Facebook as a teaching tool to encourage collaboration and creativity

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Facebook as an educational tool — A group of teachers used Facebook as a collaborative writing platform to encourage students to create and co-evaluate.

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Recent research revealed the educational benefit that Facebook can have as a platform for collaboration and creativity. A group of academics conducted a writing exercise within this social environment, and the result was enriching.

Teachers from the Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos, Argentina, created a private group on Facebook in which they asked their students to start a story with an image accompanied by the first sentence of the text. In turn, more students complemented and transformed the course of the tale.

The students were able to observe, adjust and write their contributions to continue the story according to the guidelines of the community. In general, the participants thought that this experience was innovative, creative, productive and fun. As the author points out, “learning from others” was characteristic of this collective action.

Some of the participating teachers affirmed that this experience motivated the students to “sit down and write.” On the other hand, the use of Facebook encouraged students to collaborate and co-evaluate enthusiastically and creatively, since they knew well the characteristics of the platform.

More than seeing the use of Facebook or Snapchat as distracting mediums, it is worth exploring the educational potential they may have. It is possible that in social networks students feel more comfortable and can concentrate better on specific activities.

As various specialists claim, it is necessary to begin to instill soft skills at all educational levels such as critical thinking, teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, to name a few, and social networks can be a useful tool in this regard.

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