Collaborating on Facebook: Teachers Exchanging Experiences Through Social Networking Sites

Abstract

This study explores the use of Facebook for educational purposes, as a collaborative online space for enabling communication among teachers from different schools. The article describes how a group of 43 teachers on Facebook, from various schools in the southeast region of Brazil used a group on Facebook as a collaborative space for communicating among each other. On the group, these teachers shared experiences about the use of digital technologies in their secondary education classes. This study is based on Cultural Historical Activity Theory, considering the group on Facebook as a tool for mediating communication . The objective of this study is to explore why and how teachers collaborated with each other on Facebook, and to study how communication among them evolved in the process. We examined the posts on that group from 2012 to 2014, and two questionnaires responded online by the teachers in June 2012 and in December 2013. Our findings suggest that teachers tend to critically collaborate in smaller groups and that further online communication evolved outside the group of teachers, with the creation of smaller groups on Facebook inside their schools. E ducation is essentially linked with (multi-modal) communication amongst people. In the course of human history, communication has evolved from oral to written, and more recently, to communication with the help of digital tools. While schools tend to follow these cultural developments, they often experience problems with integrating new tools into their practices. It is expected that the recent innovations in human communication with the help of digital tools will follow the same evolutional path into schools. KeywordsWith the popularity of Social Networking Sites (SNS), like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, people are easily connected to each other. The distances between them are reduced and sending or sharing written files, pictures or videos is getting simpler. SNS are also a space to expand the relations people have, like the academic relations teachers have inside schools, to a virtual space where people relate to others who are in completely different contexts [36]. In addition, the Internet is making possible mass-scale applications of knowledge and knowledge sharing, which are applied to transform the educational contexts [3].Facebook is nowadays the largest SNS, with more than 1.23 billion users in the world, and more than 90,000,000 users in Brazil [13]. Because of the large number of users, research on digital media has increased in the last years, and there is an increasing interest on its use at schools, especially in emergent countries like Brazil [35]. There is also a growing interest in the use of Facebook for educational purposes [2; 19].

Information Sources and Constraints to Climate Change Adaptation amongst Smallholder Farmers in Amathole District Municipality, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

“…Social media has provided varieties of innovative interaction systems [127,128] and meets the need for instant access to information [129]. These media applications have been found by many studies [124,[130][131][132] as critical contemporary information tools. Attaining a significant presence [133], its impact is indeed impressive; from changing the manner of information access and sharing [134], to improving interaction abilities, engagement and influence [135,136].…”

A Sociological View on Designing a Sustainable Online Community for K–12 Teachers: A Systematic Review

“…In a large Korean community, Seo also found that members became motivated to participate in the community after seeking help and being helped by other teachers to return their favor to some other teachers [30]. Likewise, da Cunha Júnior, et al [42] found that, in their longitudinal case study of a Facebook group of 43 teachers, the general low level of participation resulted in no collaboration initiatives among teachers.…”

“…In special interest groups, teachers who share a similar interest can work collaboratively on a smaller scale [41,49,55,56]. In a case study of 43 teachers in a Facebook group, da Cunha Júnior, van Oers and Kontopodis [42] concluded that teachers tended to more critically collaborate in small groups than large groups. To support these groups, members should be able to initiate a collaborative project where they construct a meaningful product that they can actually use and build a closer relationship during collaboration [41,42,55].…”

“…In a case study of 43 teachers in a Facebook group, da Cunha Júnior, van Oers and Kontopodis [42] concluded that teachers tended to more critically collaborate in small groups than large groups. To support these groups, members should be able to initiate a collaborative project where they construct a meaningful product that they can actually use and build a closer relationship during collaboration [41,42,55]. In eTwinning, there were several features that facilitated collaborative projects [57,58].…”

“…The communication channels can be categorized by their purpose, mode, or the platform in which the channels are provided to the community members. The purposes can largely be seen as promoting social, emotional, or collaborative interactions among members [27,42,43] or to engage members in efforts to improve the services within their own community by enabling direct communication with the moderators (i.e., participatory design) [5].…”