This class, EDM 510, has been very informative for me. I am not familiar with many of the advancements in computer and cell-phone technology, and am almost completely ignorant about most forms of social networking (I have never tweeted, used Facebook or had a blog before). This class has opened my eyes to some of the possibilities these technologies can have in an educational setting. However, for this post, I was thinking about some of the negative aspects technology has in the classroom. When I was a TA at South, I noticed a trend of some students taking their text-talk into their papers. Words like "to" became "2," and "you" became "u" (I also suspected the prevalence of sentence fragments and run-on sentences in some students papers were the result of the less than formal writing environment present in text messaging and twitter). Apparently, my fears were not entirely unjustified. there have been studies that seem to back up my fears from my year as a TA. However, another study suggests that it may not just be grammar that suffers. Researcher Joan Lee has found evidence that those who texted more were less accepting of new words. She suggested that peer to peer text messaging does not contain creativity in language that helps learn new words. Technology will only continue to evolve at ever increasing speeds. For your responses to this blog post, I would like for you to consider how you as a teacher (in whatever subject you teach) can encourage the use of proper grammar and vocabulary building- skills that are critical for building good communication skills.
