Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has become the most widely utilized social media website by individuals and organizations worldwide. Corporate organizations have found this site a great companion for sharing information on their new and upcoming products and services with the online social world.
Although the educational institutions previously wanted their student community to stay away from Facebook, because they felt the site would distract the students with a majority of non-academic topics being discussed. Nowadays, we see an increasing number of schools encouraging their students to use this social media site to connect and collaborate with the online learning community. Educators now term Facebook as the hottest educational technology to effectively manage their classes/courses.
Almost every student of various colleges and universities across the world has a Facebook profile. They use the site to share important links, photos, and videos with their friends. Additionally, the website helps to expand an individual’s network by adding new friends to the existing friends list. Slowly, a rising number of teachers are also joining the networking website to utilize the benefits of communicating with the students and taking education beyond the traditional classrooms.
Facebook helps students to develop virtual bonds with fellow students of a different culture and educational background. They can instantly connect, share and discuss a variety of lessons and topics with each other. Facebook’s instant messaging feature allows the users to communicate immediately with their friends or classmates. The status updater will show what your friends are doing at present, and you can post a comment on their wall to receive a reply to it. The networking website includes a lot of applications to let students learn, discuss and share class-related documents and such similar learning materials with other users.
Books iRead
This application allows students to share books they are currently reading with their classmates and also with the teacher (for reference purpose).
Notely
It helps a learner to easily create calendars to organize various projects and coursework that need to be completed within a particular time period.
Study Groups
It helps you get groups of your classmates together to work on a particular homework or a project.
Get Homework Help
Students can solicit assistance from their teachers to solve a complex mathematical problem or understand a literary piece.
Class Notes
This particular application can be used to discover the scanned notes for your semester or course.
Rate My Professors
Learners can use it to grade teachers on the basis of their individual teaching styles, communication skills, and so on. They can also find out from the existing students what they think of their lecturers before registering for a class.
