What the Tech... Facebook and Twitter?

The many-way avenues of social media are still a controversial topic in many circles, especially
among educators when it comes to employing them in the classroom. These electronic tools were not designed with classroom instruction in mind, but they have made the exchange of information via the Internet an instantaneous and rapid process. Social networking sites in particular, which have less obvious instructional uses than other media avenues, are still considered questionable, but as with all classroom tools, their potential effectiveness may lie in how the teachers structure their use and present that to the class.
The rapid flow of communication and the plentiful content on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can be addicting, to the point that most schools do not allow their use on school property because of their capacity for distraction. They have also received mostly negative news coverage in the educational world, as they are often avenues for cyberbullying and other reprehensible (or even just questionable) practices among young people. There is also the ever-present threat of a breach in security or privacy, as these media are open to public use unless certain safeguards are available and applied. For these reasons and possibly others, many parents also have restrictions on their children's usage of social networking at home,the common of which is simply not providing them with a smartphone. But the potential of social media in productive activities such as awareness campaigns and charitable endeavors are also well-known, and the level of popularity of these tools among the next generations of learners can make them effective teaching tools. They can help to engage the students while also adding a dimension of real-time communication and feedback to the learning. It would also give the less vocal students in a class an avenue for expression which they might be more comfortable using.

Several educators and schools are adopting an "if-you-can't-lick'm-join'm" approach to social media in a classroom environment. They would seem to be most effective for parts of a lesson that require student communication among themselves and with the teacher. One possibility would be for a teacher to create a class Facebook page on which class discussions would take place about the given topic, allowing students to post relevant articles and pictures, thus enabling them to build a group base of knowledge on the topic. This could also be done after school hours, giving the teacher more time to focus on the material in class. Field trips may also make use of social media, as the teacher could have students take photos and post them to a class Instagram  account for later discussion (provided, of course, that the venue of the field trip permits photo taking). Teacher monitoring of such pages would be fundamental, but the community that could be built around academic topics could help the students to understand the relevance of these topics to life outside the classroom.