Social Media as an Educational Resource by Jacqueline

Social Media as an Educational Resource by Jacqueline - March 2022 Scholarship Essay

Social media has the potential to enable educators and pupils to adopt innovative methods for educational purposes such as data sharing and community engagement. Although some students use social media for amusement, many scholars, like myself, utilize it to expand their education. For example, Facebook groups enable me to create webinars, engage in group discussions, and upload files. Instagram is the best medium to submit visual essays or writings in the form of videos. Pinterest is an excellent tool for organizing a wide range of material into useful presentations. When these social networks contain educational approaches, a substantial proportion is influenced by how one interprets the setup toward a certain framework. It has become the “norm” to stay current with the most recent educational trends, and one of them is through the use of social networking sites.

Due to a lack of opportunities and resources in their village, my Mexican immigrant parents did not attend school. They were raised on a farm in a rural area with little access to the outside world. As a result, they decided to immigrate to the United States to escape a lack of opportunities and other concerns such as crime, lack of freedom, poverty, and violence. Their lives were revolutionized for the better when they came into contact with technology in the U.S. They had access to electricity, heat, running water, and transportation.

I am struck by how the abundance of resources enabled my father and mother to progress in all aspects of their lives. Similarly, the availability of social media access has provided me with access to new content, which has aided and strengthened my learning in areas of special interest to me. When I compare the resources I currently have to those my parents had, I have learned to appreciate and be grateful for the tools that enable me to learn and proceed to post-secondary school. I can build networks, find reliable information online, and improve my communication, literacy, and reading skills. Owing to limited opportunities in a highland region, I may have become a product of my environment if my parents had not taken the courageous decision to relocate to the United States.

When looking at one face of a coin, one must also see the other. While technology has the potential to enhance my education, it can also be detrimental to my learning. I have noticed that my use of language has progressively changed. Platforms such as social networking sites allow one to express their thoughts in a restricted number of characters, limiting the person's capacity to usefully write words. I have found myself utilizing abbreviations such as 'r' instead of 'are,' 'u' rather than 'you,' on school assignments, which is unacceptable language in academia. Typing these phrases seems to have become a habit for me, and it is something I am striving toward improving.

The internet and other platforms, such as social media, helped educate me on a variety of concerns, such as accessing the latest news, learning English, and translating for my immigrant parents. The impact of social media has made it essential for me to obtain proper educational knowledge and to apply it in a way that benefits me and the world around me.

Although having a basic measure of access to social media and knowledge of its usefulness in the context of education, I experienced considerable challenges toward having sufficient access to educational platforms at home owing to socioeconomic factors. The technological gap in social media learning was exacerbated when my university was unexpectedly closed in favor of online education for all pupils owing to the COVID-19 outbreak.

For low-income students like myself, the transition to online learning had negative social challenges. I found myself struggling to follow up with social courses that span the entire day. Web-based classes necessitate the use of devices as well as a dependable and efficient Internet service which I did not have. Unlike higher-income households, I frequently lacked appropriate access to electronic devices and broadband services at home. I found myself visiting libraries and restaurants that provided free Wi-Fi hotspots in order to connect to these social media platforms that were dependent on my academic progress. Despite the fact that this challenge continues, I have learned to transform my trials into triumphs and continue moving onward. Overcoming these obstacles has only made my pursuit toward a postsecondary degree more worthwhile.

In any case, the creation and introduction of social media platforms are here to stay and will influence many aspects of my life. It is up to educators and students to discover how to use these apps effectively; how to avoid becoming sidetracked and meandering aimlessly through websites and instead promote actual learning in the virtual world.