Technoliteracy

In a speech I gave yesterday to the University of Chester's final year teacher trainees, I touched on the concept of multi-literacy. This was in response to a question from a student about the potential dumbing down of language through SMS texting. She was concerned that txting was encouraging bad spelling which might adversely affect students' academic work. Referred to variously as 'squeeze text', txting, vernacular orthography or unregimented writing (Shortis, 2009), this kind of unorthodox spelling first emerged as a result of the 160 character limit on any single text message. The result is abbreviated spellings, emoticons and phonological representations of orthodox spellings, many of which have become a part of txting culture. The question thrown at me was about the potential problem of squeeze txt spellings appearing in assessed essays and other formal documents. I can see how it could become a problem. Students in my own programmes occasionally make phonological spelling errors. 'I could of...' is a regular mistake I see in the essays I mark. People are beginning to spell as they speak. But is this a problem, if they know what contexts to use these unorthodox spellings within and which to avoid? In 2008 David Crystal related the story of a young student who wrote an entire essay in squeeze text. One of the extracts went something like this:

My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go 2 NY 2C my bro, his GF + thr 3 :-@ kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc.

Crystal notes that the complete essay was never tracked down, leading to a fair assumption that the entire story was merely a hoax, and possibly an attempt to sensationalise the issue for the popular press. Regardless of its accuracy or provenance, the press had a field day, and a storm of protests ensued. Crystal, an acknowledged world expert on language was less impressed, and suggested that regardless of the strange appearance (or morphology) or the words, they never the less followed orthodox grammatical structure. He  wryly suggested that for sheer creativity, he would have awarded the student 10 out of 10, but for appropriateness, 0 out of 10.

Crystal and other make the point that language is evolving and new words are appearing all the time in the English language (in all its many forms worldwide), because language is organic and the culture it emerges from is constantly adapting to change, as are the meanings of some words. Is the controversy of squeeze text really as serious an issue as people are making it out to be? Or is there more than a hint of hyperbole and hysteria about the 'dumbing down' of the English language?

My view is that today's students are able to adapt to all the various media they use to communicate. In being habituated into a particular medium, the user assimilates the culture of that particular tool and begins to communicate appropriately within it. In many ways this is akin to living and working in a foreign country, where to survive and not stand out like a sore thumb, one learns to adopt the practices and social mores of the host country in parallel to learning the new language. This transcends skill and becomes a literacy. My theory is that students generally know the difference between communicating in SMS and writing a formal essay, and will usually follow the rules.

How many media do today's students use in regular communication? SMS, telephone voice, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, written language... the list is quite long, and they certainly use more modes of communication than those that were available to me when I went to university. It therefore follows that they need to learn more forms of literacy than I had to when I was in full time study. For Shortis (2009) the term technoliteracy is used to describe how adept a user is in communicating through any given device. For example, SMS texting requires a specific kind of technoliteracy, where the user has to be familiar with a number of features and affordances, including the capabilities (and error issues) of predictive text mode, the 160 character limitation per single text, and the multi function feature of the standard keys on the keypad. They will also need to be aware of the many regularly used abbreviations, some of which transgress into other modes such as Facebook and e-mail. My 85 year old father recently started using Facebook and soon sent a message including the phrase LOL. To most people using SMS or Facebook LOL stands for Laughing Out Loud. To him, it meant Lots Of Love. Heaven knows what he thinks WTF stands for... Welcome To Facebook perhaps? Whichever stance you adopt in the Gr8 Db8 - one thing is clear. We all need a good dose of technoliteracy.

References

Crystal, D. (2008) Txting: The gr8 db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shortis, T. (2009) Revoicing Txt. In S. Wheeler (Ed.) Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures: Cybercultures in Online Learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.


Technoliteracy by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

A marriage made in Heaven?

Some readers of this blog may recall that I presented a keynote speech for the 'Let's Talk About Txt' conference organised by Txttools Ltd, at the University of Bath earlier this year. It's an excellent, small conference series that attracts delegates from both the public and private sectors of education and training, and is always well attended. My last talk was entitled: 'Everything you always wanted to know about txt but were afraid to ask', and is available in slideshow format at this link.

Well, I am delighted that I have been invited back again to keynote another of their conferences, this time at the University of Leeds, on November 16. Let's talk about txt 7 will be held at Bodington Hall, on the University of Leeds campus - details here. I must have done something right last time then. Below is the title and abstract of my keynote:

Combining Mobile Tools and Social Media: A Marriage Made in Heaven?

