GCSE English Exam to include questions on text messaging

There have been as many articles on the benefits of text messging to the English language as studies condemning it's negative impact on students' writing skills, but this is the first time a major English litterature exam, the GCSE English, will actually include text messaging questions, The Telegraph reports.

In the new exam, being introduced by the Assessment Qualifications Alliance (AQA), students will get 10 per cent of their overall mark for the section on text message linguistics.

As part of their answer they will be required to include examples of common text shortcuts.

The subject of text messaging will be taught from next September as part of the Studying Spoken Language module intended to make GCSEs harder.

Not all faculty members agree, to some it's the ultimate "dumbing down". Read full article.

Schools Should Make Learning Materials Work on Mobile Phones

Research institutions needn't expend valuable resources equipping students with mobile devices for learning, they should integrate students' own phones, PDAs, and netbooks. That's according to Euro-American research published next year in the International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, reports Cellular News.

The researchers investigated a project to help students and educators use mobile phones and Wikis (user-contributed and edited web pages) sand in higher education. The success of this project suggests that the same approach could be extended widely to the almost universally available technologies used by today's students.

... In order to test their hypothesis with one particular form of technology, the team charged their students with gathering and uploading field data using their mobile phones and then using a browser interface to collate, edit, and annotate that data on a Wiki platform. The use of in-phone cameras and video recorders allowed the students to collect simple visuals for incorporation into the Wiki too, without their having to gain access to expensive video camera equipment.

French Senate Moves to Ban Mobile Phones in Schools

Pupils at French primary schools and middle schools could be banned from using mobile phones in school under draft legislation approved Thursday by the French Senate. PC World reports.

The measure, proposed by the government, is just one clause of an enormous piece of environmental legislation that must still be debated by the National Assembly before it has any chance of becoming law.

Half of French kids use mobiles in class: survey

Nearly half of French youths are using their mobile phones in class, with a majority saying they had answered calls during lessons, according to a survey published Tuesday, reports the AFP and some seven percent of students surveyed said they had surreptitiously filmed their teachers.

Tech addiction 'harms learning'

Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned. The BBC reports.

The study - Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology - was carried out by researchers at Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and academic consultancy AJM Associates.

They used a written questionnaire to examine the nature and the volume of mobile phone calls and text messaging as well as computer use including e-mail, instant messaging and accessing social networking sites.

Read full BBC article.

The full report, Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology is published by Cambridge-based Sigel Press as an electronic whitepaper download and is available at www.sigelpress.com.

New Collins dictionary has text messaging guide too

Imagine a dictionary that offers tips on text messaging abbreviations for Indian cell phone users and has a Shakespeare guide too. Well that's exactly what two new Collins dictionaries have to offer. Samay Live reports.

The Collins Cobuild Learner's Illustrated Dictionary includes text messaging abbreviations for cell phone users, said Rob Scriven, managing director of the Collins Language Division.

..."Dictionaries have changed over the years. They have become more local in flavour incorporating indigenous words so that they are more friendly for non-English speaking users," Scriven told.

Parents now nag via text messaging

The Washington Post on how parental nagging has gone high tech thanks to text messaging.

Some say technology has made nagging less annoying.

Texts are less emotionally charged and seem to inspire less resistance, less eye-rolling, says Longwell, the McLean mother of three. "It's not as painful for them to hear it by text. It becomes grouped with the friendly communication," she says. "They can't hear the nagging."

Or so she hopes.

Joe Lanzafama, 52, a father of two in Stafford, has another tech-minded approach. He nags his seventh-grade daughter about cleaning up after herself -- by text, by phone, in person. Recently, he landed on an idea that he thinks might get results.

A text: Take a picture of your room clean and send it to me.

If eyes don't roll on that one...

Study: Teenagers Lose Sleep over Texting

Yet another study, this time from Belgium, claims that text messages on mobile phones are making an impact on the quality of sleep for almost 50% of the 16 year old people. [via NewsReviews.org]

The Leuven study on media and adolescent health was conducted in Flanders in which about 2500 children studying in 1st and 4th year - aged 13 and 16 years were asked how many times they wake in the night because of incoming SMS messages in their mobile phones.

