Crazy Idea #2 - Homework via Social Media

My students like phones. They like instant messaging. They may even use Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, though I haven't gotten that close with them yet.

I on the other hand am a little forgetful. And disorganized.

That's why I see a great opportunity to provide my students with homework via various forms of social media.

My plan looks something like this:

1. Explain to students that they will have some homework assignment that can be sent as text messages, tweets, Facebook wall posts, etc.
2. Provide reading assignments where they must read an assigned text and send me their summary of the text as their social media homework.
3. Post this homework assignment on a designated Twitter account and set some deadlines for when the homework must be turned in by.
4. After the deadline, refuse to accept late work. (All messages will be automatically time stamped thanks to the relevant website, wireless service, etc).
5. Tweet the first correct answer submitted with the student's name as a reward. This award may also go to late submissions that exceed expectations.
6. Grade assignments by checking the relevant websites and my various inboxes, all of which I check throughout the day anyhow.
7. Provide retributive written homework to all students who did not submit homework promptly and properly.

Some Pros:

• Saves paper.
• Saves time since I am reading less homework. (140 character limits are great.)
• Provides a way for students to know the homework (Twitter account) even when they forget to write it down or are absent.
• Keeps me better organized.
• Keeps students more focused on summarizing a text well. The 140 character limit is a strength and not a weakness in this sense.
• It should be fun for the kids and create some incentives for them to do work promptly and even to do high quality work.
• Focuses students on the main idea of a reading, not on the spelling, grammar, punctuation of their writing.
• Keeps my focused on their ideas and not their writing, which I often am tempted to correct even when the assignment is assessing something else.
• Provides a way to fact-check when a student says s/he already turned in her/his homework.

Some Cons:

• All fun aside, students still need to write.
• Most students need to make drastic improvement in their writing and this won't help aside from helping with concision and focus on a main idea.
• Some students may not have the tech savvy or access to keep this going (of course, they could always just replace a tweet-HW answer with a Post-It answer on my desk.)
• Let's students off easy when it comes to writing about their reading. Only so many ideas fit in 140 char's.
• It could be difficult keeping track of so many sources of info.

Once again, I lack the experience to know how well this could work. I can't wait to get it set up and report back, but in the mean time please posts your thoughts on how this idea could be a better one.

Crazy Idea #1 - Video Bell Work

I plan to implement a new system in my classroom in the coming week, namely to begin each class period with a short video (say a max of 10 mins.) during which the students will be required to complete some short assignment, comparable to an extended Do Now, or warm-up exercise. Below I will shares some of the pros that I see for this technique as well as some of the drawbacks that I'm anticipating.

Some Pros:

• Students will come in knowing what to expect procedurally.
• Students will be eager to enter the classroom and settle in in order to watch the video (provided I succeed in finding videos that are both entertaining and education-oriented).
• While students watch the video, their attention will be fixed on the screen, releasing me from the need to supervise as directly as I would otherwise and allowing me the freedom to handle a variety of administrative tasks that are best addressed early in the class period.
• I can connect the short lessons that I will provide to the students to the video I have chosen. (For example, I'm planning to show a clip from an Obama-McCain debate in which they argue their perspectives on US military policy. I would connect this with our current chapter on Athens and Sparta to show how Obama-McCain compare with Athens-Sparta in the sense that they show a cosmopolitan and hawkish perspective on war, respectively).
• I can teach a wider range of communication skills by covering video, film, music, etc. with a metacognitive approach, rather than just relying on written words and my own speech.
• I can provide concrete visual connections to those students who have trouble comprehending the abstraction of our written texts.
• Class may be just a smidge more fun.
• I can say more in my lesson by talking less (I think my students will greatly appreciate this aspect).

Some Cons:

• Students may not be as interested or invested as I anticipate in starting each class with a video.
• Students may be too distracted in watching the video to pay attention to the work I have assigned to guide them.
• Students may interpret the use of video as a license to switch into a passive mode of thinking rather than engaging with the material in a way that they might with a written text.
• Students may be distracted by the video and miss out on the more important aspects of the connections between the video and our learning objectives.

I'm sure there is a lot more downside than I'm anticipating at present. But, I'm eager to get started with this idea so I can see exactly what will work and what won't.

Does anyone else have some ideas about what I could be missing?

Welcome!

I am writing this blog in order to publicize some of the unfamiliar and unconventional teaching methods that I will attempt to employ in my 6th grade humanities classroom at a NYC charter school. I have limited formal training as an educator and less than a year's worth of experience as a public school teacher, but what I lack for in experience and training I will try to make up for through innovation and critical thinking about my goals, objectives, and methodology.

My hope is that by committing more of my ideas to a written log, I will better organize my attempts to innovate in the classroom. Furthermore, by sharing my ideas I hope to gain insight from others who have more of the experience and education that I lack, perhaps reminding me of why some things never change but perhaps also opening up some new ground for others.

Wish me luck!