In the last decade we have witnessed an exponential rise in the use of participatory media on the web. Tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking sites are flourishing, and boasting huge numbers of adherents. Alongside this rise in the use of social, participatory media we see an almost ubiquitous use of mobile telephones. Even in the developing nations of the world, the use of mobile phones is widespread and impressive. The advent of smart phones has raised the stakes even further affording developers major opportunities to create applications that will dramatically impact upon the daily lives of millions of subscribers across the globe. This presentation will examine these trends and will pose several questions: What happens when we combine the power of these two sets of tools? What happens when learners hold the power of the web in their hands? How will such possibilities impact upon education and training? What will be the new skills teachers and students will need to acquire to exploit the full potential of mobile social media? The answer of course, is that we don’t yet know all the answers, but we are beginning to find out, as research is conducted into for example, the mobile blogging (moblogging), mobile learning (m-learning), geo-caching, augmented reality and handheld teleconferencing. Such combinations of visual and textual media will advance learning and teaching in all sectors into a new phase, potentially changing irrevocably our conceptions about what it means to ‘learn’, the nature of knowledge, and the long established division between the roles of teachers and learners.


A marriage made in Heaven? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Txt in line

Later today I'm travelling up to the University of Bath to meet up this evening with some of the other speakers at the 6th 'Let's Talk About Text' conference. The event takes place tomorrow, Wednesday 19th May, and I'm presenting the opening keynote speech. I'm actually a little regretful of the fact that once lunchtime comes around, I'm going to have to jump into my car and head over to Bristol Airport to catch a flight to Germany where I will be working on Thursday and Friday (More about that later in the week). But for the short time I'm in Bath, I hope to catch up with a number of old friends such as Andy Black, Nitin Parmar, Matt Lingard and Andy Ramsden.

My presentation, which I have embedded here, will hopefully set the scene for what I am sure will be another great event in the series organised by Txttools Ltd. Stephen McCann, Steve Sidaway and their team have put together an interesting programme which I;m sure the 50 or so delegates will find thoroughly engaging. My keynote will cover a range of issues around the use of SMS in education, including a brief history of human communication, from cave paintings to mobile phone texting, student expectations, cultural shifts, language change including 'squeezetext', the texture of language, and finally ... what the research has already shown us about the use of txt in higher education, good and bad. If you're at the conference on Wednesday, I'll see you there.

Everything you always wanted to know about text

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

'Txt in line' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Txt in the city

I'm giving a keynote at an event being held at the University of Bath on May 19. It will be nice to go back to the city of Bath again so soon after my last keynote there on November 11. I enjoyed meeting the HEA podcasting special interest group and was well looked after. This conference will be the sixth in the series entitled 'Let's talk about txt', and apparently over 60 people have already signed up for the one day event. I wrote my title and abstract yesterday and sent it in to the organisers, Txttools. I hope it hits the mark:

Everything you always wanted to know about Txt but were afraid to ask

In this keynote presentation I will trace the history of written communication, and the emergence of communication technologies that have been used to convey our words. Taking a journey from cave wall paintings through the Gutenberg Printing Press to current handheld devices, I will argue that language is the first and most powerful human technology, and that all other technologies are merely extensions - vehicles to convey meaning from person to person.

In consideration of this position, txting can be seen as an evolving facet of interpersonal communication, and in its various forms (e.g. vernacular orthography, squeeze text, homophones, acronyms, respellings and rebuses) it has become the technological equivalent of spoken slang, and can therefore include or exclude. Through an examination of technology enhanced learning contexts and exploration of some examples of txt pedagogy, I will argue that if used appropriately, txt has powerful educational potential. Txt can motivate students to learn, and encourage creativity, and must therefore assume an ever increasing importance across all sectors of education.

Child friendly technologies

Along with some of my third year Primary education students I'm presenting four papers at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference later this month. One of the papers, co-written by Gareth Excell and John Edwards, is entitled: How can child-friendly technologies enhance children’s learning? I'm particularly excited by this one, because the notion of 'child friendly' technologies has not been addressed that often in the recent literature. It may even be a new term for educators to consider. Fact is, most technologies children like to use informally, are banned by most schools.

I had a conversation with a veteran secondary school teacher last night about the use of personal technologies in schools. He came to the conclusion that although devices like mobile phone could be used to great effect during lessons for texting dialogue, he and his colleagues would be very reluctant to do so, unless they had total control over what students could text and who they could text it to, during the lessons. Regardless of the reticence, child friendly technologies will come to the fore I believe, and it is important for teachers to begin discussing now, what the pedagogical potential is, and what safeguards they need to employ to make them a success.

