The Benefits of Using Social Network Services in Education

Francisca Yulia Martaningrum
081214069

Internet now becomes very popular around the world. All people, from children, teenagers, adults, until old people, are familiar with internet. It is because internet provides many things. It provides information, entertainment, education, and many things which can be learned easily. One of internet services which very popular is social network services. Social network services are a kind of tool on the internet which has a function to make a social relationship between one to another better by sharing their profile, interests, activities, projects, etc. Facebook, Twitter, Ning, and My space are some example of social network services.

From that definition, many people then explore social network services to be a media for their activities. By the time, social network services are also popular in education. Many of schools and also teachers use social network services to support their teaching learning activity. Some of them even use them as their main media in teaching and learning. There are many teaching learning activities which can be done by using social network services. The examples are: writing about something and uploading it on the internet, making a discussion forum and asking the students to join the online discussion, and many more.

Many educators decide to use social network services as a media in education because they believe that social network services can give many benefits. The purpose of this essay is to discuss some benefits of using social network services in education. The benefits are: introducing globalization to students, helping students to improve their communication skill, and developing students’ confidence.

The first benefit of using social network services in education is that it can introduce globalization for students. As many people know, they now live in a globalization era, which emphasizes technology and also the use of English as the main language in the world. Learning about technology and English are very useful for the students to face the globalization era. By using social network services, students are demanded to use computers. It means that students can learn how to deal with technology, especially computers. Besides that, students will also learn English because the main language which is used in computers and internets is English. Therefore, it is important for teachers, who are the learning facilitators, to introduce students to globalization.

The second benefit of using social network services in education is that social network services can improve communication skill which is very useful in their social life. Using social network services means that students will have interaction with others. It can be in the form of sharing, discussion, and so on. By doing those activities, students will learn how to criticize something, how to share their opinion, and how to receive or accept others opinion. Those skills are very important for students as a participant of society.

The third benefit is that social network services can make students more confident. It is because in using social network services, students will be automatically demanded to share some things about them and also to show what they have done on the internet. If they share their writing, their feeling, or their opinion about something, of course the readers are wider. It will be very different if they do not upload them because the readers or the viewers are only their teachers and their friends. So, using social network services are good because students will not only present something to a small group of people, but to a wide range of people. They will face or receive many feedbacks not only from their teacher but also from their friends from outside.

They are some benefits of using social network services in education. Besides introducing students to globalization, developing communication skill, and making students more confident, there are still many benefits of applying social network services in education. Social network services will be very helpful under teachers and parents control. On the contrary, they can give bad effects to students if there is no control from teachers or parents. So, one successful key to maximize the benefits is to control the students while they use social network services.

References:
1. Benefits and opportunities. (2007). Digizen.com: Benefits and Opportunities for Learners. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from http://www.digizen.org/socialnetworking/benefits.aspx
2. Social network service. Wikipedia. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service