Amazing Ways to Use Social Media as a Learning Tool

All students are on Social Media now-a-days and as much as it bothers us to see them glued to their phones, its time teachers got close to the real world. Social Media platforms are a boon. If they are used in ways that benefit students, they can become a great learning tool as well.

Here are a few things you can do :-

• Create a Facebook group

Facebook is a platform famous for status updates, announcements, photos, and video — all things that are likely to be used in classes anyway.
Use the platform to post assignments, make announcements, and remind students about important deadlines. If you want, you can allow parents to access the site to monitor what is going on in your class.

A Facebook group also creates a space for students to ask and answer questions. When students get home and begin working on their homework, they can post a question to the group’s wall that either you or a classmate can answer. Since students often learn from others, having students share their questions, insights, or experiences with a topic can expand learning for other students. In short, it extends the classroom discussion beyond the classroom.

• Twitter hashtag projects

Introduce a daily hashtag related to a certain topic you elaborated in class, and ask each student to discover a fun fact related to it. Then, they should post a tweet under that hashtag, and the entire class will follow the activity. This is a great way for the students to realize how the things they learn at school are being implemented in the real world.

•  Use YouTube as a video library

YouTube is a great platform for sharing either your own videos or videos made by other awesome people. You can use this great plethora of resource to educate your students. For instance, you can find videos related to the topic you covered in the class and ask children to watch the videos. You can discuss about the same the next day.

• Require students to blog

Instead of writing assignments, you can encourage children to write blog posts about different topics. The ideas can range from their views about a recent field trip or a class project. If you encourage children to write a blog, they will cater not just a class of 30, but the whole wide world.

Since students are already using social media away from the classroom, integrating it into the classroom helps students learn best practices for social media and offers an interesting new twist on lessons.