Here's the abstract of the paper (comments are very welcome):

Technology is now a central component of the Primary teacher’s toolkit, and there has been a significant increase in the use of learning technologies in classrooms in recent years (John & Wheeler, 2008). However, several technologies have been viewed as undesirable when viewed in a formal education context. Such devices, including Nintendo game consoles (Wii and DS), mobile phones and iPod Touches can be identified as ‘child-friendly’ technologies, because they are fun and culturally relevant to children, yet they are perceived as either troublesome, or having little relevance in a formal education setting. Teachers often use technology to support their own teaching, but may often fail to see the relevance of child-friendly tools as a means to support children’s learning. Further, many schools have banned the use of such devices due to a perceived threat of misuse and abuse.

In this paper, we contend that child-friendly technologies should be considered as serious learning tools in the formal learning environment of the primary classroom. Several previous studies have established that handheld and mobile technologies have relevance in formal education to encourage collaborative and project based learning (Norris & Soloway, 2004) especially when coupled with social media (So et al, 2009). Such studies reveal that children collaborate more freely, engage more readily and enjoy learning more.

Our study initially involved identifying the range of child-friendly technologies available, and then theorising how the most popular devices might be successfully embedded into the Primary classroom. This was achieved by delivering the same lesson to two groups of children, once using the child-friendly technologies, and once using no supporting technology. We hypothesise that children will engage more with learning when they are able to access technologies they are comfortable and familiar with. We will reveal our results from this study during the presentation.

References
John, P. D. and Wheeler, S. (2008) The Digital Classroom: Harnessing the power of technology for the future of learning and teaching. London: Routledge/David Falmer.
Norris, C. and Soloway, E. (2004) Envisioning the Hand-Held Centric Classroom. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 30 (4), 281-294.
So, H-J., Seow, P. and Looi, C. K. (2009) Location matter: leveraging knowledge building with mobile devices and Web 2.0 technology. Interactive Learning Environments, 17 (4), 367-382.


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A moving experience

Whilst reading David Crystal's book 'Txting: the gr8 db8' yesterday, I came across the txting expression 'a3' which apparently means 'anytime, anywhere, anyplace'. It sounds like the strapline for a glitzy advert from the 1980s for Martini - 'anytime, anyplace, anywhere, there's a wonderful world you can share'. In other words, you can totally get off your face anywhere and at anytime, so just go for it. Whilst the glamourisation of hard liquor and drunkenness is not something I'm likely to espouse (No, really? - Ed), I can appreciate the sentiments of the 'a3' notion when it comes to learning. In particular, technology mediated learning has never been so 'a3' as it is right now. Smart mobile technology, touch screens, context aware systems and fast access to the Internet are just a few of the features that are drawing us ever closer to the holy grail of ubiquitous learning (u-learning).

But why on earth do we need a3 learning? Is it because we are all so busy that learning has to occur on the move, or in shifting contexts? Is it due to our increasingly nomadic lifestyles? Is it perhaps because learning informally is becoming more and more vital in our everyday lives, and must become more achievable beyond the bounds of the traditional institution? I believe it is all of these ... the context of learning is changing because our lifestyles are changing.

Several years ago I adapted the work of the late Professor Dan Coldeway (I had the pleasure to meet him on one solitary occasion when I was invited to speak at his university in South Dakota in 2002). Dan's quadrant model of 'same time, different place' contexts was quite simple, but very useful in visualising all the possible combinations of locations and times in which learning could take place. I mapped a variety of tools and technologies over this model, and it allowed me some thinking space to help me to see all of the possibilities of technology mediated learning. I called it the martini model. That was over a decade ago. Time has moved on and so has the technology. And so, I might add, have our expectations. We now carry extremly powerful little devices in our pockets which we can use to access information, communicate and discover, while on the move. Although a3 learning is not fully with us yet, due to constraints in bandwidth, patchy provision, variable cost and some human factors, it is on its way, and it won't be long, I predict, before students will be able to experience seamless, transparent learning that does not vary in quality, wherever they are, and at whatever time of the day or night. It shouldn't matter where we are or what the time it. We should be able to access the same resources wherever and whenever we are. Equivalent experiences should produce equivalent outcomes. Think I'm wrong? I'm waiting for your comments...

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Scotching the myth

Just about every new technology that has been introduced has been criticised for its potential to corrupt, dumb-down or otherwise undermine society. A recent speech by the Open University's Martin Bean highlighted the fact that from the slateboard to the Internet, the doomsayers have been warning us that we are at risk and that innovation is to be feared and new technologies avoided.

