Use of Social Media in Education

Most educators realize the usefullness of using different mediums in the classrooms as an aid to learning. From textbooks to audio cd's to movies and discussions there are numerous ways and portals through which learning can be accomplished. Yet, is social media one of these portals?

The use of social media allows its viewer to connect what they've learned in their textbooks to what is really out there.These scenarios and concepts that are brought to life, by actual accounts from people around the world, are most likely the best possible models then any textbook could depict. Also, the student because more informed about their society and social networking.

Yet, the downfall of social media is that it can never and should never replace the classic textbooks of the classroom. Also, when viewing social media one becomes easily distracting by other events that are happening on the network that (unfortunately) have nothing to do with the academic subject in question. I have only to flashback to earlier on in the week, as I was lulled away from my task of bookmarking articles for Materialism and Idealism, into watching an Onion video about how robots were destined to take over the world. For now, I beleive that social media should be used as the unique supplemental information that it is while being appropiately balanced by other useful portals for information.