(876) MOVING INFORMAL LEARNING TO A NEW LEVEL BY USING SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS IN THE CLASSROOM

摘要

In today's world, in which almost every person is connected with at least one social media platform, itis almost impossible to ignore the frenzies that has taken over.Informal learning, used as a support for the educational process it's not “new”, it has been animportant part over the years and had turned different shapes, from radio to television and today to,what we name, World Wide Web. What is different today is the attention that the digital natives'students give to Internet and social media platforms. Today, informal learning means Facebook,Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube. All these social media platforms are today's students' secondnature.It is a fact that higher educational institution started using, in different measures, social media tools inthe classroom, but the question is if the applications facilities benefits the students development? Andhow do we select the appropriate tools so that the quality of the information provided still be measuredin the competences developed by the students at the end of the process.The first chapter of this paper is aiming to present the main social media platforms that are being usedin the educational process for the Distance Learning Department students (acronym CREDIS)The second chapter of the paper is centered on CREDIS student's point of view regarding the usabilityof social media tools as a support for formal learning, the degree to which social media tools are anintegral part in the educational environment for CREDIS students and also the adaptive capacity ofuniversities and teachers to these new directions of learning.In 2014, Romania is one of the countries where the proportion of young university graduates remainslow - at 21.8 percent - compared to the EU average - 35.8 percent and this means we have seriousproblems because young educated people are a nation future.Another problem that can't be ignored is that educational institution are spending time and money inoffering students all king of courses that do nothing but to submit an enormous amount of informationwithout converting it into competences. So, why it is still a surprise that most of our graduated studentsare unprepared for the reality from the work field?And if our students are surfing the internet and teaching each other how to do it more effectively thenshouldn't educational institution gather the feedback provided and by engaging the entire communityto contribute to a new revolutionary way of teaching and learning?In the 21 st century society will require a knowledge generation, not just information delivered in thetraditional way!