Teens, Cell phones and Texting

Yesterday, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report on "Teens, Cell phones and Texting".

Some major findings are shown graphically here and on that site:

--75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004.

--More than half of teens (54%) are daily texters.

--Fully two-thirds of teen texters say they are more likely to use their cell phones to text their friends than talk to them to them by cell phone.

There is an entire chapter in the new report which deals with cell phone regulation by parents and schools.

--As we know, teens overwhelmingly bring their cell phones to school. In this survey, 77% said they do and the number is only slightly less (65%) for schools where cell phones are not allowed.

--31% of teens who take their phones to school send text messages every day during class time.

I wish that Pew had probed more deeply about how educators are integrating cell phones in their classes. Maybe that will be part of a future study.

Why Teach Social Media? A Case for Media Literacy

Howard Rheingold has been teaching social media to Berkeley and Stanford students for about five years and has been consumed with the question "are personal computers and Internet-based communications good for us as individuals, communities, democracies?" He answers that question: "it depends on what people know about how to use these tools." Whether digital media will be beneficial or destructive in the long run doesn't depend on the technologies, but on the literacy of those who use them.

The use or nonuse of social tools sparks Twitterstorm

Everyone is talking about, or should I say twittering about, the use of twitter and other social networking tools in the school setting. What do you think? Read this short but thought provoking article in School Library Journal.

Northern Illinois Computing Educators (NICE)

The November 6th NICE meeting focused on the Read/Write web: Web 2.0. Charlene Chausis (Apple Distinguished Educator 2003) is a staff developer at Stevenson High School. Her audience ranged from the totally uninitiated to high end users of such tools as blogs, wikis, social bookmarking tools such as Furl and del.icio.us. I was excited to try out del.icio.us and love the ease of use and its integration with the Firefox browser. Charlene's presentation Social Technologies for the Classroom is shared on the web, so if you missed it, see her web handout.