Spanish Teacher Wins Prize for Lesson on Text Messaging

From http://www.cleveland.com/shaker-heights/index.ssf/2012/01/shaker_heights_middle_school_t.html

Shaker Heights Middle School teacher earns $5,000 prize for classroom by text messaging
By Pat Hyland
January 6, 2012

Seventh-grade Spanish teacher Ellen Roberts recently won a $5,000 prize to purchase any technology-related items for her classroom — plus $1,000 cash for herself. The awards came from a competition among the Shaker schools faculty to find the best ways to measure the effectiveness of technology in the classroom.

Roberts’ project studied the use of text messaging to aid her students’ retention of vocabulary words. Daily text messages were sent to students’ cell phones during after-school hours. They contained Spanish vocabulary words and their English translations in a short message service format. Three text messages were sent per day using three different vocabulary words. Students were then tested on their ability to produce the vocabulary terms on short quizzes during regular class times.

The test results showed students who received the text messages were able to produce the terms with 18 percent greater frequency than those who did not receive the messages. After adding an interactive element (asking students to respond to her texts) in the final phase of the study, Roberts found that gap grew to 31 percent.

Read the full article at http://www.cleveland.com/shaker-heights/index.ssf/2012/01/shaker_heights_middle_school_t.html