USE OF FACEBOOK AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL

Abstract

Technology is ubiquitous, embracing almost every part of our lives, our communities
and our homes. In the field of education technology doesn’t have a secondary role in the sole
process of knowledge transferring especially because technology is becoming increasingly
integrated into the lives of learners of all ages and groups. In particular of this technology is the
use of Facebook as an education tool. Originally designed for college students in the United
States in 2004, Facebook was created as a social networking website. Facebook later expanded
to different educational settings. Facebook allows each user to create a profile, updating it with
personal information such as home address, mobile phone number, interesting religious views
and also allows people to form groups and post pictures. Today with approximately 800 million
subscribers worldwide (according to www.internetworldstats.com), Facebook now has a
diverse community of users at all levels of education and areas of society including companies
and universities. This number of users all around the globe makes Facebook the most used
social network out there. This has made Facebook to be integrated into the way teachers,
lecturers and professors teach and administer courses. But like always, the use of Facebook as
educational tool has been received with mixed feelings, concerns related to privacy and anxiety
in the interaction with professors in this environment, a belief that doesn’t serve an academic
purpose and the opinion that facility should simply avoid “education appropriation” these
backstage social space have been expressed. Yet other people have supported the notion of
using Facebook as an education tool, as survey worldwide has shown