Check your assumptions at the door, please
A research report written up in the Times Online (of the UK) showed up in today’s ASCD Smartbrief. The research indicates that, contrary to what most people have assumed, kids that have grown up using text messaging are better writers than previous generations.
It’s just one study, so it isn’t the end of the argument, but it does at least sort of slap the widely held belief that text messaging is corrupting our kids’ writing skills. Instead, it found that “…today?s teenagers are using far more complex sentence structures, a wider vocabulary and a more accurate use of capital letters, punctuation and spelling.”
We ran a technology and writing project for three years centered on the use of Alphasmarts. By removing the access issue (one Alphasmart for every kid meant that anytime a child wanted to write, they could grab one), we also increased the amount of time writing. The basic underlying assumption was that the more kids write, the better they’ll get. That turned out to be true. Beyond Alphasmarts, any tool that encourages increased time spent writing is our friend. That includes instant messaging, texting, and blogs. And with a few more research reports like this, maybe we can stop being accused of contributing to the fall of western civilization for using new writing-based technologies.