NING IN EDUCATION: SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY
Updates
Eventually, social media communities will transform the educational system forever. There is no doubt that online communities are our future. And talking about social media, we mean not only the biggest networks like Facebook and Twitter. There are actually many ways to use social networking in education.
Ning is the perfect social media builder for universities, colleges and other educational institutions to establish quality community that will completely change and enrich communication with the students.
Recent research shows that young people overuse social media tools constantly. In fact, recent surveys show that 66 percent of people older than 16 years old have at least one social media account. Although we cannot get any statistics sorted by age groups, it is crystal clear that college and university students are the demographic that is affected the most by the social media. Usage rates are really high among them.
For instance, the study conducted in a National School Boards Association revealed that about ninety six percent of the students were using social media resources. This is quite an astonishing number. Moreover, half of these students admitted that they use online networks to discuss study-related topics.
Even though we are talking about the survey in one institution, there are doubtfully any differences in other schools. This is a clear indicator that social media has affected the way students communicate, and educational institutions should not hesitate to adopt social media networking and have to do everything they can to follow this trend.
Social Media in Education
When we are talking about social media in education, we mean all kinds of social media platforms that are meant to connect people and let them online communicate with each other. With the help of social media, everyone who is involved in educational process can better understand each other’s needs and interests.
But if we look closer to the relationship between educational institutions, social media and college students, we will see that many schools prefer to ban the most popular online social resources not only for students, but even sometimes for staff as well.
The reason for this restriction is clear: school and college administrators want to protect their students. It is also not always clear what educational benefits can social networking bring. As a result, despite the general interest to the topic, schools stay dramatically behind in the adoption of online social media.
And talking about interest, it is indeed very high. A national survey conducted back in 2010 that covered teachers, librarians, and principals, found that the majority support the idea of creating special networks that would improve the communication with students and staff and where educators could share study-related resources and information.
Moreover, the same survey showed that the educators who already used social media were more supportive to the idea of creating own online network as they could easily see the benefits of such collaboration.
Ning has provided a great number of communities based on an educational topic that benefit in many ways: such as uniting learners and mentors from around the world to share their experiences across cultural and geographic boundaries and promoting innovation in education through the use of technology. Communities can do wonders.
Ning in education
Here are just a few of our favorite educational communities:
- My BYU Ad Lab is a community organized by student, who run ad agency where BYU undergraduates can find information about agency disciplines and communicate through real-world project application.
- Classroom20.com is a social community for those interested in Participative Technologies, Social Media, and Web 2.0 in the classroom.
- The University of California, Riverside uses Ning for their website.
- iPads for education is trying to promote all kinds of technology in the educational process.
- Vanderbilt Web Community is a network that unites designers, web developers, and online communicators who work with Vanderbilt.
- Education Beyond Borders is a community that helps like-minded educators from all over the world to communicate, develop their professional skills, and share teaching and learning resources.
- UB Communicators Network (University at Buffalo) (University at Buffalo) helps the network members collaborate around different topics and share information about networking in the university.
- Teach Book is a professional online network for teachers. It is an impressive database of educational information, such as lesson plans and video tutorials.
- Northland College provides all the information for their students about college students’ life.
If you also use Ning for educational purposes, please, share your experience with us! We would also like to invite you to share how are you using Ning to enrich your students’ lives and facilitate their studying process.
Let’s start create educational website with Ning