In the 13 year old children, 13.4% reported that they wake up 1-3 times in a month, 5.8% wake up one in a week, 5.3% wake up many times in a week and 2.2% wake up every night.

In the group of 16 year old children, 20.8% wake up 1-3 times in a month, 10.8% wake up at least one time in a week, 8.9% wake up many times in a week and 2.9% wake up every night.

Previous studies:

-- Sleep Deprived teenagers risk their hearts (USA - 2008)

-- Can't Sleep? Turn Off the Cell Phone! (Canada - 2007)

-- SMS teens losing precious sleep (Australia - 2006)

-- Teens face mobile stress (Sweden - 2006)

-- Students lack sleep (Japanese study - 2005)

-- Americans are sleep deprived (USA - 2005)

-- Mobile phones and video games 'are depriving children of sleep' (Belgian study - 2004)

-- SMS causes poor sleep (Belgian study - 2003)

-- Children text at night instead of sleeping (Australian study - 2003)

School Sued for "Illegal" Cell Phone Search

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a middle school honor student, who it says was wrongfully expelled from school after authorities illegally searched his cell phone and found what they claimed were photos depicting "gang-related activity" - when in reality the photos mainly depicted the student dancing in the bathroom of his own home. Cellular News reports.

... The lawsuit charges that the searches and expulsion violated Richard's rights under the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as his rights under the Mississippi Constitution.

"This is a case where an honor student was expelled from school because a police officer and school officials decided without any basis that innocent pictures of a kid dancing conveyed 'gang-related' messages," said Reginald T. Shuford, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. "School officials and the police officer involved never pointed to anything that would suggest that pictures of Richard dancing were linked to a gang in any way. From the day he had his phone confiscated until the day the county school board expelled him, school and police officials showed a callous disregard for Richard's rights."

Students From Around The World Learn Through SMS

Students from around the world will be able to learn together by using SMS in the new school year 2009-2010. Cellular News reports.

An IICD supported Global Teenager Project will experiment with using SMS to ensure that schools without internet access can also participate in one of the world's largest online learning programs.

Although the Global Teenager Project was already widely spread throughout the world, the program was only accessible for schools with access to the internet.

Through the internet, classes around the world ask each other questions about a certain theme (such as 'politics in my country', 'teen life' and 'how HIV/AIDS affects the world') that they also talked about in class. This way they earn from each others cultures.

With the new SMS component, it is now also possible for schools in rural areas with very limited or no access to the internet at all to participate in the project.

... The first countries that will use SMS for learning in the Global Teenager Project are most likely Zambia, Ghana, South-Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, Romania and the Netherlands.

Students Hit With $15 Fine For Using Cell Phones in School

Schools across the country have been cracking down on cell phone use but nowhere has that stance been stronger than in Texas where state regulations allow individual districts to confiscate the devices and charge up to $15 for their return. ABCNews reports.

Across the state at the Klein Independent School District teachers have been confiscating cell phones and slapping students with the $15 fee for two years.

In that time, the district has collected $100,948 from students.

... In fact, the district didn't budget the money or even know how much was coming in to its 39 schools from cell phone use until a reporter asked.

Teens send three texts per class

According to a study conducted by Joel Benenson of Common Sense Media, teens send 25-percent of their total text messages while killing time in class. Switched reports.

The pollsters broke the numbers down and found that students send 110 texts a week during class time, which equates to over three texts per class.

The study also determined that half of all students have used their phones to either store notes they can consult during a test, or to text a friend for a test answer. Only half of all the students polled believe this phone cheating to be a "serious offense."

Teens panic as they're forced to unplug at camp

No texting, no Facebook, no iPod; teens cope with being unplugged at sleepaway camp. Cellular News reports.

For a generation used to texting, Facebook and YouTube, going away to sleepaway camp can be a bit unnerving. Many outdoor camps don't allow cell phones, laptops or iPods, and there is no computer lab for them to update their pages.

