VietNamNet Bridge – Instead of trying to prohibit students to access to social networks which are believed to be the sources of a lot of students’ problems, educators have decided to manage students via Facebook.

Ngu Hanh Son district education and training sub-department in Da Nang City has found from its survey that 50-60 percent of the students in the district access to Facebook. The social network proves to be the place where students gather to exchange view about their lives, school and works.

The education sub-department has decided that Facebook could be used as an instrument which can helps teachers manage students.

All the teachers of the general schools in Ngu Hanh Son district have been asked to attend the training courses where they are taught how to use Facebook to manage students.

The teachers have been told that they have the responsibility of monitoring students via Facebook which may help prevent negative problems and take full advantage of the social network to upgrade the learning and teaching quality.

Tran Van Hong, Deputy Head of the Ngu Hanh Son district Education and Training Sub-department, noted that students nowadays get used to computers and access to social networks from the very early age.

“A lot of students have been using social networks for the wrong purposes, therefore, it is necessary to manage them more strictly,” Hong said.

He went on to say that it is impossible to prohibit students to access to social networks and play online games, because teachers cannot control the students in their non-school hours. Therefore, it would be better to equip the teachers with the skills of using Facebook and managing students via Facebook.

A lot of teachers don’t use Facebook because they have no interest in the social network. However, they have been asked to access to Facebook as one of their duties.

Tran Tan, Headmaster of Tran Dai Nghia Secondary School, believes that students need to be shown how they should use Facebook in a right way, or students would be driven to the wrong way which leads to unforeseen consequences.

In early 2013, a local newspaper reported that a married teacher of a high school in Binh Phuoc province kept an illicit relation with a 16-year-old student. Especially, the teacher admitted the relation on Facebook.

However, the entry on Facebook was later found as falsified. The teacher, his wife and the student – the involved parties in the fabricated story – could not understand why people invented such a made-up story. Some of the teachers then even suggested prohibiting students to use social networks to blacken somebody’s reputation.

“Managing students via Facebook is the new pedagogical skill teachers must have,” he said.

Tan went on to say that via Facebook, students and teachers would have more opportunities to exchange ideas, thus creating favorable conditions for students to improve their knowledge. Especially, teachers have been told to help students rectify thoughts and correct spelling mistakes, thus forcing students to use the standard Vietnamese language instead of the slang words now popular among the youth.

Le Thi Kim Van, a teacher of the school said managing students via Facebook has brought positive influences. “We can better understand each other, thus allowing us to fix problems quickly,” she said.

NLD