Hi there
I am currently a second year Education student at Stellenbosch university. I love the degree I am doing , I am passionate about education and technology, therefore I have a great focus about inclusivity of technology in the classroom and schools in general.

I will post about various things regarding education and technology in my educational blog and hope that what you find on this blog can be of some help to you.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Technology in Education: Facebook

In today’s day and age we find great advances in technology. These advances like internet, laptops and smartphones. These types of technologies were not available, like it is now, when I was in grade 1. The only technology type we had was, television. After 2000 more and more technology types were refined up until the latest technology we have today. Yet this development, of technology, is not ending, but it changes on a daily basis. Smartphones for one is affordable to the man in the street.

This is where I come in with the problem we have with the question: How can we integrate the latest technology, like smartphones, into the current education system? Will this have any success in how the students will progress? Will it make students more interested in the learning process?

In this I will look at how, I think, technology can be integrated into the. education system. The specific type of technology I will look at is Facebook

Facebook, like we all know, is a social networking site on which youngsters spend way too much time and energy.  It’s a website  where they play online games, to do  online chatting, including video chatting with the added skype feature. Facebook has become an all in one site for the youth and other individuals of all ages to stay up to date with family and friends, the latest trends, the latest celebrity gossip and any new activist movements hitting the globe or a local region. Teenagers spend hours on Facebook even during school time. We as teachers and future teachers have to find a method to use this social networking medium, which they enjoy being on, as a way to communicate with them and utilize its technology to get the students interested and more interested in their learning process. This can be achieved, according to me, by creating closed groups on Facebook. This in my mind will make communication between the teacher and students easier.

Facebook has a group function which allow users to create groups. This groups can have different settings, such as being an open group or a private group. An open group would allow anyone who comes across the group to join it. Thus we, as teachers, would only want communicate with the learners for educational purposes and thus a private group would be preferred. In this way only the learners of a specific class are allowed to join the group.

With the group established on Facebook, free of charge, we can begin to explore the possibilities of them (the students) becoming actively involved in their learning process. Firstly we, the administrator “teacher in charge” would speak to the class and tell the learners to search for the group example: “ HPSGR5”. That would be the grade 5 class from Hartenbos Primary School. Once everyone has joined the group we can communicate to the learners what the group will be used for:

·         It will serve as communication medium outside the classroom
·         Can be used as an aid for learners to get help from other learners
·         Will serve as a reminder medium, of homework, upcoming test, excursions etc
·         Can serve as an exercise, assignment medium where the teacher can upload exercises and assignments that the learners have to do at home.
·         Student will get a mark based on their participation in this group

Those are only to mention a few of the uses a private Facebook group could be used for in the context of education. This group would be private thus the teacher would be in complete control of who joins the group, he / she would only allow the learners of her class who the group is intended for to join and perhaps the head of department and parents, which of cause would be at the discretion of the teacher.

In terms of financial implications for the parents it would be cost effective data wise because Facebook has released a “lite” version of the Facebook app for phones, this app uses less data then the usual Facebook app which means it cost the parents less in terms of purchasing data / airtime. 

This has an upside as the learners would be receiving part of their school work on a social networking medium which they enjoy spending time on. The goal would be that they see this as just more social time which they enjoy, in which they would be engaging with their schoolwork.

In the final analysis I would like to emphasis that Facebook is only one of the many social media that students engulf themselves in. Similar things, if not more, can be done on applications like Twitter, WhatsApp, and many more. This is the age of a great technology advancement. Let’s use this to the teacher’s advantage of educating our students in a way which they will enjoy and thus getting the optimal benefit from their educational journey.








1 comment:

  1. Great idea! This way learners will always be informed.

    ReplyDelete