Requiring Students to submit homework online - At what age?

It seems that people are introduced to submitting homework, quizzes, and essays online mostly in college. Some people encounter this in high school, but for the majority it seems that college is when this beings to be required. It is only slightly more difficult than physically handing something in to a teacher. It cuts down on environmental effects because less paper is used when assignments are submitted through the internet. It seems that this method could be introduced to students in middle school or earlier. At what age do you think it is appropriate to require students to submit work online?

Tags: age, assignment online, classroom, internet, online quiz

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Permalink Reply by Julie Collison on September 5, 2011 at 6:55pm

What format do most people use to submit homework online? Is it through a wiki page or google doc's or something else?

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Permalink Reply by hartman.susan4 on September 5, 2011 at 7:47pm

Try edmodo and schoology - both are free and relatively quick and easy to set up. The kids love it - they both resemble facebook - but you as the teacher have total control over access.

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Permalink Reply by Grace Gorman on September 5, 2011 at 7:33pm

I used a wikispace to have my 4th grade students post their homework online. For short assignments like write sentences for new vocabulary words, they would post on the discussion page. For longer assignments like choose your favorite poem and explain why you like it, each student had a personal page to write on. They could also watch videos about authors whose work we were reading and I could post links to Spelling City or whatever else they needed to go to. I could check their work and add my comments. It was great and the children liked it.

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Permalink Reply by hartman.susan4 on September 5, 2011 at 7:46pm

For the last 2 years I have had my 7th and 8th graders turn in all assignments on line - it has worked well. It is nice because then the parents can see what has been turned in and the student and I both have a copy of the document so that if there is a question we can both open the document and make sure we are discussing the same assignment. There have been a few issues with attaching the wrong document, but no more than the usual "dog ate my homework"/I didn't do it but you lost it that you would have with hard copy assignments. This year I am also teaching 5th and 6th grade and will expect them to turn their assignments in online (my class is a technology class so the computer accessibility issue is not as great). For the 5th and 6th graders I use Edmodo and for the 7th and 8th graders I use Schoology. Both work great - Schoology is just a little more advanced in some of its features, so I want them to learn the basics first then move them into a more complex program.

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Permalink Reply by Bronwyn Hayes on December 13, 2011 at 2:00pm

Thank you so much for the reply and the resources. I will definitely check those two things out!

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Casal on December 14, 2011 at 8:11am

I require my 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students to post comments to my blog a few times a year.

http://mrcasal.blogspot.com

The blog is basically geared toward homework. With the younger set I'm limited by the usual issues such as technology in the home, internet access, lack of email addresses, etc. I use the blog a few times a year, during holiday breaks to afford plenty of time, to give my students a little bit of online homework exposure.

I've used Wikispaces in the past too, to have students create & edit webpages, post writing assignments, etc