Topic 4 = Ethical issues raised by Social Media in Education

Out of my understanding of social media, I believe it plays a huge role in our daily lives whether socially, morally or intellectually as we are govern by it round the clock. In this blog, I am going to discuss the ethical issues raised by social media in education that I consider to be particularly significant.

Social media allows people to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions and share links: allowing information to reach a wide range of targeted and perhaps sometimes untargeted audience. Amazingly, 70% of worldwide students do not use social media for academic purpose [1]. Therefore the message is to enlighten students on how social media can help them to learn more effectively.

Above is a sketch of a student facing a critical thinking skill he/she doesn’t know how to solve. Ironically, underneath that is another sketch that shows how social media would help solve this very problem.

The picture above shows the increasing number of students in social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube etc. This enables universities to reach their students according to their interest, preference and availability [2].

Social networks like Facebook is a bridge between students and universities. Students can also even share their ideas about technical solutions; they can also network with other students in the same university or any other university around the world. However, some university may think that the social media is a distraction to students but in fact social media is a dynamic tool, which support students to learn effectively.

Social media does not only help with study it also can also help in many other ways, you need to know the tools that are available and how it can support you. There are more detailed explanations in the video below.

My social media life is pretty much fun because I do take some courses from social media sites like Coursera.org and YouTube.com. Most of these materials are provided from the best lecturers from the top universities in the world. They are a number of students like me from all over the world where we share our ideas and comments to help others. Indeed one of my favorite place to study for computing course is online as IT is a rapidly changing course hence it is really hard to find up to date information in books because by the time it get printed out for sale, a new finding is out, Hence that is why we need to know about the ethical issues raised by social media in education. For example most of these online course are for free but some courses may have fees, T&C, etc. Overall the moral of the lesson is that when you are online please do take care of your privacy, comments, posts and tweets as one stupid tweet can have a disastrous effect on your life, learn a lesson from Justine Sacco.

References:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCPztmIM4vg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOXPBYx5AOU