RESEARCH PAPER TEMPLATE

North American University

Education Department
M.Ed. in EDLE & CUIN
EDUC 5324: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY INTO EDUCATION
Name: OSMAN GULLE

Date: 9/20/2015

Topic Selected:
Topic 1: What are the Educational uses of Facebook or other social media (e.g. twitter) (K-12 or
higher education)

1. LITERATURE REVIEW:
What does the literature/research say about this issue/topic? By using NAU
Library or Online Search engines, conduct a literature review.

You need to include 5 different sources (book, journal article, web article
etc.) in your review. Try to use current sources as much as possible.

You need to summarize and synthesize your sources by discussing a

common theme or issue.

You don't need to critique your sources

You don't need to evaluate your sources (if the sources are trustworthy,
weather the author has a bias or not)

You need to provide background information such as history and

definitions

Brief Literature Review:

I researched that how can we use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
for educational purposes. I started with Facebook, because the most famous social media
network is Facebook. Jean Reid explaining us the purpose of Facebook; Facebook was
originally created as a network for college students, but it was most often used as a place
to chat about who is hot, whats cool and where the hip action is. It has become a
popular past time for people from the early teens to old age, a way of staying in touch
with family and friends far away, a way of sharing photographs whilst actually on
journeys, a way of making friends, keeping in touch and finding out whats on.
(Reid,2011)
Actually this is not just for Facebook. There are numerous research studies on the
benefits and pitfalls of the use of social networking tools. "Social networking sites have
been rapidly adopted by children and, especially, teenagers and young people worldwide,
enabling new opportunities for the presentation of the self, learning, construction of a
wide circle of relationships, and the management of privacy and intimacy. On the other
hand, there are also concerns that social networking increases the likelihood of new risks
to the self, these centering on loss of privacy, bullying, harmful contacts and more"
(Livingston & Brake, 2010, p. 75) Michael Smith also expresses his apprehensions about
this problems; Now their every thought is published worldwide. In most cases, that is

OK. They are at the age where opinions are formed quickly and expressed loudly. I just
worry that while they are old enough to share their thoughts, they are too young to realize
the consequences. They seem oblivious to the fact that their words often travel outside
their peer group.(Smith, 2012)
Dr. Robin McLean is a middle school agricultural science teacher in the Northern
Burlington County Regional School District, NJ. She had research about using social
media as a professional development tool. She started using Facebook, Twitter and
Pinterest for education purposes. At the end of the research she states that Facebook,
Twitter and Pinterest might not be the best tools for everyone. However, I have found
them to be a source of shared resources, motivation, and commitment to a common
cause. I have expanded my professional knowledge and changed some of my classroom
practices based on resources I have found on them. For me, they are a tool to keep me
current in an ever changing field.(McLean,2014)
How can we solve this problem and focus our students on using social media for
educational purposes? There are reports of 100% usage of social media by US institutions
in a nationwide sample (Silverman, 2012) but the actual evidence (Barnes and Lescault,
2011) appears to suggest that social networks are mostly being used for marketing and
recruitment activities. In order to implement an institution level programmer to support
teaching and learning through social networks (of which there appear to be none), the
enthusiasm of the majority integrationist students and staff would need to be harnessed to
make a case to persuade separatist or agnostic staff who at present may have limited
experience of and skills in social media. In addition, to ensure effective engagement the
whole communication model needs consideration (Light, 1989) including linguistic
competency in writing, e.g. for creating engaging headlines, and strategic issues such as
timing and quantity of updates. For the higher education; Use of social media to assist
transition into higher education has a number of lessons that might usefully be transferred
to educational contexts. Perhaps the single most important lesson that has emerged from
these experiences has been the centrality of the social aspect: both as a preoccupation for
students, keen to establish social contact with their peers, but also as the vehicle for
learning-related interaction, both between students and also between students and their
teachers and institutions. Effective use and understanding of the affordances of social
media is thus essential if staff and wider institutional use of such environments is to take
advantage of the possibilities they offer for teaching and learning purposes. Involving
students themselves in the creation of content for such projects as well as in their
coordination and management offers real advantages to all concerned, though benefits
from ongoing staff management. Engaging staff for such initiatives in a way that moves
beyond initial enthusiasm for their potential into active involvement remains a challenge;
however, an approach that seeks to avoid extra burden on limited staff time by piggybacking on existing initiatives, that seeks also to listen to staff concerns and preoccupations and provides proper support in the use of perhaps unfamiliar tools and
approaches seems more likely to succeed.(Knight, Rochon, Hailey, 2015)

