How social media can help in your learning process

Recently, I have discovered that there is a new trend in the use of social media. One TV interview has revealed to me that children use nowadays social media to understand the material presented in school more efficiently – social media offers them the possibility to rewatch videos on Youtube for so many times until they understand everything, or they can ask other students in groups questions. Even for online course creators, the connection with social media is useful because in that way they can keep in contact with their students and respond to questions or deliver supplementary material to their course.

For this reason, I started to search for strategies on how social media can help in your learning process and hope you can find some useful ideas in this sense:

Facebook Groups:

• Post/read motivational material: motivational quotes, fun materials, TED talks. Ask the members about their opinion.
• Encourage members to share links to great online resources in connection to that topic.
• 1 time per week: put questions related to that topic and engage members to share opinions.
• Motivate members to share the difficulties they face and their own way of passing them.

Blogging:

• Encourage students to create their own specific blog and post their experiences of their learning journey
• There they share book reviews, research papers or other useful material they used.
• All students can build a blog community and exchange their experiences by commenting on each other blogs.
• In time students can develop their own projects or work in shared team projects.

Twitter:

• Post a daily hashtag about a specific topic and ask other students to build practical connections by finding something fun related to that topic. Hereby they learn to apply what has been learned.
• Get connected with other people, who are interested in your topic. Post resources and hints that help in the learning process.

Pinterest:

• A great platform to save and organize all your educational resources, because you can create different pin walls and keep information easily accessible.
• Works great also as a search engine: search content on your topic and pin it on your specific pin wall.
• You can also share your pin walls with other students and exchange material in this way.

YouTube:

• YouTube is great for delivering video content that is easily understood by students, because of its entertaining character.
• Invite also other students to post videos on a certain topic and engage with them by putting questions and commenting.

Do you already use Social Media for learning? Leave a comment below and share your experience with us. I am looking forward to reading your input!