Letter: Texting for class has a downside
In his 11th grade U.S. History class, teacher Jonathan Klomp tells his class to use their cell phones to rate the President's speech about Osama bin Laden's death after watching it on their smart board at Amityville Memorial high school. (May 3, 2011) Credit: Newsday/Karen Wiles Stabile
Regarding the article "From textbooks to texting" [News, Oct. 17], there are some inherent concerns that need to be addressed before using cellphones as teaching tools.
These programs lead to a concern that students with limited economic resources may feel compelled or driven to convince their parents to purchase or upgrade cellphones to incorporate texting. What about the student whose parent has removed texting due to violation of privileges?
What about the student who is talented enough to quickly enter his or her response, only to dally into unrelated Web or social media sites while waiting for classmates to catch up?
Using cellphones can detract from teaching and learning verbal skills, which are becoming a lost art with the proliferation of text-based communications. Do students submit text responses anonymously from their desks? Even though their names may appear within the threaded discussions or blogs projected on the front screen, I sense that they would prefer it to speaking out their responses or worse yet, avoid engaging in verbal discussion.
True, more may participate via texting, but perhaps a balance needs to be adopted to ensure face-to-face verbal interaction.
Tom Olivieri, Smithtown
Editor's note: The writer is a retired high school graphics and Web design instructor.
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