Is there a place for social media in education?

With the major advances in technology in the last decade, as do the many online platforms and applications. There are a ridiculous amount of social platforms available on smart devices, many of which are similar when it comes to operating them and the purpose they hold. Social media has revolutionized the rate at which news is exposed. When anything happens whether it be catastrophic or minor, social media is the first to receive news. This is due to the fact that some many people have easy access to these social media platforms and post directly after or as this are happening. The massive debate however is whether or not these platforms should be used in the classroom as yet another teaching tool. In all honesty I completely disagree with “Provenzano, 2015” where he states that he uses some of the bigger platforms to teach (i.e. Twitter and Instagram). Due to the fact that half of the learners you teach probably are already active on these forms of media, I feel that to constructively educate learners via these platforms will be tricky. I feel that being a past learner myself not so long ago, I would definitely sit in class and use the social media platforms for my own personal use rather than participate in class time agenda. However, I do feel that as I said earlier there are plenty of online applications and sources of media that were specifically created for educational purposes. I do agree that as teachers we should use some sort of online social media to communicate and interact with learners as learners often enjoy and are comfortable using technology and online media. I do feel that there is a place for social media in classrooms due to the fact that it can be advantageous to see whether learners are keeping up to date with work and allows them to ask questions they might have been too scared to ask in class. This does however need to be carefully monitored as have said several times in my previous blog posts. Things like Cyberbullying is a reality in this dane age and it can be even worse due to the fact that almost everyone has access to posts online.