Social Networking Sites and Education

Social networking sites are fun and a good way to get and stay in touch with friends you don’t see very often. They offer games, jokes, funny pictures, and quizzes to keep you entertained, but they have also had a more practical use – a positive impact on students, teachers, and education in general. Schools can make their own sites – like UML’s facebook page – to advertise, post events, alert students of available resources, and numerous other activities. Social networking sites also offer a more impersonal form of communication between classmates and teachers so that even the shyest student can ask their questions and make their comments. Purdue University, in West LaFayette, Indiana, developed an interesting use for social networking sites that works very much to the benefit of the teachers and the students. They created a program called ‘Hotseat’ which can be accessed by facebook, twitter, and mobile devices. Hotseat is designed as a forum for students to raise questions, make comments, and rate what other students have to say to make it easy for teachers to judge how well the class actually understands the material and to see where the most confusion is. The conversation is generated from a topic that the teacher will propose about the material, and from there the students participate in a discussion. Based on the comments presented in this site, the program seems to be working rather successfully.