People consider education to be a serious aspect of life and this is where they make the biggest blunder. Probably, it’s the key reason why the brick and mortar classrooms today have taken nightmarish forms for numerous students who rather prefer playing with technology for achieving success in the field of education. It’s sad that there are many teachers who are still under the impression that education comes only through books and blackboards. What they fail to realise is that the social networking tools can bring a splendid difference in one’s study habits which will consequently make one a better learner than others.
The Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Chris Lehmann said that it’s really disgusting that many schools put little emphasis on computers and more on their glorified workbooks. He rather suggested that teachers must now start adopting networking skills so that they can utilise them for improving the educational standards of their students.
|Teachers must look beyond this Networking model.|
(Image source: twitterforeducation.wikispaces.com)
Teachers must adopt networking skills
The dependency for books has been probably one of the biggest drawbacks in schools that have actually hindered students from acquiring interest towards pursuing education with pleasure. Rather, students should adapt themselves in making use of the social networking tools to not only study but exhibit their ability to update themselves with time.
|Image Courtesy : prosofteng.com|
So, how exactly must teachers and students use social media for making education more effective?
- Open up accounts – There are certain bookmarking sites where a teacher can open up accounts for students so that the latter can preserve, systemise and even share links. Besides, they can also view links of others and even browse to find what others have posted. In this way, teachers can keep their students engaged and make them learn in an innovative manner.
- Enter interactive forums – The modern world calls it ‘chatting’ which a teacher can now do with his/her students and vice versa through interactive forums online. What stands beneficial here is that those who are reticent can feel confident in communicating with their educators, and this is where online learning stands out of the crowd.
- Classroom presentations – Presentation work wonders for students, whether they are taking classes online or offline. Often, you fall short of words while explaining a specific lesson to an entire class. A nice PowerPoint presentation would instead say everything with the help of images, texts and animations thereby making students grasp the lessons with supreme interest.
- Social networking sites – Believe it or not, social networking sites can help you educate in a fun-loving manner. It’s just like how you love communicating with your friends, sharing updates with them, posting images and videos etc. Similarly, both students and teachers can make use of sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and get all these activities done to keep themselves updated.
Well, more and more technological developments are getting implemented into schools, colleges and universities where the educators are now getting into the trend of teaching their students through podcasting, file swapping, tagging and blogging. Social media experts have in fact said that a time will come when students will carry no bags full of books and will instead be asked by their teachers to bring nothing except their laptops.