ICTs AND GENETICS: SOCIAL NETWORKS IN TEACHING A. Castañeda-Sortibrán 1 , L. León-Rangel 1 , R. Peraza-Vega 1 , J.M. Jasso- Martínez 1 , D.A. Contreras-Peralta 1 , L. Pascual- Calaforra 1 , R. Rodríguez-Arnaiz 2 1 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MEXICO) 2 Universidad de Valencia (SPAIN) nitxin@ciencias.unam.mx, luceroichwill@gmail.com, ricardoivan@gmail.com, jovana.jasso@gmail.com, wanderer@ciencias.unam.mx, luis.pascual@uv.es, rosario.rodriguez@ciencias.unam.mx Abstract The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have grown enormously in the last few years. At the same time, the application of these technologies in education has showed a remarkable development. The increasing use of social networks by students has made ICTs viable for educative purposes. Since October 2009, we have used the blog “Ciber-Genética” (ciber- genetica.blogspot.mx) to support Genetics classes in Biology Major at Sciences Faculty of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). In 2010, we implemented the use of three different social networks: Facebook (facebook.com/ciber.gentica.unam), Twitter (@cibergenetica) and YouTube (youtube.com/user/CiberGeneticaUNAM) to increase the interest in the area. These services available online provided information about the news and events related to Genetics major Additionally, we have uploaded presentations and videos created by our group. The use of these social networks has been widely accepted by our students and also has allowed greater interaction between students and teachers. Keywords: Blog, Social Networks, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Genetics, Education. 1 INTRODUCTION A major pedagogical concern of university teaching is how much students should be involved in their own learning process and which tools could help them to learn in a reflexive and autonomous way. Under the best of circumstances, students must be the main actors in the acquisition of their own knowledge. The increasing use of social networks, such as blogs and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by students represents a viable manner to reach this ideal panorama of greater student engagement, since these technologies can be applied for educative purposes [1] Blogs are simple and websites easy to use, where users can publish articles, comments, photos, events, links and even videos and slideshows on one or more subjects. Blogs can be periodically updated, and they can be grouped together by date (showing on top the more recent works), articles and texts from one to several authors. As means of digital content publishing, blogs have unique characteristics that can enhance its use in the field of education. The posts can be associated to all type elements: graphics and multimedia files that can bring extra strong visual information, as well as other sites on the net to further reading [2] [3]. Nowadays, Facebook ® and Twitter ® are the most used sites to share information on the web, with millions of users all around the world. In Mexico, the use of these social networks has grown in the last few years. Currently Mexico occupies the fifth and the seventh place of countries with the most Facebook ® [4] and Twitter ® [5] users, respectively. From this point of view, the increasing use of ICTs can be exploited to help popularize science and other educational topics. 2 OBJECTIVE Investigate the impact of Facebook ® , YouTube®, and Twitter® in the dissemination of the contents of a blog (Ciber-genetica), which is designed to improve the learning process on the subject of Genetics. Rtqeggfkpiu qh KPVGF4235 Eqphgtgpeg 6vj/8vj Octej 4235. Xcngpekc. Urckp KUDP< ;9:/:6/838/4883/: 546;