Table 3.5 listed some of the ways in which social media can be used in education. It is likely your college or school may have a strategy to use social media. The WOU uses social media in its association with the community. It may not however use either Facebook or Twitter for teaching and learning as much as its uses it for administration and marketing.

If your school plans to use social media for its teaching and learning purposes, it must have in place a strategy to carry this out in a carefully planned way. Dell, the PC and Laptop vendor, has produced a number of short videos on the use of technologies in the classroom. One such video relates to strategies for using social media. I would like you to watch it.

While the video describes the social settings in a typical North American community, is it very different from Malaysia? From the earlier part of this unit you would have gathered that there may be as many as 20 million Malaysians surfing the net. While many of them probably do this through their laptop computers, PCs or tablets, the probability of many also using their mobile phones to surf the is high. I say this because the density of mobile phones usage in Malaysia is among the highest in our region and more importantly, a larger proportion of population is made up of young people. Therefore we have to ask ourselves whether it makes sense to start using social media for academic purposes. Nicola Osborne, Social Media Officer at EDINA (Edinburgh Data and Information Access), based at the University of Edinburgh, published a report on "Using Social Media in Education." In it she highlighted a few points, including:

Figure 3.15 Percentage social media users in UK, US higher education groups
Source: Nicola Osborne (2011)

1. Both in the USA and the UK, young college students were among the early adopters of social media, ahead of the curve in terms of using it for a number of purposes (though mainly social) use is also made in sharing content and other aspects of collaborative learning.
2. Teachers have been much slower - is this because of generational issues? As a younger generation of teachers populate our schools and colleges, this can change
3. Usage patterns indicate that these resources are often used in a passive way i.e. information sources or teaching resources.
4. Use of social media in a school setting is advocated through clear policy guidelines and there a number of them available as samplers.
5. Since active use of social media involves active conversations it is useful to develop guidelines on do's and don'ts. Unmanaged conversation poses legal threats.
6. Among the many risks associated are privacy violations, abuse, and, more recently, bullying. Policies and guidelines to mitigate risks are warranted.