I joined it.

2. What is the appeal for the young and old to network in online places like the ones you examined this week?

Personal web was a little different before than today. As described in 2009 Horizon report, “… part of a trend that began with simple innovations like personalized start pages, RSS aggregation, and customizable widgets, the personal web…” Today it is more than this. Personal web can be organized and built according to an indivual’s personal needs and interests.

Using social media makes all learners and educators’ needs in updating software and finding technological support less than before. Therefore, people being willing to teach or learn do not have to waste time and money so much. This opportunity is also important to access the older educators or learners who do not have enough knowledge about using computer technology like updating some software or setting some devices on their computer. People in older ages can be more motivated by using social media because it does not require an expertise on computer to use it. Moreover, if these people need some specific information for their computer’s problems, they can get them easily because people in social media help each other. Therefore, the people prefer to spend more time in these social media. 

3. If used in a classroom, how might networking websites positively and negatively affect teaching and learning?

Social media is an important educational tool in terms of teaching, researching and communicating because social software can be access thanks to the web. So the need of updating software on individuals’ computers and local services for new tools is decreased. Social media makes communications of professionals in education strong via especially blogs that have deep dialogs. There is an intense interest of students on social Medias. It should be used to keep students’ attention on the contents of education as an attractive tool by educators. As for personal learning environments, I can say that they offer all learners a unique learning style based on people’s preferences. In the 2011 Horizon report, authors states that “PLESs serve a dual purpose: They enable students to determine the style and pace at which they learn while exposing them to technology that they may not otherwise encounter in traditional classroom.” (Johnson, Adams, and Haywood, 2011, pg.30, para.2) Therefore, using them in a classroom affects teaching and learning positively in order to meet all students’ unique needs.

Social media is also a way that allows to access information easily to realize independent researches to students. Because students have a keen understanding in creating a website or creating a video to share on social media like youtube, this situation includes a chance making a link between students’ creative enjoyable social activities and educational activities to educators.

As for negative effects of using networking websites in a classroom, if students did not trained and guided about netiquette, using these sites would not be a good idea in classroom. Moreover, there should be an age restriction to use some of networking websites. For instance, there is an age restriction to use Google+. Students should be at least 13 years old to use it. Except those, because social media is created via some software based on internet instead of based on desktop management processes; this situation causes unpredictable problems that students and educators face.

4. In what kind of site might you tend to spend most of your time networking and for what purpose?

There are different kinds of social media tools. They are blogs, synchronous communication tools, status broadcasting, image, audio, and video sharing, document and file sharing, wikis and social games. I am using instant messenger (MSN) to talk with my family. I spend some time for blogging in blogster.com so as to share my experiences. There is a website named TappedIn.com, even if I do not know if it is a social network. I rarely use it to get idea from other teachers by meeting at a particular date and time. However, I can say that I spend most of my time on youtube because there is a huge visual resource in order to find an answer to a question, to just get an idea about an issue, to find the things how they are created, to find tutorials for learning any kind of software, to share my works and to get a feedback from other people, and so on. However, I mostly use facebook. I log in at least every day to share some pictures/videos or an experience with my friends.

5. In what ways will this benefit you and what do you think might be the drawbacks?

Actually, being on facebook keeps me updated about what is going on in the world and among my friends. I believe if it is used for reaching experts or experienced people in any subject while searching something, we can get lots of benefits. It can be also used to communicate with other educators to share our experience in classroom. Our students can be connected with students living all around the world, while doing an assignment which required some interviews of getting different views form other peoples. However, if I use it a lot, I began to feel lazy about everything because I can waste my time, if I focus on some entertainment elements there. The other bad thing in using it, it is dangerous if you share your all information there for robbery or any other illegal attempt from other people.

Youtube also very important to me, even though if it is in the category of a personal web. Using youtube to learn anything has an obvious benefit because it is a visual resource. I am a visual learner so it helps me a lot in learning. As for its drawbacks, we can feel to be threatened by other people after sharing a video which is created by ourselves, if they comment on our video in a way hurting us. As for another its drawbacks, we should not trust in the comments for any video because the comments sometimes do not reflect the reality.

 

References

Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Haywood, K. (2011). The NMC horizon report: 2011 K12 edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from

http://utetpt5550.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/49357920/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf