Monday, October 31, 2011
Week 8 - Assignment 2
In my article from Week 5, a topic that the author brings up is student use of instant and text messaging in the classroom. Students use these tools in their everyday life outside of the classroom. Do you feel that using these tools would be a motivating way to engage students? Or would they be a distraction in the classroom that allows for the use of "non-standard English", such as "C U L8R"? Also, how could you see yourself using these tools in your classroom?
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I honestly wouldn't trust 60% of my students with phones. I would constantly have to deal with my students texting throughout the school and not paying attention. For example, I used to play on the graphing calculators whenever we used them. I was easily distracted.
ReplyDeleteI actually wrote an interesting blog post on how texting in "txt language" is mentally stimulating. It's just something that people don't get until they text often. My writing on this can be found below:
http://brianfediuk.com/blog/46-maybe-texting-isnt-ruining-the-minds-of-the-young
I have to agree with cell phones as a distraction. I could see myself using it for other reasons other than what I was supposed to.
ReplyDeleteThomas and Brian,
ReplyDeleteBrian - your blog post is interesting; you raise the important point that students need to differentiate between audience and what type of language is appropriate for different situations. I believe this is called register in the linguistic realm. If teachers explicitly teach students that there is an academic register different that register used for texting, and continuously encourage students to be aware of this, I would hope it would stick. I've found the same scenario occurs when my students reply to one another on blogs and discussion boards online. They often resort to texting language. I am trying to encourage academic writing when responding to academic tasks, but it is a tough battle. It's so second nature for the kids.
One thing I found interesting with my own children is the introduction of the full keyboards for their telephones. One day when I was asking them about abbreviated words and texting both my kids said that with the full keyboards they did not feel compelled to use as much abbreviated text as when that had to use one key for three letters.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about cell phones in the classroom either. My daughter did have a very tech savvy teacher who incorporated cell phones into a few assignments for social studies. She thought it was very cool. My concern would be with the distractions they pose. One thing I find very interesting is more times than not if a kid is texting in school and I ask them to turn it off their response is usually it's my mom or dad??? I don't necessarily believe every one who says its a parent but i do believe enough kids do communicate with their parents throughout the day via texting. How do we expect kids to comply when the example is not being set for them?
Very interesting topic for discussion. It seems that mobile learning is more popular in Asia countries, such as Japan and Korea. They use mobile devices to enhance students' learning inside and outside of the classrooms. There are many studies with positive results of using mobile device (including cell phone) to improve students' learning. Here in the U.S. we are also trying to explore the potential of using mobile device to connect to students' formal and informal learning. Read this interesting article: http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/cell-phones-in-classrooms.html
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