Abstract:

Technology inspires changes in the economy, in the social environment, in communication and in our relationships with each other. Learning environments and ways of learning are increasingly changing. Digital technologies are changing not only the way learners learn but also the way educators teach. In the past, teaching was mainly done through lectures and physical learning tools. Today, however, there are many digital tools available and social media is used to create digital learning communities. Thus, teachers are challenged to use social media purposefully in their work. The purposeful use of social media in educational practice depends on the preparation of teachers. There are studies on the purposes for which working teachers use social media and how they apply it in their work.

The conducted studies emphasize that teachers usually use social media for the following reasons: communication, communicating with others; for information search; for active participation in commenting, evaluating; to create communities, like-minded groups; for the development of communications; for sharing. Higher education students use social media mostly due to ensuring the need to communicate, searching for information, and achieving faster results; influencing.

However, there are few recent studies that would illustrate the purposes of future teachers' use of social media, the methods of determining the reliability of information provided in the media. Several of them focus on a specific social media (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) or on the general student population. It therefore becomes important to explore the experiences of pre-service teachers in order to create the conditions for preparing for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future. The research asked the following questions: what are the purposes of social media identified by students – pre-service teachers? How do they choose social media to realize their goals? Do they relate their goals for using social media to their future profession?

The data was collected by using an open-ended survey in the study. 41 students who participated in the project flipped classroom activities with the purpose to develop advanced transversal skills of critical thinking and media literacy in higher education students were involved in the survey, but only 31 completed it. Content analysis with deductive approach was used to analyse the data. Based on the results of the study, pre - service teachers primarily see social media as their private space, and therefore they are not inclined to use it for educational purposes, i.e. to develop professional relationships; to share or search for professional information, to inform, etc. Future teachers use social media for personal information seeking, socializing, relaxing, observing others, shopping, for their hobbies. Reliability of information becomes important on social media. Students use the following strategies to extract information reliability: controlling, caparisoning, rejecting, searching for evidences and some use their intuition.

Acknowledgement:
This research was conducted in collaboration with partners from Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania as part of the Erasmus+ KA220-HED Cooperation partnerships in higher education project “Critical Thinking in the Information Society” (CTIS). The general objective of the project - to stimulate innovative learning and teaching practices by elaborating digital educational materials intended to develop advanced transversal skills of critical thinking and media literacy in higher education students (https://ctis-erasmus.info/)

Keywords:

Social media, purpose of social media, pre-service teachers, teacher education.