Do not interfere. Not interfere with working professionals! This brief response reflects the confusion that is going on in the mass media in relation to education.

Everyone must work honestly and professionally. Teacher and students should be aware of current events (the media). But the basis of education should be to develop students' abilities on the basis of the society developed truths and moral values. Immediate assessment of the situation should not be imposed on students. Students must have their own opinions about society and nature.

some teachers attempt to use it in a complex way, but others apply it in a very simple and efficient such as a professor who has been using Facebook to discuss clinical cases. he posts the clinical cases before classes to stimulate discussion with great interest, not only among students, but former students and colleagues. In the classroom, discussion flows much more thorough and consistent, because it happens from a prior knowledge

Use of social media as a medium of teaching or analysings social issues has not yet been explored properly. 

One of my colleagues has recently defended a thesis with the following title: "Supporting collaborative learning among Cuban university students through the use of social software". In his work he presented many case studies that can be valuable for you even when they were conducted in higher education.

His email address: robec(at)uclv.edu.cu

Let's talk. No one is against the media. Teacher needs to know about the innovations and inform students. But the media often appears pseudo-scientific information. Therefore, the basis for the teaching of knowledge must be confirmed by practice. And, most importantly, the teacher should teach the student self creatively analyze the data. It is impossible to develop such abilities in mechanical perception of information in the media.

I have the impression that someone is missing the point we are being asked. The question doesn't seem about the thruths, lies and mistakes in the social media, but in their use as teaching tools for specific purposes. I am sure that we are just scratching the surface of their teaching powers, particularly in fostering students team engagement and their ability to share knowledge and express themselves. That can work both for secondary and higher education. No need to insist on how useful Twitter can become, for instance, as a source to collect information for a PhD thesis.

And I am very interested to know about experiences, successful or not, already tried in that respect

Las relaciones y las interacciones sociales son clave para la vida de las personas en la sociedad, en el trabajo, en la familia, en el ocio y la recreación. A tal efecto las habilidades sociales deben de ser educadas desde la más tierna infancia.

El respeto, el turno de palabra, la postura, la mirada, la comunicación, la cooperación, los valores morales, la moralidad, deben de ser educadas. Un ingeniero, un médico, un abogado, un maestro, un albañil, un fontanero, etc deben de tener conocimientos propios de su materia y tener autoridad en conocimientos en dicha materia, pero además debe de tener unas buenas habilidades sociales y estas deben de educarse, en la educación infantil, en la educación primaria y en la educación universitaria, con programas diseñados para ello. Si se diseñan programas para enseñar estas habilidades sociales deben también diseñarse propuestas de evaluación.. 

Dear Pedro! Thanks for a wonderful speech. I listened to a concert like Joaquín Rodrigo.

One project comes to mind and that is to connect your students with students from other parts of the world via Skype, facebook or any other social media.  This will allow the students to learn about the culture of the other countries in a fun and light way.  These students can keep in touch after the class is over if they chose to.  Evaluation could be students working on a project together.  

In order to incorporate social media in any classroom there has to be a social media policy that governs what is or is not allowed.   If not properly monitored this can be a disaster so care has to be taken to make sure there are proper controls in place to keep students on target and focused on the lesson at hand and nothing else.

I believe that everyone will agree with the opinion that the key to learning is the professionalism and talent of the teacher. Each professional will find appropriate methods for teaching young people. It is possible to use the media. Or use other modern sources of information. But the main thing is the talent and sincerity of the teacher to his own labor.

Estimados compañeros. Parece que todos estamos de acuerdo en las opiniones que damos. Yo coincido plenamente con lo que indica el profesor Vladimir A. Kuchitsky, el profesor Ross o la profesora Carr y somos profesionales de dedicados a la enseñanza universitaria, desde diferentes ramas del conocimiento y en diferentes lugares del planeta.

Pues bien, ni reto va más allá. Podríamos plantearnos un trabajo conjunto y conocer cuáles son las opiniones de los estudiantes, que dicen ellos. Formular un mismo cuestionario de preguntas en nuestros respectivos centros de trabajo y conocer:

Qué comportamientos del profesor consideran los estudiantes universitarios que repercute en su éxito académico.

Qué estrategias didácticas utilizadas por los profesores los consideran que repercuten en su aprendizaje.

