Social Networking as an Educational Tool

As a result of its popularity especially among young students, social networking is becoming  widespread in education. Technology has a lot of benefits for education, so why not social networking sites? Like blogs, wikipedias, folksonomy, and podcasting social networking sites, teachers can make use of these tools in education for homeworks, discussions, etc.

Social networking sites have three special features bringing a new dimension to education. These features are Profile (for identity), Traversable (having a chance for adding someone as a friend), and semi-persistent public comments (allows people to comment to share their ideas). These features are connected to each other and make some contributions to education as well. 

Social networking tools can be used for different kinds of activities in education. Tools, for example, wikis, e-portfolios, blogs, podcasts, etc. students can make use of these sites for homeworks interactively and collaboratively group works, to identify themselves. Also any kind of knowledge can be discovered easily and in a variety of ways. Many more benefits like these can be sorted. 

The attraction of technology to students, frequent use of technology by students increased the demand for technology for the education. Technology has lots of benefits in education surely but there are some negative effects using technology in education as well. Like less meaningfulness, decreasing reflections, poor researching skills can be seen.

Here are several links from my friends' blogs, you can read their thoughts about this topic as well :).

https://ilkaylinguland.blogspot.com/?m=1 https://learnwith-ilknurgoray.blogspot.com/?m=1 https://englishnowandlater.blogspot.com/ https://selinaltinoba.blogspot.com/ https://plussinformation.blogspot.com