Application of social network in classroom management for secondary school students (an example of Tokat city)

Rapid changes experienced in the knowledge and technology have changed the needs of the people by affecting their lives multi-dimensionally. Social networks which have been grown up with the Internet use take the first place among these needs. The number of users, power and usage of social networks is increasing day by day. The use of social networking has been a condition seen in the education area recently. It is of critical importance to use social networks for the effective classroom management . in the education by releasing it from the negative impacts. For this, there is a need for the use of an educational social networking site appropriate to classroom management in the field of education The aim of this study is to examine the educational social network developed to be used in the classroom management by Gündüz (2014) and then to test the effectiveness by applying it to a group of students. Educational social network developed in the scope of the study can be accessed from www.mavikurdele.net address. The educational social networking site has been used during 6 weeks in the experimental research which was conducted with 54 students at a secondary school in the province of Tokat in the first term of 2014-2015 academic year. Data after the study was collected through the scale of the use of social networking in education, social networking usability survey and the record data of the educational social networks (log). In the analysis of the data obtained, descriptive statistics were used. In the study result, students participating in the study said that educational social network is useful for communication, collaboration and sharing materials, it is easy to use, they found it useful to connect via the mobile device and they liked the reward system. At the same time, they stated the opinion that the use as a way to communicate with the teacher of the course in the days there was no lesson was very appreciated.