A recent NYT article “Texting May Be Taking A Toll” is relevant for any teacher today, but it is particularly relevant for teachers of writing who wish their students demonstrated the same mania for their textual assignments as they have for texting. With 2,272 text messages per month, it works out to about 6.3 text message per hour in a 12-hour day. That’s no small amount of writing – even in text-speak.
But for all its popularity, text-speak is not sufficient to develop articulated ideas or express complex emotions, so our avid communicators need to channel some of this enthusiasm into more focused practice at expressing their ideas more fully, coherently and powerfully. Rather than simply reject or resist the trend in texting, let us harness it for more productive purposes.
And for when the cell phone is a constant class interruption there is the cell phone jammer !
We need more tools to jam the sewer-pipe of information that distracts Millennials in class.
As much of a geek as I am, I know when to turn off the multi-tasking. Next semester, my class policy will be: if I catch you off-task on the computer, the first time it’s a warning and a note in my roll.
The next time, it’s a skip.