A great site for connecting with other educators is edConnectr. It gives educators several avenues with which to find other like-minded educators. A Visual Mapping Engine narrows down certain criteria allowing educators to save valuable time and energy.

Edmodo acts as a playground for teaching and learning with a place for posts, calendars, and general communication for teachers and students. Linking to students becomes simpler and more efficient as well as more effective when students enjoy the presentation of it. It makes it easy to share valuable apps with students.

TedEd offers a variation of TED Talks with shorter, often-animated clips of subjects such as science, technology, social studies, literature, language, art, health, psychology, and business and economics. With communities and clubs, the site also makes it effortless for collaboration.

Besides great graphics and themes, Google+ takes teachers to their students with circles that make managing virtual communication an art. Students might need to know more about a particular lesson because they didn’t quite get it the first time. Pull them into a circle of their own with just the right tools to connect them to their path to understanding and learning.

The great part about Facebook is that everyone is on it. Students love connecting with their friends and family with Facebook so telling them to check out the page where you post only makes sense. However, it’s very important to stay professional and have a separate personal account.

The best way to use Twitter for teaching is as a reminder to students that they need to complete an assignment for a particular due date or that they have an exam coming up soon so study this or that. Sometimes teachers even use it for inspiration by sending a famous quote.

Students love Instagram for so many reasons but mainly for the photos and effects available to them. Teachers can create assignments that tap into the need to Instagram such as photo essays where students take photos, upload, and add captions or students can even create campaigns for certain organizations or just for a lesson.

If you want to share videos on Facebook or Twitter, use Vimeo. But, there’s a whole lot more teachers can use it for such as uploading and storing video then utilizing it as a tool to teach students more about creating video. Vimeo teaches for you at Vimeo Video School with lessons and tutorials.

With so many themes to choose from, WordPress has become a popular way for teachers to set up a web of communication and lessons with their students. Chalkboard is an educational theme that prepares students for learning and helps teachers outline goals and objectives while still providing great visuals. Teachers can also use it to inspire students to write more by having them create their own blogs and meet the WordPress Challenges.

Like WordPress, Blogger connects teachers to students using unique themes as well as diary-style writing. With access to teachers’ posted links, lessons, and thoughts students become more successful and comfortable with the teacher when learning online.

Using Skype means connecting with anyone, anywhere, at any time. This means students not only connect with teachers but teachers encourage students to broaden their view of the world. Set up virtual connections by contacting other teachers then connect the students to each other. Also, Skype has a whole portal dedicated to educators who can use it to teach various lessons already set up by the Skype team.

The celebrated platform for pinning favorite pix can be a great teaching and learning tool. It also encourages quick collaboration between teachers on all sorts of subjects and interests. Teachers can set up a Pinterest page for one particular class or a series of classes with Pins that focus on themes or subtopics important to the lesson at hand.

Educators of any level can click on the education category within YouTube and find several subcategories such as university, science, business, and engineering. YouTube even has a special section dedicated to teachers and how to teach with it. But, even if teachers never visited that section, they could teach using all the great videos available according to subjects or searches.

If YouTube doesn’t make the cut, try TeacherTube. It’s dedicated to all sorts of education, from the basics to more complicated work. Interestingly, the tabs for docs and audio are some of the more useful resources within it. However, it’s the idea of TeacherTube and it’s tools that make it so useful because teachers can use it to communicate with students and there’s no question that this is within an educational format.

For academics whose main goal is to share research papers, Academia.edu draws a crowd of over five million visitors. Academics can monitor the effect of their research and keep tabs on the research of the other academics that they follow. It’s a great tool for anyone needing data and information on various subjects and interests.

While acting as a professional social forum for employers to connect with applicants or search for potential employees, LinkedIn is used for so much more than that. Having students post professional resumes there and then contacting them about the job market and the business world around them keeps them in touch with reality and the endless possibilities through a targeted education.

Access millions of documents and hundreds of scientific news feeds by using LabRoots, a social networking site catering to scientists, engineers and technical professionals. Besides the plethora of information, it helps stay connected with colleagues and peers. Pulling students into the mix gives them a cutting edge feel and insight into precious tools and information.

Ijad Madisch founded ResearchGate, which is similar to LabRoots bringing scientists together for collaboration. The difference really lies with the mission and the creators who are scientists working to give visibility to the dedicated researchers all over the world.

Not a science lab, LabforCulture.org provides a place for artists to start blogs or an art group as well as connect and share information. Mostly made of Europeans, LabforCulture.org also highlights art news, events and exhibitions and helps artists find jobs and learn more about funding their projects. Teachers can use this for motivation and to help students get a feel for other artists’ work.

Focusing on the gallery concept, CultureInside creates space for online galleries and actual galleries. It might just be an artist’s dream if used correctly. With the guidance of a teacher, students can profit from their creativity as well. There’s also a feature called lightbox, which connects artists and helps promote artwork in other artists’ lightboxes.

GogoYoko began as a solution to the problem many musicians and artists have. They don’t make the money they deserve. Sharing and streaming music through GogoYoko keeps users listening and needing more, so teachers can use it to do the same. On top of that, GogoYoko helps musicians and artists sell and promote their music.

