ing; 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 in classrooms. “They may phone or iPod, a $30 to $40 monthly telecom fee, and an annual software subscription fee of $8 to $35 per device—have impressed district IT departments as an alternative to the nearly $1,000 cost for many laptops and the many more thousands of dollars needed to build and support a wireless network.” (Mobile Devices in The Classroom; Ron Schachter, P.32) By integrating cell phones and other new technologies into today’s classrooms, schools are cutting down the costs of buying massive amounts of bulky computers and flimsy laptops that are not only expensive but take a lot of maintenance and time to use. By cutting the costs of access to the internet, schools can invest their money in other things concerning the school, such as building up keep and purchasing programs that can help teachers find more productive ways of teaching to his or her students. Without this technology in classrooms today schools would be taught in the out of date manner that disregards technology as a valuable resource for learning in society today. Cell phones can be one of the most useful tools in a professor’s arsenal. “Qusay Mahmoud, director of the Centre for Mobile Education Research (CMER) at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. ‘The average cell phone today has more computing power than many of the computers of a few years ago, and many are equipped with video recorders, cameras, and other features,’ he notes. ‘All of these could be used to improve the learning experience.’” (Dial M for Mobile; Sharon Shinn, P. 34) The future of education is in cell phones and the new technologies associated with them.
In a recent article; Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children’s literacy attainment? By Beverly Plester, Clare Wood and Victoria Bell, the authors discussed recent studies that took surveys from young students in Britain. “There was no evidence that extent of text message use was associated with use of text abbreviations in the translation exerc