The Use of Social Networks in Education and Socialization of Adolescents: an Analytical Review of Empirical Studies (International Experience)

We present a review of foreign studies on the use of social networks in teaching practice. We provide the description of social media as a potential new resource, providing the organization of teacher-student interaction, group communication of students, increasing the involvement of students in the learning process. It is shown that social networking services are relevant to the teenagers request: the pursuit of intimate-personal communication. For the review were selected publications about social networking in education over the past 3 years, satisfying the criteria of describing the details of empirical research. Comparative analysis showed that social media are used in two main ways: 1) as support and operationalization of existing forms of educational work, and 2) to development of the learning process. We confirmed the presence of the «digital gap» between students and teachers that is not in favor of the latter: the described positive results are associated with a wide variety of activities of students, and negative -with low technological literacy and higher workload of teachers.

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