If there’s concern about privacy, Sgrouples promotes itself as a networking site that allows users to have ultimate control over who belongs to what group. It’s supposed to reflect how we click together with our “small” group. More importantly, the site doesn’t share anyone’s information, so staying private really means anything shared, remains in that group.

A French video sharing site, DailyMotion adds an edge to social media by presenting users with a “news” feed of the latest videos. Teachers can use it for themselves in order to keep up-to-date on bizarre and informative social networking but also for posting their own videos or sharing some of the unique videos available through DailyMotion.

The New York Times, Mashable, Wired, and Time magazine among others tout RebelMouse as the best tool for organizing all the social media networks any one individual uses. While also used by publishers or larger organizations, RebelMouse brings the many networks together for one person and creates a presence that fits a teacher’s agenda.

Another powerful social networking manager, HootSuite makes it easier to access various forms of social media and analyze how valuable the use of one media is over another. Sometimes getting caught up in the social media craze can be overwhelming so using HootSuite helps make sense all the media at the same time.

Social media doesn't have to take students attention away from their school work. It can actually provide the forum you need to reach your students in a more meaningful way.

By creating a private Facebook group, you can post assignments, lecture via Facebook Live, and answer student questions via comments and private messages. While face-to-face teaching has definite advantages, this is a great way to connect with students who would otherwise be unable to attend a traditional classroom (for health reasons or because they live in a remote area, for instance). Such a class could also be used to augment the standard curriculum for students who fall above or below the norm.

One of the key challenges for educators is to keep the momentum going when students are on spring or winter break, or when they have to stay away from school due to harsh winter weather. Posting assignments, projects, and discussions on social media can help students keep up the momentum in their school work and help you, as an educator, avoid having to go back and review quite so much material at the end of the break. This would be a good occasion to use a learning management system (LMS) that keeps track of student assignments and records delivery of student work.

Encouraging teamwork and collaboration can be difficult in classrooms with limited time, especially if your institution covers a broad geographic area that makes it hard for students to get together after class. Social media can provide the forum a student group needs to share work, critique projects, and to collaborate on an assignment.

One educator, a professor of art at Penn State University, created an iTunes U class where students could view and evaluate each other's projects. She amassed more than 58,000 students.

While parents and advisors are a vital link between educators and students, it can sometimes be tricky to forge a relationship and start a dialogue with them. It's not always realistic to send messages home with students and busy schedules often mean that the parents and advisors who would benefit most from a one-on-one conference are unable to attend such a session.

With most classes, you only have an hour or two, at the most, to get students excited about the topic and encourage them to share their thoughts and opinions. If the discussion is slow getting started, you might have to shut it down just when it was getting beneficial.

With social media, you can transfer the classroom discussion to a Facebook group or similar forum and keep the discussion going long after class has adjourned.

Writing has evolved in the Internet age from writing in a vacuum to participating in the worldwide conversation. Writing on the web is much different from writing for an academic journal. Such writing requires shorter sentences, shorter blocks of texts, links to sources, and graphics to break up the "sometimes considered boring" text. However, these are skills most students will need as they begin their careers.

Having students create and write a blog has many advantages. It not only introduces them to the quirks and special format of web writing, but it gets them researching a particular subject or topic by reading articles online and in the habit of writing regularly.

A good blog also requires students to respond to comments and questions, be able to source copyright-free images (and upload their own images), and cite sources. It also provides a good start to a digital footprint for potential employers to see when it comes time for them to start their job search.

It's now easier than ever to share ideas and successes with other educators from around the United States and beyond. By "friending" and following educators you admire, you can see what is working for them in a similar setting to yours and adopt their techniques to help your students succeed. In this global age, no educator has to recreate the wheel. They just have to put together a strong professional learning network.

https://www.schoology.com/blog/impact-social-media-education-student-engagement-tactics

Implementation in Schools?
When it comes to social media, schools tend to adopt different positions. It’s a general consensus that they’re useful when it comes to sharing information or organizing the school tasks. And at the same time, the social networking is blamed for the lack of attention in students during classes.

But an increasing trend of adopting social media in school is starting to show. And since students already devote a lot of time for social media and connecting with others outside school hours, why not do it during school as well?

It’s a matter of practicability, really, because it makes perfect sense to use the online universe to communicate with your students since they’re already there most of the time. There’s no need for another case study about the usage of social media in schools. You simply need to walk through the hallways of any school or colleague to see kids of all ages totally immersed in their smartphones. Browsing their news feed, sharing photos on Instagram of sending Snapchat messages has become a part of their daily routine.

How Can Teachers Penetrate the Online World?
Moodle and Blackboard are just two examples of learning management system that involves online learning for more than 10 years now. Slowly but steady, such systems will lead to the actual implementation of social media within classrooms. And the best tool available for teachers is social media itself. Only by being open-minded and using the technology themselves will they be able to really reach out to students.

