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On the trail of Napier exchange’s success, Nick Kearney explained how using an existing platform, Facebook, was not successful. This was explained by the social media website’s association with leisure time and fun; students were very talkative but never produced any materials. Kearney explains that “Facebook is a social space, and not a work space… it is not good for structure, but very good for communication.”
The final social media specific session was Social Media: A Teaching and Learning Experience with Facebook, one of several ‘learning cafes’ that were popular at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN. The session was aimed towards educators and with a tagline as bold as ‘how to implement Social Media into your teaching without increasing your own workload’ it had a popular turnout.
This was more than a simple session where the speakers present their latest findings. Participants were encouraged to discuss the topics in groups with the presenter acting as a guide and mediator between groups. This workshop was of particular importance as it countered the previous session’s argument that Facebook was a poor platform for education because of its close link with ‘social time’. Wim Oostindier explained his success using Facebook and Twitter with his language-learning students, by utilising the websites as continual reservoirs of knowledge and information – even after the course was finished.
The success that Wim Oostindier had using Facebook and Twitter, which was in sharp contrast with the failures observed by Nick Kearney can be explained by the differing usage by their students. Oostindier used Facebook as an educational ‘supplement’ and a way for motivated students to continue their learning, long after classes were over. On the contrary, Kearney’s example of Facebook’s failure as an educational tool had students thrown into a vast pool of strangers, telling them to start socialising and forming groups, a very different and ultimately disastrous approach.
The sessions heard many stories of success as well as a few failures, but the overarching opinion of using social media as an educational tool, was extremely positive. Educators walked away from the session with the knowledge that though social media changes the focus of education from single person to groups, the students’ individual learning experience is enhanced through collaboration and informal learning with their peers.
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Nec ne erant suscipiantur. Harum facilisis adversarium pro ea, cu duis iudicabit sadipscing eam