SOCIAL MEDIA AS A LEARNING TOOL IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORTS AREA

The existing needs and challenges have guided the community of physical education and sport specialists to the online environment: sports blogs, social networks that promote interactive communication, photo sharing, thematic forums, internet websites, wikis or YouTube videos. Seen as a resource for the educational process, social media has become in the recent years an important learning tool. Numerous studies highlight the increasing use of open-learning resources in physical education and sports education such as YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr or Edmodo. The integration of social media resources into initial and continuing education is an approach that provides accurate, applied and constantly updated information. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the frequency and the impact of using social media resources in the skills training process of the physical education and sports specialists. In order to achieve the proposed goal, an on-line questionnaire survey was applied to both teachers and students, enrolled at various training programs in the field. The main variables were the people expectations and skills in using social media resources in this area; the frequency of using social media as a learning tool, during the classroom and individual learning activities; the relation of all these variables with the experience of teaching in the field and level of studies (initial and continuing education). The conclusions of the paper outline the active role of social media resources in generating and sharing educational content and in facilitating interactivity within the community and also, in developing opportunities for the field.