Social Media and the Impact on Education

Social Media and Home Education

Magda CHELLY

Hana MATAILLET

CEO, WinAkademy
WinAkademy Soutien Scolaire
Paris, France
infos@winakademy.com / http://www.winakademy.com

Commercial Department, WinAkademy

WinAkademy Soutien Scolaire
Paris, France
infos@winakademy.com / http://www.winakademy.com

AbstractThis document describes the impact of the social media

on education and home schooling or tutoring. The new
technologies are used by children every day for different
purposes. We tried to analyze the use of these new technologies
through social media in educational organizations.
Keywordstutoring, education, social media, teaching, new
technologies

I.

INTRODUCTION

The education field has gone through significant changes

over the past few years. With the developments in technology,
that have helped to design better and more advanced learning
tools, new subjects have been added to the educational
programs and teaching methods have evolved.
The 21st century has become a digital world that has borne
digital natives. These children have never lived without a
computer and spend hours online looking for information,
creating or sharing it.
Nowadays, web environment offers limitless virtual
opportunities through the use of social networks.
Those social networks or social media are becoming more
and more influent and widely spread. In fact they are the new
tools of the digital generation. They affect a very large public
composed of children, teenagers and adults, and give
opportunities to better communicate in a community and to
create close links with people around the world.
The objective of this paper is to show how social media has
impacted the education of our children and how it could be
integrated for education purposes.
The leitmotiv is based on the existing popularity of these
social media and their integration into educational
organizations for learning purposes.
The structure of the paper is as follows. First, it will present
an overview on how social media has gained momentum in
todays world and educational system and how children have
used these networks to communicate better. Secondly, this
paper will present how social media has been integrated into

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schools, colleges and secondary schools and the positive

impact it has had on childrens lives.
II.

SOCIAL MEDIA

The past decade has seen the rise of social media, with the
current dominance of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, the last
one being the second largest search engine in the world.
What is exactly social media and how it is used?
Social media networks are interactive and collective tools
on the web that give people the opportunity to create, share and
publish information, build communities and communicate
around the world.
As Social Media has become a viable marketing and
customer service channel, many organizations are looking to
quantify and understand the impact of their overall marketing
investment of their business in the industry.
Quantifying the impact of social media includes multiple
variables and companies or organizations often fail to
understand and value their efforts properly in terms of the
potential long-term business benefits of this type of channel.
The companies cannot seem to see the profits generated by the
integration of social media into their commercial and
marketing strategy.
What about education and educational organizations?
As a matter of fact, the impact of social media is not limited
to industries; education has also been influenced by the social
media communities. Actually, the movement of social
networking has already taken place in general education and is
looking to leverage the potential of social networking for
educational purposes.
The use of this new channel to communicate has helped
children, teenagers and adults to grow and be completely
integrated into the new digital world.
Although it can be harmful to children in the way that they
can lose focus on school and can reduce their academic
performance, it can also be beneficial for teachers and for
children and become a learning environment, only if it is used

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responsibly and correctly, under the monitoring of parents for

young kids.
Educational organizations that implement systems in order
to connect and inform the various actors of Education have not
yet quantified the impact of the social media on educational
purposes [1].
III.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATION

Understanding the impact of social media on the

educational system is very complex and requires multiple
variables.
With the ever-growing amount of information being found
and produced on the web, through blogging sites to social
networking sites and now niche social media, children are now
largely immersed into a digital world.
99% of children are behind their computers participating to
any online activity while only 10% participate in class. A
change in education is clearly needed and has actually well
started; educators are no longer the main source of knowledge,
Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook, all those websites
offer endless resources for students. However, we need to teach
the students how to effectively use these resources.
The 21st century learning skills have changed in many
ways. We could define them by the level of collaboration kids
and teenagers have with each others, associates and specialists
globally, and the connectivity, in other terms how fast they
connect to resources by using broadband access. Connectivity
and collaboration are two main capacities that give a brand new
set of skills that are updating the reference by which we are
measuring scholar attainments, student standards and student
learning capacity. Thus, it is important to change the way of
teaching and the way students learn.

