Social Media as a Modern Learning Tool

Few years ago, going back to school would mean new pencils, eraser, or
new notebooks. Nowadays, students still carry the stationery to school, but it’s
rare to find students without gadget on their hands, gadget such as handphone,
tablet, laptop, or netbook. Gadgets have become such a trend among students,
so do the features, for example social media. Teenagers now often communicate
through social media. Even though they have handphones, most of it are modern
enough that they choose internet over phone calls to communicate. Teenagers
now often use internet-based applications to communicate such as Whatsapp,
Line, Twitter, or Facebook because these applications have more features that
teenagers need. Almost every student now knows or uses social media. Most
schools have also improved their teaching tools using various kind of electronic
devices, so it’s impossible that students and teachers would be separated from
technology and yet, social media. The students and teachers should maximize
the use of social media in the classroom, especially in modern school, because it
improves students' skills, assists student in learning, and maintains a neat class.

First, the use of social media in the classroom should be maximized

because it improves students' skills. In this modern world many skills are
required to get a decent job, and social media helps students improve some of
the skills. Social media can improve students' language skill. Social media has a
broad connection, it’s globally connected. By using social media, students can
practice their communication with others, and they don’t have to do it face to
face. They can easily talk to foreigners or their peers. If students are too busy to
socialize in real life, they can practice their communication on social media. They
also can read many articles or e-books shared on social media. They could easily
search for interesting reads that would help them learn more. By communicating

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and reading often, they will learn new things and references they didn’t know
before. Once their linguistic skill is improved, they will be able talk confidently to
the public. Not only language in talking, social media will also help their language
in writing. New words and phrases will help them in their grammar and
vocabulary. Besides, unique and various article contents may expand their
knowledge about the topic they are writing. These will make their writing more
interesting. Also, students' technology skill will improve, since they're using
gagdet to access social media, they learn to operate the gadget and to run social
media. This keeps the students updated with the latest technology and make
students understand technology better.

Second, the use of social media should be maximized in the classroom

because it assists students in learning. It provides the class a faster access to a lot
of resources. A lot of information is available on social media. Some of the
information may be something new to the class that it can serve as a learning
source that will help students and teachers in learning. They also get to get the
information faster as they only need to search for it online, then pick the most
proper one. They need not to search through shelves of books, so this really
saves time. Social media can also keep the lessons interesting. Using social
media, other method of learning can be created. Instead of doing conservative
way of learning, they can create a modern way of learning which requires
students to be active in class. For example, the students can do individual or
group project. The project can be a public survey for a research, or a digital
poster. Once they finish the project, the students will publish it to their social
media. Also, once their work is published, many people would be able to see or
give comments. This can make the students proud of themselves and not lose
interest in learning. In social media, people can choose not to publish their face if
they are shy, or they can be completely anonymous. This can help shy students

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to contribute more on the class. They might be too shy to join but they actually
want to. They would be able to express their feelings and creativity more
through social media. This will help them communicate with their peers and
teachers. Gradually, this will help them speak to the public more confidently as
they’ve practiced it through social media.

Third, social media should be maximized in the classroom because it

maintains a neat class. Using social media, teachers can create an online forum
or group for the class. In the forum, students can post what have they learned in
the class, also publish their tasks or projects. The forum would keep track of the
classroom’s learning records, keeping it organized. There would be a clear list of
the lessons the class has learned, or achievements students has gotten. Teachers
can also post homework assignments or lesson plans for the students. If the
teacher only announces it verbally, there might be students who didn’t take
notes on it and later would forget about it. But using social media forum,
teachers can be sure that all students would know about the announcement
because it was posted online. Teachers can also inform about the schedule or
upcoming events in the class, so students would get prepared and up to date. If
some students happen to be absent from class, they can easily review what has
been happening and what is going to happen in the class once they get back to
school.

People should make use of technology to enhance their life. Social media
is an example of technology that can be used to maximize learning in class. Both
students and teachers should use it because social media can improve students’
skill. Besides that, social media also assists student in learning and maintains a
neat class.