... Experts agree that unplugging is a great idea. But it will be a "shock to the system" for those who are digitally dependent, says Anastasia Goodstein, author of "Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online."

... While teens will inevitably make friends at camp, 10 friends in your bunk is not the same as hundreds on Facebook, says Gary Rudman of GTR Consulting, author of the upcoming "2009 gTrend Report", which focuses on teens and technology.

Related:

-- No cell phones at summer camps (2003)

-- Away but connected: Sleepaway camps differ on e-mails and cell phones (2005)

High-tech cheaters jailed in China

Eight Chinese who used high-tech communications equipment, including mobile phones and wireless earpieces, to help their children cheat at university entrance exams have been jailed on state secret charges, local media said, reports Yahoo! Tech (cf also article in the BBC).

The eight, from the wealthy eastern province of Zhejiang, got together in 2007 to plot how to help their children as "they knew their achievements were not ideal," the official Legal Daily said.

One of the parents hired university students to provide answers which were sent to the children via wireless earphones while they were in the exam room, the report said.

But their ruse was discovered after police detected "abnormal radio signals" near the school, the newspaper said.

The parents were given jail terms ranging from six months to three years after being found guilty of illegally obtaining state secrets, it added, without saying what happened to their children.

Related:

-- Hi-tech exam cheats jailed (China)

-- The new cheating culture (USA)

-- ‘Wigged out‘ students caught cheating (Vietnam)

-- Cheating reports in national exams (China)

-- Students found using SMS during final exams (Australia)

-- Pupils use mobile phones to cheat in exams (UK)

-- High School Kids tell the New York Post they cheat on exams with their cell phones

Links to articles on the largest student cheating scandal to date, which occured in South Korea:

-- Metal Detectors Present In Exam Rooms (South Korea)

-- Exam scandal offers shades Orwell's fear (South Korea)

-- Education Ministry goes after cheaters (South Korea)

-- A Struggle of 18 Days with 280,000 Text Messages (South Korea)

-- 1,625 More Suspected of Exam Cheating (South Korea)

-- South Korean Students Burned for SMS Cheating

-- Answers Relayed From Other Organizations (South Korea)

-- Cheats stir jamming debate (South Korea)

-- Seoul Education Office Took Precautions Against Cheating (South Korea)

-- Students held for (Text Message) exam scam

Mobiles at school don't harm kids

Using mobile phones and playing video games doesn't harm teens' academic performance, according to new research by Michigan State University. Techradar reports.

A three-year study of students from 20 schools found that using mobiles had no effect on the educational results of a group of 12-year-olds.

Read full article.

Related links to both positive and negative studies on cell phones, students and academic results.

Tajikistan Bans Mobile Phones in Schools

The parliament in Tajikistan has adopted amendments to laws on education which will now ban the use of mobile phones in all educational facilities in the country, which covers both schools and universities. The ban applies to both students and teachers, reports Cellular News.

These measures were taken following multiple requests from the country's president, and are intended to raise quality of teaching in educational institutions," a Tajik lawmaker said.

The decree also banned students from using their own cars to travel to their studies.

Student Arrested For Classroom Texting

A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl who refused to stop texting during a high school math class was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, according to police.

The student was issued a criminal citation for disorderly conduct, which carried "a bail of $298," and had her phone confiscated.

[The Smoking Gun via Gizmodo]

Idea new ad on 'Education for all'

This latest ad from IDEA highlights the power of mobile telephony to address the socially relevant theme of education. Fabulous. Spotted on Core77 .

The thought-provoking ad campaign has Abhishek Bachchan playing the head of an educational institution. When challenged by the traditional, physically bound classroom methodology that prevents reaching out to many more who are in need of education, he uses mobile telephony to overcome the barrier.

UK Parents 'want texts from schools'

According to the BBC, one in 12 of the 1,493 parents polled by government education technology agency Becta said schools kept them informed using these methods.

"But 68% of parents said they wanted schools to use such technologies to keep them up to date more frequently.