Consideran relevantes el aprendizaje en habilidades sociales,

Son útiles para sus vidas personales y profesionales el buen uso de los medios de comunicación,

Estas o preguntas similares pudieran ser formuladas y sabríamos el sentir de nuestros estudiantes y además comparar si en diferentes partes del planeta estos temas tienen más o menos coincidencia. Ello, posiblemente, haría que los profesores cambiáramos nuestras prácticas docentes.

Mi correo electrónico: [email protected] 

I don't really know the level of social fever on technology at your country but in my country Malaysia students at secondary school were highly exposed to social issues through social media to the extent that they have learnt more than what their teachers had taught. This brings to the question whether teachers would be able to cope with this situation and further utilise social media to teach social studies. I would suggest that teachers use social media as triggers for learning or in a proper way to organise some of the materials as a flipped material. Overtime when students using social media they will not only use that for the social purpose but also for the learning purposes.  

At the present there are a huge number of tools. I think we NEED to use them because we are preparing students to be in the world market where they should be familiar with them. It is not a question of being or not a good teacher. If we are good teachers we know this… we cannot be behind the concept of being a good teacher to avoid our personal difficulties in facing these topics.

On the other hand, be natural. Do not worry so much which is the best technology because when we discover it other one will be on the way. Make students be flexible with tools!

I will use a rhizomatic learning approach to identify the convenient tool (social media) for the instructor and  the learners especially. Getting the students involved in selecting what will work for the class is the way to go. What is happening now is that students are getting increasingly experienced with technology usage for their learning while instructors are learning to cope with old technologies...You will run into problems if you force something on them. Let them suggest  a variety of social media with justifications. Again, the same media may not work for all classes. You can repeat this exercise with all the classes you wish engage on social media. You will get very interesting results. The learners form the community of curriculum (rhizomatic learning). Please share how things go. Thank you.

Contrarian view of social media- bad news- 

http://www.anzca.net/component/search/?searchword=eunson&ordering=&searchphrase=all

New Media as Biohazard: 

Social media in social studies is a good blend if proper coordination is put in place to include pedagogic and curricula activities. If this is not ensured, it only then remain a  an internet site for socials rather than planned learning 

Edmodo might be one of a social network platform that you can explore for social media usage in schools.

Why would anyone want to incorporate social media into the classroom, especially when ICT studies show that media distracts from academic achievement?  See PISA 2009 results on the influence of computers in the classroom.  

When we speak about social media and social studies teaching, I can not help recalling the wise poems of Kipling. Listen to these verses one more time. Please.

I KEEP six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views;

I know a person small—

She keeps ten million serving-men,

Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,

From the second she opens her eyes—

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

And seven million Whys!

Some kind of study is being carried out on use of social media in teaching and learning in Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Norway I guess. My assumption is that in my case, I use very little social media such as facebook and twitter are used very minimally, however, youtube is used very frequently. I think, researchgate and academia.edu are also becoming professionally more useful in teaching, if at all, these are also called social media.

Social media tools can be very useful for educational purposes. Specially when talking about students engagement, we have to take into account that most of them are connected to the social web.

In my courses for teacher-preparation in social studies I have utilized social media as a basis for improving teacher-to-teacher networks.

Specifically, we have created in-class pages on Pinterest for "Dynamic Social Studies Instruction" and have required students to follow some social studies leaders in the field on Twitter to stimulate class discussions.

Both have been very effective at engaging the learners, however, I would hesitate to see much value in these beyond repositories of ideas.  Personally, I don't think social media tools are great for content creation in most cases - I did, however, have my US history students when I taught K12 education create MySpace (that's how long ago it was!) pages on famous people from history, which did seem to both engage them and bring out some pretty good products but I never measured any correlations with learning.

Dear All:

According to Marshall McLuhan "The medium is the message" social networking should fit admirably well with social studies classes.  But be careful with what you're doing as business models in social networking introduced into academia will completely change the traditional social science message based on print and the book.  In addition using social media in learning, like online learning will further David Noble's prediction of the "commodification of education," in which courses and lessons are distributed as nodes on a vast commercial network, with teachers being mangers of the vast educational machine.  Given the sad state of traditional education today, I'm not sure it's a bad thing.  For those who want to apply social networking to learning, see the article "Business Models in Social Networking" to learn more of the technical aspects of this new IT trend.  http://vbn.aau.dk/files/19150157/falch_3.pdf

Kevin, if you decide to measure your student's learning, make sure you find the right measuring instrument.  Traditional measures based on text and print will result in negligible of negative results.  See popular review of the literature in an issue of Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/., which I would re-title, "Life on the Screen" after a famous work by S. Turkle, Life  on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet.

Mike