My New Classroom Idea✎

Twitter-Tweet Tweet-Homework?
The idea of having assignments sent to a cell phone is introduction enough to students. I would still want students to be responsible and write down assignments and my Twitter feed should only be used as a "reminder" as to what assignments are due or a reference as to what assignments were due previously.
Students can access daily assignments by subscribing to feed via text messages
Students who choose to be added as a "friend" on Twitter, can also ask questions about the homework assignment through messaging the question or referencing my username in their post.
Another good aspect of Twitter is that students only have 140 characters to type, so students have to pre-think what they want to write and how to get their point across in a certain amount of space.

As with any new technology, one must be prepared for difficulties and challenges. But the hope is the reward is worth it. Students must have a cell phone with text messaging and unlimited texts would be even better. But since I teach in a low income district, this could be a problem. I am hoping the my administration backs me in this idea and hopefully this can be something that more teachers use in their own classrooms. I am interested to see if homework completion gets better once students subscribe to the tweets. I could see this being a cool classroom study.

In this article by Greg Ferenstein, he states that it seemed that students who used Twitter in the classroom participated more in class as well as becoming a leader in their own education. Students want to learn when social networking sites become a part of the lesson.
http://mashable.com/2010/03/01/twitter-classroom/

These are 2 videos that I found showing Twitter being used successfully in classrooms:

Roosevelt High School Example:


Ideas for furthering Twitter in the classroom


Additional links:

http://janeknight.typepad.com/socialmedia/2009/08/twitter-in-the-classroom-10-useful-resources.html

http://prezi.com/jev9ny1qogvj/using-twitter-in-the-classroom/

http://www.edutopia.org/poll-twitter-classroom

http://mrslwalker.com/index.php/2009/03/29/nine-great-reasons-why-teachers-should-use-twitter/

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6708199.html