For many students, especially from middle school upward, texting is a part of everyday life. As a teacher, you may see texting in class as an unwelcome distraction from learning. Although student mobile devices can certainly be a classroom management challenge, they also present an opportunity to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model in your classroom and take advantage of the technology in your students’ pockets.

  by  AFS-USA Intercultural Programs 

Although students may have phones with different capabilities, the ability to text will likely be available for most. Here are just a few ways you can harness student interest in texting for learning activities:

• Have your students use texting to create short summaries of longer, more formal pieces of literature. For example, how would the famous dialogue between Romeo and Juliet in the orchard (But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun…) have been different if conducted via text?

One final point: It is important that your students understand texting charges and that parents are aware of your plans.

Want more ideas for using texting for learning? Check out our Tech Research Brief Using Texting to Promote Learning and Literacy 

Acknowledgment: Special thanks to Lina Breslav for helping to prepare this blog post.