Impact Of Social Media On Schools

Social media is bringing change in numerous ways around the globe. It has become a vital part of everyone’s life. It is changing the perspective of people about everything. Social Media has a great impact on students, teachers, the staff even on learning, education, the classroom, and everything present in the school.

It helps to transfer an abundant resource of knowledge across boundaries. Social Media has a great impact on the interaction of students with each other, with teachers, and with online knowledge-sharing

behavior leading to outstanding academic performances. When used safely and appropriately, social media can benefit learners to fill in the gaps in learning, aid in accessing course contents, and video clips, transfer instructional notes, and many more. It can become a cheap, efficient, effective, and convenient tool to obtain relevant information.

Let us see how social media affects schools:

1. Effective and Convenient Communication Channel

Social Media proves to be a better communication channel making communication easy and effective. Students can connect with their teachers, and peers at any time and any place. They can ask them questions and get help to solve their doubts, without waiting to be physically present at the school. You can share documents, and video clips, and communicate your ideas with the help of social media.
With social media, teachers can facilitate discussion among classmates about content, post assignments, and class schedules, the announcement of exam dates, increase interest by using new information, keeping them in the loop with the current events happening all around the world.
It can also be useful for parents. They get to know about their children, their progress, academic records, their behavior in school, and many more things by directly asking their teachers on social media. Through social media, parents can be updated on school-related activities, projects, and events that are happening.

2. Acts as a reference desk

Both students and teachers can find concrete information from social media. They can follow informational and relevant social media websites to keep them updated. They learn about current events around the globe to keep you in the loop. They can learn about hard-to-discuss topics like drugs through social media.

The latest data on the various school subjects can be made available on the social media website, to

increase the knowledge of the students. They can get inspiration for school projects and can learn

practical problem-solving methods.

3. Widen your area of expertise with online courses

Social Media enables you to connect with students all over the world. You can increase your enrollment

numbers for online courses provided by you through social media sites. The majority of students rely on social media to get information about online courses like course fees, duration, benefits, syllabi, and class schedules from social media. Therefore, it is the best platform to endorse your online courses.

Additionally, your online courses can impart education to students who cannot attend regular classes and get a formal education. These disadvantaged students will learn about the courses through social media and learn from them with the help of social media platforms offering live chat, uploading and sharing documents, uploading videos, live video lectures, etc.

4. Improves creative element

To develop their skills students can interact with teachers, alumni students, or experts for some inspiration. By joining groups of interest in social media they can explore out-of-the-box ideas and can master their skills.

Students are likely inclined towards online reading especially if it contains eye-catching animations. They can develop stronger reading habits resulting in a drastic improvement in their writing abilities, thereby improving their reading, and writing skills to a large extent. The teachers and parents can share blog posts, articles, and videos on social media which helps to extend student learning beyond the prescribed curriculum.

Students can improve their creative skills by learning them on social media and later practicing them anywhere they want. They can post about their hobbies on social media through photography or videos and later can turn them into a fully successful careers. They can master their skills when learning and practicing them at such a young age which is possible only through social media.

5. Platform to promote your school

It provides an opportunity for your school to connect to a diverse audience which was impossible physically. You can encourage positive behavior, responsibility, and healthy relationships in schools, homes, and the community through social media.
Social Media provides access to an enormous consumer base who are active on one or more social networking sites. For schools the target audience is young people, it provides the best opportunities for awareness about your school and visibility, generating leads, and attracting potential customers to

connect with you. You can highlight the positive aspects of your school, what you can provide to students, your courses, and the opportunities that your school opens up for them. Furthermore, you can advertise special events/programs, and acknowledge student awards on social media. It helps you to create a global brand for your school and stand among the top learning institutes of the world.

6. Global exposure

It empowers students, parents, as well as teachers to communicate and form a community across the globe. Besides the entertainment factor, social media has made it possible for students to find a summer or winter internship, collaborate on international projects, promote success stories, and many more. Students spend most of their time on social media so it is practical to communicate with a student on social media. Therefore, schools should incorporate social media to empower and educate their students. Besides this, it will help them to go beyond their school premises and reach out to people all across the globe. Schools as well as their students, teachers, and other staff can make connections, engage audiences from any part of the world and build a community that will be much more diverse. It will not stop the education process at the student-teacher relationship but extends it to the global community level where students can connect with like-minded peers, and learn from them while breaking constraints of distance and time. Especially, minority students in the school can benefit from socializing by finding others like themselves.

7. Engaging students effectively

Teachers can use visual tools social media platforms provide in the learning process. These tools make communication of ideas, and thoughts related to the subject easy. Discussion among the students related to the content can be initiated by teachers through social media. They can break complex material into simpler smaller segments and help each other to understand each segment properly at their own pace without any pressure. Teachers can discuss issues related to today’s world like cyberattacks, hacking, cyberbullying, and drugs through social media. Social Media aids teachers to discuss any critical topic and sharing posts important to students through social media. With the help of social media teachers can associate many concepts with real-life situations, they can illustrate how they are related to various aspects of nature and human society, thereby making them interesting for students. Through social media, students can read, watch, or hear information multiple times in different contexts over time thus boosting their knowledge retention ability. Additionally, they can learn about different courses depending on their interests which may not be covered in school courses. They can learn about their course content or content outside the course in unique and innovative ways through social media. When teachers use social media in the learning process, students will be more interested and engaged because they spend most of their time on social media. Now, if they are spending more time here, they might as well learn something new.

Conclusion

Social Media has surrounded every aspect of our lives on all sides. It has become a go-to medium for people to interact and it is going to stay here forever. Therefore, schools cannot stay away from it and cannot underestimate its role as a learning tool. It can be used to eliminate various problems that today’s education system is facing like fundraising through social media pages, the safety of children, access to up-to-date resources, and many more. Social Media platform provides students the opportunity to connect, get in touch, access information, and research. A collaborative venture of schools as well as parents must ensure that students make use of such social media platforms with sincerity and not just waste time browsing useless things.