“The best teachers I’ve ever had have used technology to enhance the learning process, including Facebook pages and events for upcoming projects” – Katie Benmar, Freshman

 As the above statement emphasizes, students also react very positively when a teacher is willing to use their methods and adapt them as part of the educational process. And it makes perfect sense since a homework has a certain strictness about it, but an online chat discussing a certain book gives students the ability to open up and share their opinions.

Daring Teachers
Of course, the examples of teachers already implementing social media in classes are far numerous that we can know of, however, there are a few that did such a great job that their students almost made them viral. For example, a biology teacher from Bergen County proposed a challenge to his students. They had to debate over the subject of meiosis on Twitter by using a specific hashtag. This is a great opportunity for students to have fun and learn at the same time. As you need to know your meiosis in order to compress it into 140 characters.

“We live in a digital ecosystem, and it is vital that educational institutions adapt”

Carla Dawson – Digital Marketing Professor at the Catholic University of Cordoba Professor Dawson really has a valid point there as history showed us all that, no matter how strong the resistance, technological progress and new trends will eventually become a standard. Of course, this applies to developed countries that already have a well-structured traditional educational system. It’s a totally different situation when it comes to developing countries that are still struggling to find their way.

A Stronger Community Through Social Media
The benefits of social media in the education process doesn’t have to stop at the teacher-student relationship. There are a lot of other benefits that can be extracted from the use of social networking at higher levels as well. For example, principals or administrators can find a new way to integrate social media. Like sharing school news via social networks, holding online meeting with the parents or even starting fundraising for different projects and social media can quickly become the only channel of communication since we’re living fast-paced lives, parents are usually busy with work and cannot attend school meetings. But this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in touch with events or be able to check on their kids every once in awhile. Just like in every other field, communication is vital and if it can be done easily with the help of social media, why not go for it?

It may not be criteria just yet, but soon enough questions like ‘Does this school have a Facebook page?’ could become just as important as the things that parents are asking right now. Like, how well equipped the library is or what are the optional classes their child can be part of.

https://csic.georgetown.edu/magazine/social-media-reshaping-todays-education-system/

The great thing about using social media is that you soon learn who the experts are in particular fields and subjects. When you start following these experts you learn more and gain useful content from them, this empowers you to produce great results.

Social media has the ability to broaden your perspective on various subjects and gives illuminating, instant content that is new. You have the opportunity of engaging experts to get answers on topics that you may need help in.

Learning colleges have the ability to connect with students through social media networks such as Facebook, Google Plus groups, and YouTube. These channels can be used to communicate campus news, make announcements and provide students with useful information. This builds engagement between the College and students which help tackle many student issues through the group interactions.

Institutions can share supportive and positive posts that reach all students that are connected to the networks and pages. You can initiate hashtags on social media to engage students and online discussions that are helpful. Video is a prominent tool in social media trends that are effective and you can use it to share useful videos that inspire students and help them in their course subjects.  Through social mediums such as YouTube, Facebook or Instagram live video the engagements between students and the institution can be sustained. It is advisable to be selective about which social platforms to use for the best practice.

Social media offers audience and subject monitoring tools that are useful and it is one of the best platforms to extract data. You can find out how the majority people feel about a particular topic or how experts perceive and advice on specific issues.

This can help students compile and produce useful content for research. Whether students are working on an assignment, working on a project or trying to gain more insight on a subject, some of the best information and results can be extracted from social media.

Learning management systems is a networking software that delivers educational programs and gives institutions other administrative activities. Social media learning in LMS can include instant chat functions, video, forums to share info and other lesson resources to help students.

Most LMS’s come with built in social media integration and this drives instant interaction between the users and the system. The system strengthens student participation and makes team projects easy to collaborate.

The system exists to tackle student and learning related issues to improve education schemes. It is beneficial for institutions to use popular Learning management systems with social media integration to have the best reach and effect through the system. Other social learning benefits are live conferencing systems, webinar capability, share group reviews, blogs and much more.

Learners can build social credibility

Building a brand through the social networks can help students build a portfolio for their career. The platforms can be used to start sharing work while a student is still in the learning space. This is beneficial to the launch of a student’s career it demonstrates the learning process has developed through their social media.

By reflecting on educational background and gaining exposure on social media builds social credibility and students come across as people who can offer their expertise in specified fields. This prepares and positions your career to have social credibility.

As social networks interactions advance in education systems, social media will become the number one means for solving education problems. The important benefit that networks build is the many helpful and beneficial tools and access that make learning become a pleasant process. A digital marketing qualification can inspire learners to know about the role of social media in education. This can lead to various social media and marketing job paths.


https://www.lcibs.co.uk/the-role-of-social-media-in-education/

 

Remember that thousands of students everywhere are studying the same thing right now -- study networks don't have to be limited to students from just one school.

Continue the conversation: Starting a collaborative study network to tap into the group mind can save everyone time and effort.

Organize learning resources: Social media tools can help keep course information organized and accessible.

Supplement course materials: Social media can help identify additional content to reinforce or extend core instruction.

Social media no longer has to be an obstacle to studying; it can help students create and manage a study community, make the best use of study time, and find new resources to help them learn and retain knowledge.

https://www.mheducation.com/blog/thought-leadership/how-social-media-can-help-students-study.html