After watching Pay Attention and A Vision of K-12 Students Today, I first had to wipe away the tear that was dripping down my cheek (I’m a sucker for those poor sad-eyed students holding the messages their teacher wrote), then I was able to stop and consider the message and how it relates to my teaching practice.  I was thinking about the possibilities that could be unleashed in my classroom if I began to encourage texting rather than suppressing it.  Ironically, before I began to consider too deeply, I found myself back on Yahoo’s home page faced with this little gem about a teenage girl who won $50,000 dollars as a result of her texting skills.  So, I am convinced.  Let them text! It is not likely to be harmful to students’ writing skills, but rather, the practice will help develop them.  Texting can also increase collaboration, support good study habits, and encourage contributions to class discussions that otherwise might be lost.

I admit I was one of those teachers who feared that my students’ texting abreviation habits would interfere with the way they wrote formal papers as well, but according to linguist David Crystal in an interview with Good blogger, Mark Peters, the majority of texts don’t really include abbreviations, and those who do use them are perfectly capable of knowing when not to use them.  I have only seen a few in the written work of my students, and even those only required a reminder that formal writing shouldn’t include text speak to set them straight.  In a similar way, it used to irritate me the way the R in Toys ‘R Us is backward, and that Rite-Aid incorrectly spells the word ‘right’.  But, as these examples haven’t led to widespread deterioration of the English language, I don’t suppose I should worry that texting will either.

In his Suite101 article, Tom Wolsey mentions that students could participate in classroom discussions by texting rather than by raising their hands, thereby deepening the classroom conversation.  A strange idea at first, but do I not actively listen to my professors in online courses while following the text chat of my classmates? (And listening to an internet radio station, answering emails, ….)  Why didn’t I recognize this before?  Of course not all of the texts will be on topic, and some will probably be less than flattering comments about me, their teacher, but I think I’d rather the insulting notes were digital ones that I never see, than the paper ones that I pick up off the floor later and then spend too much time trying to identify the handwriting.

Texting could also be used outside of the classroom to supplement learning inside the classroom.  In Distributed Learning and the Field of Instructional Design, Dempsey and Van Eck define distributed learning as, “Any eductational or training experience that uses a variety of means, including technology, to enable learning.”  It goes beyond online learning, which is bound to the internet, to include just about any technology that enhances learning.  Students could text each other or me with a response to something they read for homework.  They could publish to a class blog via text.  In this way, text messaging becomes an asynchronous (not taking place in real time) component of learning.

Finally, back to that champion texting teen that led me down this road.  How does she use texting to support her learning?  She uses text messages while, “studying for exams with friends, which she says is better done by text because she can look back at the messages to review.”  So there you have it.  Let them text.