Some 15% of parents were told of their child's progress at least once a month, and 85% were updated four times a year.

And eight out of 10 wanted more feedback on how their child was doing. "

Some Teachers Are Welcoming Cell Phones In Class

Rather than wanting cell phones out of their classroom, some educators are now embracing them as platforms for learning.

Schools from Michigan to Texas to Maryland are using smart-phones to send email to students, send virtual handouts and podcasts. Instructors say they can check attendance by using the phones.

[via WITN]

Let pupils abandon spelling rules, says academic

Children are being held back at school because they are forced to memorise irregular spellings and learn how to use the apostrophe, a leading academic will claim this week. Times Online reports.

"John Wells, Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London and president of the Spelling Society, will use the society’s centenary dinner this week to call for a “freeing up” of English spelling".

The teaching of literacy in schools is a major worry. It seems highly likely that one of the reasons Britain and other English-speaking countries have problems with literacy is because of our spelling and the burden it places on children. "

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.”

Mobile phones 'boost school standards'

Schoolchildren should be allowed to use mobile phones in the classroom to boost education standards, according to researchers, reports The Telelgraph.

"Despite fears that mobiles and MP3 players are a huge distraction, it is claimed schools can get the most out of pupils by giving them full-time access to the latest gadgets.

Academics said mobiles could be used for a wide range of educational purposes, including creating short movies, setting homework reminders, recording a teacher reading a poem and timing science experiments.

New-style "smartphones", which can connect to the internet, also allowed pupils to access revision websites, log into the school email system, or transfer electronic files between school and home.

Employing them as part of day-to-day lessons boosts pupils' motivation levels, it was claimed.

The conclusions comes despite high-profile calls from teaching unions for an all-out ban on the use of mobiles in schools."

Related: - Phone a friend in exams - A Sydney girls' school is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to "phone a friend" and use the internet and i-Pods during exams

Phone a friend in exams

A Sydney girls' school is redefining the concept of cheating by allowing students to "phone a friend" and use the internet and i-Pods during exams. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

"Presbyterian Ladies' College at Croydon is giving the assessment method a trial run with year 9 English students and plans to expand it to all subjects by the end of the year.

... An English teacher, Dierdre Coleman said her students were being encouraged to access information from the internet, their mobile phones and podcasts played on mp3s as part of a series of 40-minute tasks. But to discourage plagiarism, they are required to cite all sources they use.

"In terms of preparing them for the world, we need to redefine our attitudes towards traditional ideas of 'cheating'," Ms Coleman said. "Unless the students have a conceptual understanding of the topic or what they are working on, they can't access bits and pieces of information to support them in a task effectively.

"In their working lives they will never need to carry enormous amounts of information around in their heads. What they will need to do is access information from all their sources quickly and they will need to check the reliability of their information."

... International education consultant, Marc Prensky threw out the following challenge to educators in a British Educational Communications and Technology Agency publication: "What if we allowed the use of mobile phones and instant messaging to collect information during exams, redefining such activity from 'cheating' to 'using our tools and including the world in our knowledge base'?

"Our kids already see this on television. 'You can use a lifeline to win $1 million,' said one. 'Why not to pass a stupid test?' I have begun advocating the use of open phone tests ... Being able to find and apply the right information becomes more important than having it all in your head."

Court Upholds School Ban on Cell Phones

A ban on cellphones in the nation's largest school system was upheld Tuesday by a state appeals court. The WSJ reports.

"City lawyers argued that education officials had the right to make policy decisio -- "the kind government officials make all the time" -- about devices students are allowed to have at school.

The state Supreme Court's Appellate Division agreed. It said that nothing about the ban interferes with any of the rights claimed by the parents, nor does it prevent students and their parents from communicating before and after school.

New York has more than 1,400 schools and 1.1 million students.

"We are extremely disappointed", said Norman Siegel, a lawyer for the parents and students. "We strongly believe the ban is unconstitutional and illegal, and we will not rest until the prohibition is reversed."

