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By Raj, September 8, 2008 8:54 am

It seems that the Brits are really quite interested in what the impacts of txt are to the academy as it seems that European youth in general, and Brit youth in particular are all over the mobile thing … like a noob on T9…:

As part of the study – being presented at Thursday’s British Educational Research Association’s annual conference – teachers were encouraged to allow pupils to use their own mobiles or new generation smartphones in lessons.

According to researchers, pupils gained confidence by using technology familiar to them, using it in a number of different ways.

One teacher told academics: “Students like mobiles and they know how to use them.

Using this technology gives them more freedom to express themselves without needing to be constantly supervised.” (Telegraph)

So it would seem that the mobile world is the great panacea for education right… but wait…

Professor Wells pointed towards the emerging technologies that are leading to a reevaluation of spelling, saying: “Text messaging, e-mail and internet chat rooms are showing us the way forward for English.” (Times)

So new technologies are changing the way we communicate… and if communicating is core to learning, then it would all seem to make sense as students would then be learning in their own world. If this is so great… what is the problem (there always has to be a fly in the ointment eh?)? Well, the second quote comes from a story that suggest that English spelling and in my mind, grammar. The Times story suggest that we are spending too much time in Div I and II teaching and dealing with spelling, claiming that if this practice is stopped, that it would provide more time for students to learn all manner of other things – they point to txt, IM and other new communication fora as evidence of this. And this of course is the “sticky place”.

In my mind, if we let spelling go to the way side, there will shortly be a great number of “valid” variations for any given word and that the “time saved” not learning how to properly spell would be spent by everyone else spending time trying to understand what was written. I’m not talking about the difference between fetus and foetus or color and colour… it could be chul vs cuil vs cool… a slippery slope if I ever saw one.

So if we are to encourage mLearning… we might want to empasize “context specific” linguistics, much like we currently have formal and informal language – both of these have rules that have allowed English speakers to thrive, so I’m sure that if there is some way to formalize “Mobile English”, and document its informalisms – we might in short order be able to get the best of both worlds… a language that matches the media that is being used to transmit it (I think formal language was used way back because it allowed for more “art on the page”) with a reliable way to decode what has been transmitted and done with tools that are natural to the user.

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By Raj, July 8, 2008 9:00 am

I spotted this story in the Gaurdian via my reader and also noted that OLDaily had also picked up on it and having looked into the impact of txt for quite a while. As Pontydysdu summarized, in order to really get anything out of txt… and to even enter into that world, one needs to have a very strong literate base.

That got me thinking… well that is fine and dandy for the older kids and for adults “looking in”, but what about the little ones coming up? Won’t they just read txt and understand it as text? But then it hit me as I was reading the Guardian article… for the most part, txt is a non standard language, and just as it is an adaptation of language to a media, there is also another factor. Even within a language, there are dialects and this is what requires one to be strongly literate in the base language in order to translate the new form. This is the one bit that makes me feel comfortable in thinking that young kids coming up won’t pick up the short forms of language (necessarily) and take it as the true form – if they do, they won’t be able to understand the other dialects that may or may not be around. This is at least the hope for the abbreviations., because the kicker is… at least this is what I believe… that most of the text that is sent and received is in proper English – save stupid companies that use short forms to be “hip”.

Some supporting quotes:

People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

Although many texters enjoy breaking linguistic rules, they also know they need to be understood. There is no point in paying to send a message if it breaks so many rules that it ceases to be intelligible. When messages are longer, containing more information, the amount of standard orthography increases. Many texters alter just the grammatical words (such as “you” and “be”). As older and more conservative language users have begun to text, an even more standardised style has appeared. Some texters refuse to depart at all from traditional orthography. And conventional spelling and punctuation is the norm when institutions send out information messages, as in this university text to students: “Weather Alert! No classes today due to snow storm”, or in the texts which radio listeners are invited to send in to programmes. These institutional messages now form the majority of texts in cyberspace – and several organisations forbid the use of abbreviations, knowing that many readers will not understand them. Bad textiquette.

Research has made it clear that the early media hysteria about the novelty (and thus the dangers) of text messaging was misplaced. In one American study, less than 20% of the text messages looked at showed abbreviated forms of any kind – about three per message. And in a Norwegian study, the proportion was even lower, with just 6% using abbreviations. In my own text collection, the figure is about 10%.

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By Raj, September 28, 2007 7:22 pm

I was in a web conference this afternoon on eportfolios and felt like more of a sell job than anything else and it was doing everything wrong in terms of presentation. But through the fuzz of boredom, I thought of something that is by far the bigger issue to overcome. ….grr… wireless dropped and I lost the entire post… so there is what I think I can pull out.

They blame “generation m” (aka generation mobile) as being to media saturated to be able to spend the time to reflect on what they are presented. Because of this, they argue that students are going to be reacting to information rather than applying any manner of cognitive skills to situations that are presented. The claim is that eports are able to slow students down and enable them to reflect. To this I wonder, if everything else in the life of the student is happening at “full tilt”, then why would eports be any different? I don’t think it’s this time issue at all that is a major obstacle.

In my mind, I’m thinking that the major problem with bringing eports into the higher ed realm, especially in larger institutions is that there is no culture on the part of the instructors to support an “object” that they don’t control, that they don’t really mark and that they may have to support but that might never have any of their course materials contained within. This culture also doesn’t promote any kind of academically altruistic actions on the part of instructors. If this can’t be overcome, there is no hope for eports.

The way to get around this would be to work within small groups/courses/cohorts and ensure that there is buy in from the instructors involved. The other option would be to run portfolios not from within courses, but rather from other organizations like the Student’s Union or the library.