Week 4 Read & React

Social Media Reflection – Use the links provided here to investigate the social media debate further. Using this information, combined with the information from your readings and personal experiences write a 250 word response to this question.

What is your personal perspective on utilizing social networking site (such as facebook) for education? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

 

Influenced by my personal experiences and the previous readings, I think basically utilizing social networking sites are essential for educating new generations. Regardless of whether we as educators like to use or not we need to bring the new way of communication to our classroom in order not only to follow the change of the world but also to provide enough opportunities for students to learn 21^st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today and future.

Through social networking sites, students might learn technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, being open to new or diverse views and communication skills. Especially, in terms of art education, students could develop many kinds of useful abilities and attitudes such as creativity, take risking behavior, imagination, design and critical thinking through using various technologies, customizing contents and thinking about online design and layout. The Web sites certainly offer tremendous educational potential. Besides, as many experts like Rosen pointed out, most students who are losing their interests in traditional learning styles in school could be actively engaged in the new learning style including social networking sites.

Even though there are many advantages of using social networking sites in education and I believe the benefits outweigh the risk, I don’t think it is a good idea to allow students to use Facebook or Myspace for educational purpose. As Brooks-young strongly emphasized, there are too much risks for young students in those social networking sites such as sexual crime, bullying, etc. In addition, it has so much information and entertainment contents which are not appropriate for education or distract their positive leaning process. It would be also very hard for educators to limit or regulate their access to those sources if teachers use those sites or allow students to use them in school. Therefore, I agree with Brook-young that it is a better idea for teachers to utilize educational social networking sites such as Ning or Elgg instead of Facebook or Myspace.