Abstract
If we look in the past at the evolution of society and education, we can resume that for generation the access to education was available just for some classes of the society and that there were relevant differences between poor and rich countries. Those times had changed, society has evaluated and the development of the new technologies had provided the path to a new revolution. Today we are facing a new challenge: the globalization of education.
Teachers, students and administrative staff from all educational institutes must respond with solutions to all new situations because, when we are facing a new innovation a day, there is no discoverable precedent we can follow. So, maybe, the solution is to be creative and open mind.
As a response to the globalization it is essential to build social connections between learners.
This paper is aiming to analyze the social media phenomenon and its role in the educational process. The goal is to analyze the utility of social network in the educational process.
In the case study we are going to present we had set up a private class community on a social media platform, a community that it is use to share ideas, opinions, to learn about thing you didn't know you don't know. Social networks, through their options, are developing a great path for students to find out their voice and to engage with the community. They provide great opportunities for teaching, learning and sharing. Even more, one of the basic element of social networking is the user profile - which gather information about age, gender, areas of interest, lifestyle, etc - can provide information for the teacher with which he can guide the students in forming an identity in the online environment. Also, through students post it can be developed a small network of strong links related to the course theme.
Social network are promoters of self-expression, communication and collaboration, self-assertion and personality. All these aspect and more will be presented in the paper, but we must mention that we are still learning how to best use it to enhance the learning experience with students and how to adapt it to best learning outcomes. |