Twitter in the Classroom

I've decided to try a new experiment in my theory class this term. I'm going to sign all the students up on twitter and have them follow and direct post an account I created called Papa_Franz. Twitter is a microblog. You are confined to writing no more that 140 characters. During class, I will encourage students to capture their thoughts, reactions, criticisms, and ideas and put them in these short blogs. Then, I'll run a application that shows the messages posted to Papa_Franz live as a strip on the right hand side of the computer screen I project on the wall.
Why am I doing this?
There are several kinds of communication that take place in the classroom. There is the most obvious one, called the front channel, that takes place between the instructor and the students. There is also a back channel of whispered communication, passed notes, glances and looks, and audible punctuation that takes place between students and students. I want to see what happens when we capture the back channel and make it part of the front channel.
I saw this demonstrated at a session at an Educause meeting in October and in the hands of the pros, it worked very well. I'm interested to see how it works with students.
The students can bring their laptops or they can access twitter as a text message from their phone.
I'll let you know what happens.