Involvement of Social Media in School

Teachers and students are incorporating online tools in their day-to-day teaching and learning activities, but there is also a risk involved in revealing students to the digital world. This risk may include exposure to unethical stuff such as sexuality, bullying, and harassment. If a teacher is not aware of what sites students are visiting in the classroom, may lead to sharing inappropriate materials such as images, videos, and other information that should be kept confidential.

On the other hand, there are also positive aspects of integrating social media in the classroom teaching. There has been an ongoing debate about the social media’s role in education. Some agrees that social media involvement is beneficial for today’s high-tech generation, whereas others strongly support the removal of social media from the teaching.

Social media can effectively be used as an educational tool. Students and teachers can join and interrelate with each other in new and innovative ways. Students and teachers can share views, ideas and opinions. It will enable them to build relationship and discussions.

If students are using social media sites as an educational aid in daily learning activities, it will help schools to make more effective and valuable learning opportunities for students. Teachers can get engaged with students by implementing social media in their teaching methodologies. It will increase the technical skills and improve teacher-student relationship. It also bridges the communication gap between teacher and students.

Karen Cator (US Department of Education) commented that social media network can improve the American education system. She further stated that, Think about not only incorporating technology into your lessons, but creating more and more compelling assignments so that 21^st century skills, the kinds of things students will have to develop in terms of critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, global participation -- that these are incorporated into assignments. The best spaces will incorporate social media, and interacting with others.

Social media sites also enable communication between teachers and administrators. Administrators can regularly post blogs and articles online to keep students, parents and teachers informed about the updates of their school.
These online tools provide great resources for education, though some of them also involve risk. Reports of Sexual Offender and Predators have raised this issue of social and emotional problems with kids, who search for sex talk and are involved in some kind of sexual activities. In addition to this, cyber bullying is another big concern. This is the most common risk for online youngsters.
To defeat these issues, social media networks have also initiated their efforts and started creating safe and secure online student communities.

Facebook has partnered with the National PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) to support safe internet use for students, teachers and parents. National PTA and Facebook are going to set up a program to provide information and news to support citizenship online. It will also reduce cyber bullying and offer solutions to internet safety and security. Facebook has set up education and safety tabs to give information and resources to teachers and parents. Similarly, MySpace has also launched a partnership with the Attorney General.

The involvement of technology and social media networks in classroom teaching is still a matter of discussion and finding a balance between students’ participation and safety is also important. To build safe online education resources in school require taking both of these issues into account.