Integrating Social Media Into Learning and Instruction

Social media can be collectively defined as those collaborative tools of the digital world that facilitate communication, engagement, and shared experience in a highly networked cyber environment. From the first e-mail in the early 1970s through the development of online portals and service providers of the 1980s, the first [Page 405]blogs of the 1990s, to more sophisticated social networks such as Facebook in the mid-2000s, social media have infiltrated popular culture in every sector including marketing, advertising, health care, music, politics, public safety, the military, and education. The tools themselves have become highly integrated into everyday life for many learners and are both an outlet for communication and a vast digital resource for obtaining instantaneous and real-time information.

Social media applications and platforms that began to ...