Education finds a new world in Social media

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Education finds a new world in Social media
By Wannapa Khaopa,
Onravee Tangmesang
The Nation. 8/11/2010

While wary of its downside, teachers welcome closer student ties

Social media fulfils teaching. It helps teachers approach more students and creates more intimate relationships. Many educators are happy with such changes and recently shared with The Nation how it has influenced their teaching.

However, social media has both good and bad sides and teacherS warn internet users to use it properly and carefully; what they type and post can affect their real life and security.

Wellknown art guru Patravadi Mejudhon who is also the founder of Patravadi High School in Hua Hin and an English language teacher at the school, said she assigned students to hand in their daily diaries written in English to her via Facebook (Fb). "I can immediately send back the checked diaries. If they are online and have questions, they can ask me immediately, too."

"Fb also gets us closer. In the past, I just met and taught students in class, so only sometimes could I teach them life skills though I really wanted to. Now, I know many things about them, including their personalities, perspectives or even their personal problems," she said.

Renowned English language teacher and writer Andrew Biggs has also used both Fb and Twitter as new channels to educate Thais eager to learn English. He now has about 60,000 followers on Twitter and 5,000 friends on Fb.

"You have instant access to communication with people. It's very fast and very terse. I like that. That's my kind of writing. It's very timely. If I write a book, it takes a month to come out. But using social media, I write it right now and people know immediately. It's instant and you get reaction immediately," he said.

Kasetsart University (KU)'s Agricultural Faculty Assistant Dean Tanin Kongsila is really active. Not only does he use his personal Fb to advise his students on education and other problems, but also he takes care of the faculty's Fb to disseminate educational activities to students, teachers and personnel there.

"I'm online almost round the clock, making it available for students to consult," Tanin said. "Also, I've often posted the Lord Buddha's teachings on my Fb's wall to indirectly teach students morality. I'm happy that it received good feedback. Many of them later posted comments and discussions."

Mahidol University (MU)'s Faculty of Liberal Arts lecturer Chanokporn Puapattanakun uses social media to gather different instructional media, such as videos, articles and pictures for her students.

Jonas Sukgul, an MU student said he used Fb to collect opinions from friends on issues related to education. "I got many different useful opinions than I expected. Fb also makes us more intimate with each other and our lecturers"

KU's student Kirati Ausahawong, said social media could disseminate rapidly educational activities to almost all students at the Agricultural Faculty. KU has opened its M@xlearn system as a channel for lecturers to post lessons and assign homework and for students to search for lessons and hand in their homework.

To prevent problems risky in cyberspace, all warned internet users not to give out important personal information. They also warned that posting improper words could lead persons who post such words to problems in real life.

Benjarut Tapaintong, an educational service officer at MU, said she used to post unclear words that caused misunderstandings, and post some improper words without care, which led to her receiving bad feedback.

Worse problems have tzaken place overseas. The New York Post reported last month that three New York City teachers were accused of inappropriate words. One teacher left comments like, "This is sexy," under girls' pictures. All three had been fired. Abcnews.go.com reported that a teacher in Massachusetts was forced to resign after posting comments describing students as "germ bags" and parents as "snobby" and "arrogant" on Fb.

Andrew said: "Everybody has to be careful about giving out personal information. I have a responsibility that what I am teaching is not pornographic and not obscene."

Moreover, he expressed concern for young people in this social media era. He said TV was not a big thing now. Adults were more worried about young people's mobile phone use.

"Really, the whole world is connected on the mobile phone. This is the new television of the 21st century TV is a little bit old fashioned now," he said "You can get too deep into social networking to the point where you actually no longer social network with people on a onetoone basis, which is the most important social networking you can do. The internet is not really social."

"Your real social network is who you see, speak to and meet for lunch." Are you on Fb collecting lots of friends because you want to be loved? So, just find one person who loves you. You will discover that one person who loves you is more important than 5,000 names on Fb or 60,000 names on Twitter," said Andrew.