Social networks which play an important role in individuals', many of whom are youngsters, daily life got the opportunity to be used as educational tools and seem to have many features to improve educational organizations and the educational processes. Organizations exist in the very complex and chaotic environments rather than the stable and steady environments. This affects the role of administrator and especially the leader within the organization. The task of the 21st century educators is to be compromising social media leadership with media, mass media instruments and information technologies and the values of the school, and preparing the youngsters for the future by building common living environments. Within the scope of research, some explanations from literature about the concept of social networks and the use of social networks in education were given first. For conclusion, comments, conclusions and suggestions about the usability of social networks in education were presented.
TopIntroduction
Very important social changes occur in the information society we are living in owing to rapidly evolving communication technologies. With the development of new communication technologies, the concept of social media has penetrated the lives of a large part of the community. Whether young or adult, everyone's profile is available on social networks, which is the most important product of social media, and they meet their daily communication and social needs over these networks (İli & Erçetin, 2014).
Information technologies reconfigured the learning-teaching process as well as the social, economic and cultural life in 21st century called information and technology age. In accordance with these evolutions, technologies applied to meet the individuals’ educational needs led to changes in the educational needs, and pulled the education through its traditional school and classroom based formal structure, causing it to focus on social and informal learning (Ekici, 2012).
On the other hand, this swift evolution brought about the changes in individuals’ roles and led the expected roles of educationals to complexify and diversify gradually. The more the expectation from the schools to form more efficient and sufficient learning groups increased the more the comprehension of leadership roles of the educationals in employing and practicing technology gained importance (Afshari, 2009).
As the social technologies changed the relationship between the persons, they required new leadership approaches and skills for school administrators as well. Now that, school administrators should give up controlling everything and leave the responsibility to the other administrators and teachers at the schools. In this way, leader can focus on the most difficult strategic decisions which are worth a leader’s attention rather than paying attention on each decision to be made (Li, 2010).
Thereby, the use of social networks in education and the relationship of the leadership in social networks with education and social network culture were focused in this paper. Within the scope of research, some explanations from the literature about the concept of social networks and the use of social networks in education were given first. For the conclusion, the comments, conclusions and suggestions about the usability of social networks in education were presented.