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.