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Teachers not LOLing over text talk in schoolwork

Posted: Nov 25, 2009 12:16 AM
Updated: Nov 25, 2009 12:16 AM


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OMG, lol, brb! Those phrases make sense to the cell-phone familiar but might sound like jibberish to others. Now, some teachers are worried that text message abbreviations are making their way from students cell phones into their classwork.

IDK, omg, lol, ttyl, and many more similar phrases are abbreviations that have sprung up with the internet and text messaging, a neccessary evil in the world of 140 character text messages and tweets.

"I tend to shorten things up and be like 'idk,'" Tucson High School Senior, Rashawn White said.

Don't lol but kids really are using these phrases in their school work.

"If my teacher asks me to write something about what I did over the summer or something, if I don't know something, I'll just put IDK," Tucson High School Senior, Mariah Perez said.

Students who make those mistakes say they usually get marked down on an assignment, but some educators worry those habits have serious consequences.

"Texting has become a problem in many people's eyes when it comes to student's performance especially on state tests and writing and reading," Dr. Stan Paz, Vice President of McGraw-Hill Education Urban Advisory Resource said.

If you ask kids why they're doing it, they will tell you it can be hard to make the adjustment from cell phones to the classroom.

"It's kind of just like force of habit," White said. "Like I just tend to do it because that's the way I text or the way I talk sometimes."

So we asked educators if limiting cell phone use at school might solve the problem.

"We know that our students are texting from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to bed," Dr. Abel Morado, Principal at Tucson High School said. "So I don't know that we would see any less. I know that we would be pulling out our hair trying to stamp it out."

Teachers hope students will quit the text talk before the bell rings.

Dr. Morado says some teachers have embraced the text message, using cell phones to text homework assignments to sick or absent students.

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