These media give the ability to rapidly connect with

students and highly influence them. Therefore this new
communication channel affects the educational system. Moods,
comments and recommendations can be shared and advices
and expertise provided.
For a new innovative educational organization, its
important to enlarge its perspective and try to incorporate
social media into the organizations strategy.
Many organizations use the Facebook platform to quantify
social spinoffs of a new service or new project, by estimating
the number of Like, for example. This number is becoming a
real social indicator and could give a precise product or service
performance.
The impact of social media indicators cannot be neglected.
As noted previously, those are important as they help drive
product sales or a new service performance. In education, they
could show the importance of the students interests in different
educational topics, for example.
Education organizations must be aware of this important
channel and should take it into account in their communication
strategy in order to have a major impact on their pupils and
students.
IV.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The template is designed so that author affiliations are not

repeated each time for multiple authors of the same affiliation.
Please keep your affiliations as succinct as possible (for
example, do not differentiate among departments of the same
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How can social media be used in education without

affecting the students negatively?

With the growth in Internet usage, coupled with the

continuing scope of Wi-Fi, we are observing a real facility to
connect to the social media at any time and in many locations,
with any device. In fact, the availability of wireless could not
be more than helpful to the social media connection, as well as
the new-generation terminals that modify the access to Internet
(smartphones, Android tablets, etc.) [2].

The objective is to use those networks to connect with other

classrooms, globally communicate with students or educational
actors, and enrich the lives of students by bringing interest,
excitement and learning experiences.

As we can see from the graph below, Figure 1, since 1997,

the percentage of Internet connection in educational institutions
is growing to reach a 100% use at colleges and secondary
schools in 2004.

Our research shows the importance of the implementation

of social media platforms, as the future best ways to involve
children and teenagers in learning and knowledge, and to have
a wide open vision of the world.
The benefits that can be drawn from the use of social
networks are the development of creative skills, and the
opportunity for students and kids to be leaders in education and
empower them to grow as digital and global citizens.
The barriers that are encountered when trying to integrate
technology into classrooms or with educational actors appear
with either with privacy issues, from the lack of knowledge
from actors of the education world, or with people against
change.
In order to be efficient, social networks needs to be used as
functional tools and critical resources in an academic way.

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Figure 1. The evolution of Internet Connection in French Educational

Institutions, Source : http://www.senat.fr

We can then conclude that Internet connection is widely

available for all pupils and students.
Technology is infused, especially in developed countries,
where all students have laptop, and have labs available to work
on. (These devices are usually provided by various
foundations).
The students can then reach each other via social networks,
creating groups on Facebook for example and exchanging
information about academic work. [1][2] Actually, Facebook
has already integrated a networking session where students can
join their school network and discuss.
Educational videos exist on Youtube or Vimeo : a way to
learn while having fun.
Of course, there has to be a limit to the use of these social
networks, so that children dont fall into a virtual world and
it always have to remain for education purposes and help the
children in a constructive way.
Social media could also involve the educational actors such
as teachers and tutors, and it could be very helpful and
productive to have them using those networks in a constructive
way. Teachers need resources and support. Professional
learning communities are now different: they have changed
from on-site into professional learning network online.
With this goal in mind, we elaborated a new online
community for pedagogical purposes. This community allows
all the actors to share information with each other and it is a
free platform with pedagogical approaches.

Social networking brings such a positive impact on children

and school: a lot of resources, many connections, people, and
experiences.
There is no time wasted if it is used efficiently, the time is
only used differently.
For example, Skype is being used in schools to
communicate across countries, help to share and exchange
aspects of different cultures, and communicate with new
friends in new places.
School directors or directors of programs should inform the
parents about interesting people to follow or add for their kids
account, such as authors, or artists.
Social networks also help to orientate the kids in their
future career and learn about different types of jobs in different
fields. They can learn about a lot of fields than can educate
them, such as Youtube showing news or up-to-date videos.
Of course the enthusiasm may be impaired a little bit, and
we cannot expect success every time, because children are
interested to chat and have fun, but if school and teachers give
them a real project to be excited about, and set up objectives, it
can work.
We are wondering what are the criteria needed to build
such efficient tools ?
Our researches lead us to the conclusion that the success of
a social media is based on these parameters:
Simplicity
Ergonomy
Interactions
Media : Images and Videos
Personalization
Buzz

Figure 2. The pedagogical community, Source : http://la-pedagogie.com

The image 2 shows the first page of the free pedagogical

online community dedicated to educational actors.
The purposes of this community are to build a real
exchange between experimented teachers and un-experimented
ones and allow every educational actor to speak about their
pedagogical methods and techniques.
V.

