txtn iz gd 4 u

I seem to be on a roll finding mLearning articles. This one, while not on the mLearning stream directly is one that finds that the SMSpeak (nee textisms) that “kids” use is potentially beneficial to them.

In “Exploring the relationship between children’s knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes” Plester, Wood et. al. in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, (Volume 27, Number 1, March 2009 , pp. 145-161(17) 10.1348/026151008X320507), the authors find that because textisms are phonetically based, this awareness translates into better reading skills – matching up nicely with other work (Parilla I believe in his work on comics) that suggests that exposure to the written word in any form improves literacy.