Positives and Negatives of Social Media in the Classroom

Social media media have several tools that allows educators to connect with students. This tools includes: Share it, remind, twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Blogging. All these tool serves a specific purpose which would be discussed in details below.

Remind: educators use text (sms) to connect with students beyond classroom using mobile phones to communicate some important information they need to know either a task, project, timetable or a test. The teacher create a group on Remind without anyone having to access someone's contact details. The fact that contact number is not revealed this creates a secure environment for the students. Remind can be used to encourage students and for making jokes after an exhausting class. It also allows users to make attachments like PDF (journals and articles) for students to prepare for a lesson beforehand and to share interesting pictures from a field or related task that was done in class. It also enable educators to inform students about what is happening either at the school or other places. Thus, messages are short and into the point, making learners to enjoy reading them.

Twitter: has been useful in connecting and sharing information with other people. this tool can be used for variety of purposes like homework announcement, sharing of thoughts and ideas and also an easy way for learners to ask questions. It also allows students who cannot communicate for their voice to be heard through writing. This creates an opportunity for students to connect and follow people of their interest and to learn from them beyond classroom.

Instagram: allows students to share pictures and has different filters for altering the photos that you post. Since we have different ways of learning, some students can enjoy learning using pictures as a physical object that is easy to remember.

Share-it: enables students to share documents like music, word, pictures, if in case someone has miss a class can easily access the information from the shared files.

Blogging: this social media is very diverse, it stimulates cognitive learning by allowing learners to comment on someone's ideas. Blogging offers an opportunity to make connections with people from all over the world. Blogging is used in close connection with twitter to connect students outside the classroom. The twitter hashtag is designed to connect public to students through blogging which enables students and other educators to comment. When students see the notification that they have a comment, they curious. then they get to read the comment which stimulates continuous reading and communication.

The negatives of social media: Not all students have access to smart phones, computers and tap. Students can use social media to do wrong things like on line dating. Perpetrators also uses social media to commit fraud and to get their victims. If example, a learner send an email to a teacher and the email ends to a wrong person, this could put the learner in danger. Although there are faulty in the system, social media offers endless opportunity to those who have the resources to do so to acquire knowledge beyond classroom. The system however, should not completely replace traditional ways of doing things like sending letters to parents to enhance communication and connecting with students. Calling can be more useful to those not having smart phone to email and twit. Texting could be useful provided the language is easy to read for the student  and student can actually read and reply (ability to write).