Mobile phones to teach Math to Girls

Nokia, together with the The Department of Education and non-profit organisation Mindset Network, has released M4Girls. [via
ITWeb]

"The pilot project uses Nokia 6300 mobile phones loaded with educational material to help improve the mathematics performance of Grade 10 girl learners in two different schools.

... The South African Department of Education is on a drive to improve proficiency in key subjects like maths among students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, in particular girls, who tend to perform worse than their male counterparts in this subject."

Watch out! Thai exam cheat triggers phone-watch ban

Thai students will be barred from wearing watches in national university entrance exams this weekend after a student was caught cheating using a mobile phone wrist watch, Education Ministry officials said on Wednesday, reports Reuters.

"Photographs of the phone watch would be sent to exam centers around the country and students would have to rely on wall clocks, they said.

The ban followed invigilators catching a student receiving text messages on his phone watch during a national exam in Bangkok last weekend.

The novel method of cheating was a reflection of the difficulty of earning a university place in a country where some university engineering or medicine departments might take only one in 100 candidates."

Links to related articles on South Korean Students and SMS Cheating.

New York Schools Give Students Free Cellphones in Pilot Reward Program

When students in select New York schools score good grades, they won’t just be getting the kudos of teachers and parents -- they will also be rewarded with talk time, ringtones and games for cellphones given to them free. Digital Journal reports.

In a pilot program affecting 2,500 students in Manhattan and Brooklyn, education officials are giving away Samsung flip-phones to seven participating middle schools. Each student receives a free phone with 130 prepaid minutes.

When a student does well at school with good behaviour or impressive grades, they can earn “points” that can be redeemed for talk time, ringtones, games and other downloads.

The Million Motivation Campaign’s cellphone project will also allow principals and teachers to text-message students to alert them to school events, tests or study tips.

... But there’s a small wrinkle to the Million plan. New York has banned cellphone use in schools, so the Million phones can only be used after class."

As campus shootings make headlines, students still slow to embrace cell phone alert systems

The massacre at Virginia Tech last year sent colleges nationwide scrambling to improve how they get alerts to students during crises on campus. One solution: Text messages sent to cell phones.

But while hundreds of campuses have adopted text alerts, most students are not embracing the system - even in an age when they consider their mobile phones indispensable, reports the Associated Press.

"Omnilert, a Northern Virginia company that provides an emergency alert system called e2Campus to more than 500 campuses, reports an average enrollment rate among students, faculty and staff of just 39 percent.

Across the country, colleges 'are really struggling with how to get the enrollment numbers up,'' said Steven Healey, Princeton University's public safety director and an expert on campus security.

The University of Missouri's Columbia campus tried a giveaway - students who signed up for the alerts were entered in a drawing for an iPod Nano - in hopes of improving its rate. Just 15 percent of the roughly 28,000 students have requested text message alerts or cell-phone calls during emergencies.

... Campus safety experts point to several factors to explain the lack of interest among students, including feelings of invincibility and reluctance to give out personal information.

Others hesitate to pay the fees - generally a matter of pennies - that some cell phone providers charge to send and receive texts. Colleges generally pay $1 to $4 per enrolled student to the companies that set up the alerts."

Graduates 'sms' in job l3tt3rs

According to The Sydney Morning Herald graduates are using text message abbreviations and gaming slang in their job applications, prompting alarmed employers and education institutions to run special courses in written communication.

Cell phone college class opens in Japan

Japanese already use cell phones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, according to the Associated Press, they can take a university course.

"Cyber University, the nation's only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids.

For classes for personal computers, the lecture downloads play on the monitor as text and images in the middle, and a smaller video of the lecturer shows in the corner, complete with sound.

The cell phone version, which pops up as streaming video on the handset's tiny screen, plays just the Power Point images.

... The cell phone lectures may be expanded to other courses but for now will be for the pyramids course, according to Cyber University, which offers about 100 courses, including ancient Chinese culture, online journalism and English literature.

Unlike the other classes, the one on cell phones will be available to the public for free, although viewers must pay phone fees."