In recent years, a new family of web technologies has been making a lot of noise. Social media, a new type of website where you can actively participate in the development of the site’s content.
There is a wide variety of them, private or professional networking sites, content sharing sites, collaborative creation sites. Several authors advocate the use of social media in education, from primary to post-secondary levels.
What is social media?
Generally, social media are websites that share most of the following characteristics:
- Part of the content is generated by the users (visitors) of the site rather than by the publisher.
- Users of the site can interact.
- You can tell which content comes from which user.
Also Read: Top 10 popular types of Social media
Some examples of social media
We have prepared a list with some examples of very popular social media. The list is not exhaustive, far from it. The social media that appear in this list almost all have competitors, but we have chosen to present only the dominant player in each niche: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter. Let’s see more details on the popular social media sites for learning.
It’s possibly the most popular social media. This site allows its users to create a web profile where they can share their interests, photos, messages and different activities. The main use of Facebook revolves around personal life:
- We use Facebook to communicate to our personal network our moods,
- What is going on in our lives, what has caught our attention,
- You can also send out invitations to events.
Facebook is very popular among students, who visit it several times a day to update and share their knowledge.
It’s an online professional network site. It is therefore mainly used for business and employment networking. It is possible to create groups to facilitate communication between people who share certain interests or affiliations. Its library proposed by LinkedIn references more than 14,000 courses to boost your skills.
YouTube
It’s a video sharing site. Youtube can be used for entertainment as well as learning resource for passionate learners. It has A lot of videos available for almost any subject to enrich your knowledge.
It is a micro blogging site where small posts of up to 140 characters are published. Twitter is much used to spontaneously share links to other sites and to comment on news in general or personal life:
- Reaction to a recently published news item
- Live commentary on a TV show
- Link to a site of interest
- Reflection that comes to the top of the tweeter’s head, etc.
Over time, various conventions have emerged among Twitter users to facilitate communication, such as a keyword system called the hashtag, which lets you know what people saying about a topic. You can get latest tweets about any topic with these hashtags. It helps you updated in any topic that you choose to follow.
Why use social media?
- Find relevant content to offer students to enrich their training
- Go and join students in the digital spaces they already occupy
- Involve students more directly in the construction of their knowledge rather than simply passing on information
- Develop their critical thinking skills with regard to information available on the Internet, Exploring the pedagogical potential of new technologies, etc.
- Create groups with peoples who have similar interests
- Learning from social media is fun and interesting