Reading the recent interview of the celebrated language scholar David Crystal reveals that there is a tension between the expectations people place on the use of new technologies and their actual use. Crystal dashes the myth that young people's literacy skills (and in particular their ability to spell correctly) are being weakened by texting through SMS on mobile phones. It is true, he says, that there is some abbreviation used in texting, twittering and other forms of messaging where space is limited (in his new book entitled the Gr8 Deb8 he acknowledges this phenomenon). But this type of txting, he argues, is a pragmatic and context specific ploy rather than a sea-change in the way people are writing. He goes on to expose the hoax essay in which a student was purported to have written a holiday account completely in txt-speak. 'Squeeze text' has its place, is the message, but it won't damage our ability to communicate in more traditional ways. We have always had abbreviated versions of text says Crystal:

"And so the point to make to adults who are criticizing the situation is to say, "You actually did precisely the same thing when you were a kid, except of course you didn't have a mobile phone to do it on." There's the old example, "YY UR YY UB IC UR YY 4ME" ["Too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me"]. As soon as you mention it, adults will say, "Oh yes, of course," and it gives them a bit of a shock to realize that in fact most of the abbreviations aren't new at all."

Alistair Creelman's summary of the interview is particularly useful:

"Teenagers, argues Crystal, are able to cope easily with different registers of language and realize clearly when texting language is appropriate. Interviews with many teenagers reveal that they can't believe how anyone would use texting abbreviations in school work. It simply doesn't belong there and they all realise that. In addition, by analysing large amounts of text messages Crystal found that only around 10% of words were abbreviated at all, thereby deflating the whole debate."

According to Crystal, txting is not going to end the world as we know it, and the tower of literacy is not going to come crashing down around our ears. My view is that children use new technologies to find new ways to communicate. They don't lose the ability to communicate in more traditional ways. They simply find new ways, and in effect, some are actually more adept at communicating than their parents, because they have so many more channels at their disposal. So teachers and parents can now rest easy and worry about other things. Now all we have to do is stamp out the grocer's apostrophe...

Related posts:

Iz txting uhfecting r students? (Writaholics Anonymous)

Image source (edited)

Wiki rebus

I gave my second year student teachers a 7 day project to tackle this week. It involved them going off in pairs and researching the psychology of the internet, as represented in a number of activities including blogging, using social networks, and effects such as the reduction of social cues, respellings through txting or 'rebus', and the nature of online relationships. They were asked to address a number of questions related to their research topic, and not only post them to their Wetpaint wiki, but also create a PowerPoint presentation (some incorporated these into the wiki) for discussion by the whole group.

They uncovered some useful websites on internet psychology - Problogger (Darren Rowse) figured prominently in their reviews with his excellent post 'the psychology of blogging', as did Dr Rudhran's blog on the psychology on the web and a number of other blog sites. They are also using John Suler's superb hypertext book called 'The Psychology of Cyberspace'. All good stuff. It was probably the psychology of online relationships presentation that created the most amusement for the group, but the most heated discussions came about as a result of the presentation on txting. The discussion centred on whether txt language was actually an evolving language, or simply an aberration of acceptable English. The presentations continue on Tuesday and so will the fun. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing what the 'psychology of the wiki' group come up with.

This has been a great group activity, and with the Wetpaint wiki there to capture and link together all of the results, there should be a fine legacy resource for the students to draw on when it comes to writing up their assignments. So if anyone out there is stuck for a teaching idea to try out....

(Image source: gasear.wikispaces.com)

The end of civilization? Revoicing txt

I borrowed the title for this blog post from an article by an old friend and colleague of mine, Victoria Carrington, who is sadly no longer with us (she returned to Australia, see). Victoria introduced the term 'squeeze text' or 'txt' to describe the respellings that have emerged due to short message services where 160 characters or less prompt abbreviations and other contrivances. Words and phrases such as gr8, cu2moro and l8r, (a short glossary is available) have caused consternation amongst purists of grammar and spelling, hence the 'end of civilisation' imprecation. Such respellings may however be simply evidence of a continuing process of evolution for the English language. In the new volume 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', a chapter written by Tim Shortis explores this notion in greater detail. Tim considers the way texting is challenging the orthodoxy of spelling, and shows that there are...

...textual pressures that act on users' choices. ICT and the Internet have not so much changed spelling as reregulated what counts as spelling, and in doing so, there is a challenge to the official educational discourses of literacy, and particularly as they apply to literacy (p 225).

Tim is very vocal in his belief that text respelling is nothing new, although the technology being used to convey the messages is. The 'vernacular orthographies' - slang and reduced spellings used in txt messages - have influences, he says, which go beyond the limited 160 characters, embracing a number of other influences including trade names and popular culture. This is a well written and challenging chapter, and I suspect the purists amongst us who baulk against the idea of txters creating their own new spellings of words, will probably be in no position to complain in 30-40 years time when 'Generation Y' have become the captains of industry, head teachers and military commanders, and we have all joined the ranks of the retired.

(picture source: georgevanantwerp.com)