SOCIAL MEDIA IN SCHOOLS

When schools organize a big project or activities, for

example, or when they want to put news and information, they
can add it on their Youtube account, Twitter account, Facebook
account.
Schools, students or teachers have created groups and can
collaborate with other groups in different schools, through
social bookmarking sites , or other social networks, and hash
tag the school name or group for example.

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Children need to be attracted by a community platform that

looks like the one they are usually using but with educational
information and applications.
The research also reveals that the impact of a social media
depends on how many followers can be reached through this
media.
Many publishers of "social platforms" enable industrial
companies to build a community spaces with collaborative
measures to support innovation and participatory support
(forum, opinions, votes, share ideas, news feed, members
scoring, answers certification, etc).
These solutions could be adapted to the educational
companies and offer a real rich cooperative space.
In fact, many schools or colleges have already created a
virtual campus where students connect and get their courses
and grades, can get information on teachers, can chat with their
classmates and submit their homework.
In elementary schools, those social networks need to be
monitored by parents, and strict rules need to be established.

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More schools should get involved and build social

networking websites, collaborate with other universities or
schools and create a large network through which students can
study, research, as well as socialize with each other.
In terms of getting pupils and students to show an interest,
social media can prove to be an excellent tool.
It can also allow students the opportunity and the means to
interact with one another in a more collaborative way[3].
VI.

GOING FURTHER

A. Listening and Answering

One of the objectives of these social networking platforms
is to allow the educational company to measure its presence on
social media, analyze the nature of the conversations and the
feeling of Internet users. Teachers could analyze the students
needs by analyzing their conversation and their answers on the
forum.
The objective is for educational institutions to define a
strategy and define the transmitted values on the community.
It is a good way to provide advice, create a connection
between teachers and students and share recommendation,
information.
B. Taking part in conversation
As we said before, it is very important to have interactions
in social networks to allow it to work well and have a growing
reputation. The more users or followers exist, the better it is. In
fact, there should be a member of the educational actors that
will supervise the community and interact with teachers and
students.
A person, such as Community Managers in companies,
could be present to interact with the community members to
answer question. The goal is to help schools and institutions to
better know the real needs of students and parents, and
difficulties they may encounter.
Also, its good and beneficial for the school to connect with
pupils or students and see them excited about a topic and learn
something new.
In terms of profit, these interactions are necessary and give
the social media more power.

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When we look at the popular social media, we can see more

freedom of speech when people talk. We could relate it to the
school community, however we should be very attentive of the
impact of this freedom and this is why values of the school are
so important. [3]
VII. CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES
The objective is for educational institutions to define a
strategy and define the transmitted values on the community.
Our research is based on an approach that takes into
consideration the development of the social media in the
industrial world and the educational institutions.
Results acquainted are promising and let us think of
innovative methods for communicating amongst educational
actors.
In addition, using social media as a means to further
education is a great way to get children involved and to help
them interact. It brings them excitement and interest about
learning and transmitting information.
The rise of social media will gradually lead to a disruption
of the functioning mode of educational institutions, if the
"visibility" of this phenomenon and the "multiplication of
points of contact" primarily affect the student-teacher
relationship models, it will actually lead most schools to
thoroughly review their strategy by implementing more
Information and Communication Technology and social media.
The main goal of this paper is to show the importance of
implementing social media in the daily school life [4].
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[2]

[3]

[4]

Kriek, L., Mobile social media for a private higher education institution
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Hybridisation with Pseudolites and Repeaters for Indoor Positioning
Purposes, ENC-GNSS 2008, Toulouse, Mai 2008, France.
Silius, K., Evaluating the quality of social media in an educational
context, 2011 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference
(EDUCON), 4-6 April 2011, Amman, Jordan.
Van Meter Community School Librarian Shannon McClintock Miller,
Positive Effects of Social Media in Education, New Leaf and Learning
Conference, (YouTube), June 1 2011, United States.

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