Since the early 90's text messaging has sky rocketed into one of the most prominent forms of communication in the world. Texting, due to its simplicity, is very popular; anyone with a cell phone can do it. It helps users stay communicated with many people through out the day. Due to this surge in texting, educators have also seen the gargantuan increase in the number of "texters" in the classrooms through out the United States and the rest of the world. While some educators consider texting to be a major distraction, and diminishing to vocabulary, communication skills, and writing skills, others consider texting to be as valid of a teaching tool as the overhead projector. Recent studies have shown that texting in class not only has the opposite effect of what teachers previously thought but also has a positive effect on a child's ability to write lengthier papers and has made their writing skills stronger in general.
New Uses For Texting
The new age teachers that are harnessing the vast power of text messaging are the progressive professors that see what the world of tomorrow has to offer us. By using texting as a positive tool instead of a means of distraction educators can now have students text in the answers that the students have to questions that the professors put on the projector screen. This new technology called Classroom Feedback System, or CFS, is a program that professors and other educators use to receive text messages from his or her students during the class. By having the students text in their answers and questions that they might have during the class thus creating better class discussions and allows the professors to get to a more personal level with his or her students because he or she can see how each individual student is doing in the class and where the student may need extra help. The CFS technology can be used in all sorts of classes ranging from mathematics to an array of sciences. This technology is some of the most valuable in the educational world today. This is the future of schooling; by allowing a communication system; text messaging, formally a taboo of schools in society, can now be a valuable aspect of education.
The CFS technology not only makes gathering the answers to classroom questions easier but also makes the classroom an easier place to learn as well. In a recent study by Eusebio Scornavacca, Sid Huff, and Stephen Marshall called Mobile Phones In The Classroom: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them; the authors randomly surveyed 600 students and the results where that 38% said sending a text to the professor while in class was preferable over raising his or her hand in a major lecture hall. This lessens the anxiety of blurting out the wrong answer in the middle of a lecture hall containing hundreds of people.
In; An investigation of the incorporation of Information and Communication Technology and thinking skills with Year 1 and 2 students, By: Marlene Walters and Heather Fehring, the two authors talk about how important cell phones are to student’s learning styles in today’s “digital native” schools. “The integration of ICT supports students as they learn through a process of inquiry. New perspectives and tools can enhance the quality of education, and ICT has the potential to be integrated into meaningful and purposeful activities and learning for the classroom”(Walters, Fehring; P.260). Without staying up to date with technologies ever changing ideas and inventions, our society would be lost and our future students will be lost in this digital age where technology is king.
New Age Cell Phone Uses
Text messaging in classrooms is not only limited to college lecture halls but also elementary schools. They are using text messaging and cell phones to strengthen the bond between classrooms at an international level. At Saint Mary’s City Schools in Ohio, students are using the new Samsung phones to research vocabulary words and communicate with international students when studying a particular country. By using these technologies, schools have made cell phones more of a regular tool i