Facebook and Twitter
Over the years Facebook and Twitter have grown into very popular social networking services, claiming an active user base of more than five million it is obvious why they have became such powerful media and interaction tools, especially amongst the younger generation. Both sites are unique from each other in terms of design and function but deliver the same social satisfaction. Within these networks lays the latent potential to be used as an educational instrument in schools.
Facebook provides easy tools for creating pages and groups on their network. Teachers and students can create facebook groups or facebook pages and share educational links, documents or engage in online debate. These groups and pages also have the option of being made into either a closed or open network. Closed groups allow only a selected few to view and access its content whereas open groups are public; meaning its content is available for all to view and modify.
Twitter being design as a blog (micro blog) is much simpler to navigate and allows readers to become followers of other twitter accounts. Being a follower means you are subscribed as a member of that profile and receive notification on the tweeting activity. Teachers and students can subscribe to one another's twitter and continue unfinished class discussions. Using twitter you can:
- Strengthen the classroom community; Teachers and students learn about each other as they interact on twitter therefore leading to better mutual respect in the classroom.
- Get instant feedback; with twitter's message pushing to mobiles (a feature that has to be setup) teachers can tweet for feedback on lectures and receive prompt replies.
- Track conversations; using twitters 'word track' feature a student will be subscribed automatically to any post containing the word of interest.
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