2. REFLECTION:

What is your personal opinion on this issue? Do you agree with the
research? If you agree or disagree, please explain why?
Provide examples/experiences regarding this issue from school
perspective or If you are not working in a school, from your profession. Be

specific with your examples. You can mention software/hardware names,

specific methods that you plan to use, etc.
How would you implement this research in your career? (At least 1
paragraph)

Reflection:
After I researched about what are the educational uses of Facebook or other social media in
the NAU library, I tried to share ideas, experiments, researches that on the same page with me.
Therefore, I totally agree with the ideas that I shared above. Technology is amazing power, if you
use it deliberatively. Internet is in everyday life. In consequence of internet, social media is in our
everyday life. Nonetheless, most people using social media for everything but education
purposes. For example, when I was going to college in Turkey, I wanted to buy a laptop for my
classes. My father bought me a laptop. But, I used it for gaming or socializing instead of using it
for my classes. This is same for the social media network. I have Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest
accounts. I am using Facebook just for shared and check family and friend pictures, Twitter for
news. I just started to use Pinterest, and it has really good things for my class level. But, I am
using it rarely. Worse thing for Facebook and Twitter is people started using Facebook and Twitter
to find a new people for dating or something like that. Also, most of the news in there is doctored
news.

To make our students to use social media for educational purposes, we need to have
well-planned management system. As I mention above, technology is amazing power.
We can find everything in the internet within a couple of minutes. If we make our
students to use social media efficiently, they will improve their knowledge well.
I am teaching algebra 2 in high school to 10th, 11th and 12th grades. They are all using
social media very much and efficiently but not for education. With this research, I found a
couple of helpful website and social media network for using with my students such as
Edmodo, Teachers Channel, and Teacher Tube. Edmodo will help me about teaching my
students we can use social media for education also. Because, it was designed just for
educational purposes. I will assign and share works via Edmodo. Also, we can discus
and share helpful information in there.

3. REFERENCES:

Cite at least 5 References in APA.

You may use http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-journal for citing
your sources in APA style.

References:
REID, J. (2011). "We don't Twitter, we Facebook": An alternative pedagogical
space that enables critical practices in relation to writing. English Teaching:
Practice & Critique (University Of Waikato), 10(1), 58-80.
Livingston, S. & Brake, D. (2010). On the rapid rise of social networking sites:
New findings and policy implications. Children & Society, 24, 75-83
McLean, R. (2014). Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, Oh My! Using Social Media
as a Professional Development Tool. Agricultural Education Magazine, 86(4), 1012.
Smith, M. m. (2012). If You Facebook or Twitter, Remember Other People Can
Also Read. Principal Leadership, 13(4), 6.

Silverman, M. (2012) How Higher Education Uses Social Media [online]

Mashable, http://mashable.com/2012/02/03/higher-education-social-media
Barnes, N., Lescault, A. (2011) Social Media Adoption Soars as Higher-Ed
Experiments and Reevaluates Its Use of New Communications Tools [online]
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth,
http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesandresearch/socialmediaadoptionsoars
Light, J. (1989) Toward a definition of communicative competence for
individuals using augmentative and alternative communication systems,
Augmentative and Alternative Communication, Vol 5(2), pp137-144
Knight, J. J., Rochon, R. R., & Hailey, B. B. (2015). Lessons Learned From Four
Years of Using Social Media to Support Transition to Higher
Education. Proceedings Of The European Conference On E-Learning, 242-246.