Technology plays a vital role in our lives and it is now a part of our lives, and it is here to stay and enhance our living conditions, and the best is yet to come. Integrating technology in educational processes is also another way in which teaching and learning can be made more easy. As technology is broad and covers a variety of things, from robotics to the media and a lot more, it is useful in our lives and it can also be useful in classrooms by the usage of social media.
Social media contains a lot of information that is relevant and corresponds to the contents that are being taught in classes, therefore it would be a good idea to integrate it in teaching and learning processes to enhance the quality of teaching. A variety of social media platforms can be integrated in classrooms, platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Diigo and Scoop It.
Twitter can be used to share information by usage of hash-tags(#) and to research about what is going on, in the world we live in. Teachers and learners can tweet and retweet all the relevant information that their students might need to know, they can also share videos that are content related and links that might help learners get all the information that they need related to their schools works. Learners can also explore Twitter on their own and discover new things, and share them with their fellow classmates and teachers, but when they do this, they must always remember the practices of a good digital citizen in order to avoid having a negative digital footprint and citizenship.
LinkedIn can be used to connect teachers with their other colleagues and students or learners to make their work more productive and successful. Lessons can be shared on this platform and teachers can communicate with other teachers from different schools. This will make teaching a lot easy as teachers will be able to share their lesson plans with one another and they will get a chance to teach using different methods and terminologies, and as many sources are better than one, learners will be exposed to different approaches of content . This will be helpful to all learners as they will all be accommodated with their different learning styles. LinkedIn will also provide learners with many opportunities that are presented to them by other countries and it will also help learners grow technologically and it will also market them to a variety of companies. Schools will also be able to look for sponsors through the usage of LinkedIn as they will be able to connect with the world's professionals. Learners and teachers will have to make sure that they have profiles in order to gain access into LinkedIn.
To enhance teaching and learning, the education system can also make use of Diigo, which is a platform that allow groups of people to search, discuss, annotate and share materials, in this case it can be school materials to one another on the web. Teaching and learning can be made easy by the usage of this platform, as it will allow teachers and students to share their work and notes with one another. It will also allow collaboration, professional and students project collaboration as they are able to share information and discuss it on the web. And teachers can provide them with feedback on the web by simply making comments. This will save time for teachers and learners as everything can be discussed and shared through the web. This will be effective in the teaching and learning processes.
Integrating ScoopIt into teaching and learning processes can also be effective as teachers can write notes in a form of a journal on a specific topic, and their learners can access it by logging into their accounts. This means that learners will also be able to get different versions of the same topic, as it will not be their teacher only writing notes but also teachers from other schools and broadly so. When this platform help them to write their school work and assignments, they must not forget to acknowledge the person that wrote the journal as it will be copyright infringement, which can result them in being in jail.
When all these social media platforms are be integrated into teaching and learning, both learners and teachers must have accounts so that they are able to get access into these social media platforms, as they will be socializing with other people from all over the world, they must also remember to respect their privacy, avoid cyberbullying at all costs as they might end up being the reason behind someone else's death, be able to interpret and understand the information they find online, be able to put the information literacy skills into practice and also respect the copyright laws, as these platforms will be giving them an opportunity to communicate and collaborate with one another. They must always remember to socialise with great responsibility.