Social media in education

Nowadays, social networks are a fundamental tool. There are many opinions that technology allows to speed up education, but at the same time it can reduce it. We must bear in mind that social networks have changed the way we communicate, socialize, how to conduct new business, as well as have made an important change in the way in which students can learn.

Can social networks come to be considered Educational?

In the last two decades the media has reached the hands of children by providing information that was previously restricted to them. Years ago the only way to learn was to read a topic as many times as necessary until you memorize it; From the communicative point of view, the use of the means of communication that we have, can be beneficial, but it has also led to many parents being restricted in the education they give their children. This educational tool does not only affect children, adults and adolescents; besides its use produces addiction.

Currently, one out of every 5 people in the world makes use of social networks, therefore, it is important that in educational centers they are known and used in a way in which students can benefit from them for their training and their Personal development.

Experts of the pedagogy affirm that social networks within the classroom encourage dialogue and participation, and also affirm that social networks are a new way of understanding Education, although there are teachers who refuse to implement them in their teaching systems for several reasons. reasons: as it may be, the scarce training on their part in this field totally new to them and the lack of technological means in the classroom.

Are the benefits of social networks in the classroom unknown?

It would be important to detail the benefits and positive aspects of the use of social networks in current education. Both teachers and students can benefit from the possibilities granted by social networks; teachers can facilitate their work as teachers and from the point of view of students, can facilitate the learning process.

Among the benefits provided by the use of social networks in the area of ​​education, we find the following:

• It allows teachers to teach the student to learn for themselves, acting only as a guide in learning. It is true that social networks such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook ... can become educational tools but the problem with this education is that it is out of control.
• They are a means of communication, allowing adolescents who are very familiar with them, to feel more comfortable in their relationships with teachers. But not only it serves to communicate between students and professors of the same center, but it can serve them to contact experts of other subjects or students of other centers.
• It helps to develop digital and technological skills necessary to work in companies, as well as in their own entrepreneurial initiatives, such as the digital certificate, a tool which is totally unknown to students but can help them and facilitate the completion of paperwork related to the INEM, with the rent, with the ministry of justice, request for online appointment in the social security, as well as consult the points of the driver's license.
• The use of social networks and blog, promotes the value of sharing and collaboration. In this way, not only the teacher transmits knowledge, but also cooperation between a group of people is favored.
• Help in the awareness of the importance of socializing, working as a team, freedom of expression ...
• Through the use of ICT, students learn by doing, which is how they learn best.
• They make it possible to make themselves known to the center, to the teaching staff and to the students, providing opportunities to publicize the institutional and educational activity.
• The search for information will no longer be a boring task, allowing the student to enter the different social networks to investigate and have the necessary resources to complete daily activities.
• Social networks, such as facebook, allow the creation of private class groups and even a group for each subject, which facilitates the resolution of doubts in a quicker and more personal way with teachers; without counting also that in this way they can share with their classmates any resource they need.

Currently there are several collaborative webs, an example is the Wiki, where students can add, edit, create or modify the content of a web page quickly and easily.

Thanks to social networks, teachers can disseminate among them different educational resources, ideas, even materials. There is no doubt that these tools, both teachers and students, facilitate the task of teaching and learning, since both parties have more resources to access and allows students to solve their doubts in an easier and faster way.

To conclude, we can say that social networks are becoming a resource that increases the development of communication skills and can be used as a learning strategy by students, since most students use them daily without specific benefit and teaching them how to make an appropriate use of these, they can include them as part of their academic activities.

Taking into account all the above, social networks will carry out an evolution in the field of education that will favor learning and enrichment reciprocally between teachers and students, that is, encourage collaborative learning using activities that allow self-evaluation or meditation on the work done.