YouTube and Facebook, Essay example

For the best or the worst, it is evident that Facebook and YouTube are social media applications and tools, which present challenges to the formal learning concept. In this regard, Facebook and YouTube have become significant in the essence of their implications for the form and nature of providing higher education (Kelsey, 08). Facebook and YouTube appear with central features of providing formal education. The use of Facebook and YouTube means that learners are increasingly becoming actively involved in co-production of knowledge rather than passive user of information. Further, these tools have enhanced learning by making it a participatory social program that supports personal life needs and goals. Therefore, there are tensions between people who argue that Facebook and YouTube can the employed in strengthening and improving the institution of higher education versus individuals who claim social sites are in existence to cause disruption in the university (Collier, 14).

From this perspective, a substantial percentage of educators have maintained the argument that social sites such as Facebook and YouTube have the potential of providing successful support to what they refer to critical student centered education. Structured implementation of Facebook and internet in educational settings means that there is a level of user driven learning. This means learners have been allowed to take active positions throughout their lessons and demonstrate the effectiveness of what they have learned. However, higher educators are of the opinion that institutions of higher education have the capability of accommodating such shifts. Therefore, commentators are talking of the importance of developing pedagogies to leverage affordances for supporting autonomy and choice of learners (Miller, 21).

For other people, the primary essence of Facebook and YouTube is observed in negating the importance of learning provided in institutions. Currently, Facebook and YouTube exhibit some of the most fundamental trends, which support learning have been positioned outside unlike the formal learning system in higher education (Mjos 15). There is an increasing growth of Facebook and YouTube platforms from higher learning institutions share course work and learning content such as iTunes, YouTube Edu and academic earth. Such infrastructures are effective in analogous to formal modes of learning in higher education. Another exploration is that these communal, open strategies to provision of higher education have been found in non-profit universities, which provide free online lessons that have been deliberately designated around principles of social networking. Teams of students are actively involved in daily discussion forums whereby they access related reading material and lecture transcripts prepared by professors. Students are required to make their contributions and comments on the ideas provided by their peers. Wide community forums of the students and teaching faculty within the university support further reading and broader discussions (Kelsey, 19).

YouTube and Facebook are fast becoming a very significant aspect in our day-to-day life. The immediate effect of Facebook and YouTube in the higher education sector is the fast changing character of students joining higher learning institutions. In essence, the highly appreciated qualities of Facebook and YouTube are perceived to be introducing new ways of living. Facebook and YouTube are mostly known to be used by young people and is becoming some form of a necessity to them. These social media sites give the young the authority in the social autonomy where they have a platform for what they do, when they do it and how they do it. Those who engage with Facebook and YouTube are more organized (Miller, 40). YouTube and Facebook were meant for all ages but coming to look at it, I find that it is centered on the youth generation. There are fears that some students will grow up knowing nothing else other than the internet. These are born in the wired and wireless connectivity era. An advice for the educators is that they try to use these sites to connect more with the students. Facebook and YouTube are being used by higher learning institutions to involve the students in interaction with peers and faculty (Lacy, 11).

Many could pin point that the universities are supposed to be playing a more meaningful role in developing the student. Many critics also focus their attention on the digital disconnects which is growing everyday between the students and the institutions that offer education. Even the best-intentioned universities are only able to offer their students constrained engagement and artificially regulated use of Facebook and YouTube. Universities are seen to be losing their trust and faith from the youth because of other institutions, which include libraries, schools, and even museums. This comes about because of the way the universities have structured their modes of offering knowledge, communication and learning (Kelsey, 44). The changing nature of students on knowledge and information can be attributed as an impact of the social media sites and its major effect on the education system. Social media sites have also been of essence in terms of knowledge construction and consumption. These are very different from the formal principles of learning and individualized instruction. These changes are the enhanced technology and new learning culture. This is the type of learning that based on principles of exploration collective, innovative instruction rather than individualized. Some educationalists have been forced to review their nature of learning. It occurred because of the fashionable constructivist that is current and theories of socio-cultural learning. The idea of learning on the social media is a tricky one and can only be determined by the accessibility of information that is distributed in time. This way, one is learning activity is viewed as his or her own individual effort to connect information nodes that are specialized and when required. For one to be knowledgeable, he/she must possess the ability to maintain and nurture these connections. A person must know more through social media instead of being reliant on accumulation of individual of knowledge, which is based on what is known currently; Siemens George (Mjos, 32) refers to this as learning.

The increasing expansion of YouTube and Facebook has presented an array of clear-cut difficulties to the nature of future provision of higher education and practice. Yet, with new technological trend, debates and discussions focusing on academic issues are subject to great speculation rather than certain and well informed. It is with no doubt that; a small-scale literature is in the offing (Collier, 56). This will be based on empirical education, which will give confidential reports about all manner of learning benefits and gains from Facebook and YouTube. I have recently learned about the positive impacts of social sites such Facebook, twitter and YouTube use on student grades and engagement. These sites have the ability to generate favorable feelings about students’ learning experiences. Rather than being a fully bad or good thing in the provision of higher education and the expectation of the society, factor and YouTube seems to be the most understood in an ambiguous context. This is more visible when a person takes into consideration the complicated and ambiguous truths of how students use these social tools within the context of education as well as within their overall daily lives (Lacy, 60).

Work Cited

Collier, Marsha; Facebook & Twitter for seniors for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010 print

Kelsey, Todd. Social networking spaces: from Facebook to Twitter and everything in between: a step-by-step introduction to social networks for beginners and everyone else. New York: Après; 2010 print.

Lacy, Sarah; The stories of facebook, YouTube & MySpace: the people, the hype and the deals behind the giants of Web 2.0. Richmond: Crimson, 2008 print

Miller, Michel. Facebook for grown-ups: use Facebook to reconnect with old friends, family and co-workers. Indianapolis, Ind.: Que, 2012 print

Mjos, Ole; Music, social media, and global mobility: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube. New York: Routledge, 2012 print