Using educational social networking for classroom management in vocational high schools

The Internet is probably one of the basic needs of today's world. One of the tools developed in conjunction with the Internet, and even the most common one is social networks. Social networks provide opportunities for users to meet, to have a good time, to make shares, to work collaboratively but also it leads to the loss of time in some cases. Recently, it has been used in various fields. One of these areas is also the field of education. Ideas to benefit social networks in the classroom management that is the core and an indispensable element of the education are emerging about. Education and social networks resulting from the synthesis of education and social networking are becoming prevalent with increasing number of users in the last days. The main aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of educational social networks in the clasroom management in Vocational High Schools. Another aim is to measure the adequacy of the educational social network that was used. At the scope of the study, a social networking site that can be accessed from the adress " www.mavikurdele.net" developed by Gündüz (2014) was used. The application was used by 48 students and a teacher, at a vocational high school in the province of Burdur in the first semester of 2014-2015 Education year for 6 weeks. The data after the study was collected through the scale of social networks use in education, social networking usability survey and the data record of ESAS (log). SPSS20 package program was used to analyze the obtained data. descriptive statistics such as the number and rate of data obtained from the site records with the average value of each of the answers given to the scale questions, standard deviations, frequencies and rates each of the answers the survey questions were used in the analysis of data. In the study results, students using the site have expressed the view that the site is useful for communication, collaboration and sharing the materials and it is easy to use. Also, they have stated their opinions that it would be useful to use the site in other courses. At the same time, the students have stated that adding some features to the site and increasing the visual quality are needed. The practice teacher have stated that uncooperative students communicated more comfortably, the increase in group work was observed and there was a reduction in the number of misbehaving students by the help of the site. Thus, the result that ESAS will be useful at the scope of the classroom management has been reached.