This document discusses the potential benefits of using social media for learning. It argues that social media allows for unprecedented global connection and collaboration. While education has been skeptical, social media may amplify student learning by enabling study groups and social interaction, which research shows enhances success. Social media also has the potential to revolutionize learning by transforming individual students into nodes within a dynamic collaborative network, enhancing communication, problem solving, and bringing diverse perspectives together.

1. A Case for Using Social
Media with Learning
Mrs. Thuleekarn Fongon
No.14 TESOL 5

2. A Case for Using Social Media with
Learning
• Humans, historically divided by geography, culture and
creed, are beginning to connect and collaborate on a
scale never seen before.
• We have launched revolutions throughout the Arab world
and created the most important reference work in the
English language in less than 10 years.
• And no institution is more skeptical about the benefits of
social media than education. But there are also few
institutions that have more to gain from social media.

3. AMPLIFYING LEARNING (1)
• Not every use of social media is remarkable. And some
might be downright problematic, even detestable. But all
media evolves and can be used or misused.
• Writing initially emerged as a
form of record keeping in Mesopotamia. Only later was it
used to tell stories, write laws and record history.
• Educators should be experimenting with how these new
forms of social media can amplify student learning.

4. AMPLIFYING LEARNING (2)
• Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of
Education, discovered that one of the most significant
factors in students’ success was their ability to
participate in study groups.
• We need to focus more attention on how we learn most
effectively, and the signs point toward social interaction.

5. LEARNING THROUGH COLLABORATION(1)
• “The centrality of group effort to human life means that
anything that changes the way groups function will have
profound ramifications for everything from commerce
and government to media and religion.”
• Social media has the potential to revolutionize our model
of learning by transforming individual students from
information silos into smart nodes within a dynamic and
interdependent learning network.

6. LEARNING THROUGH COLLABORATION (2)
• Social media can enhance student communication,
collaboration and problem solving by aggregating
perspectives.
• Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that without diverse
experiences and perspectives you won’t “have enough
dots to connect and one ends up with very linear
solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.”

7. Thank you