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Although most participants in all three groups violated grammatical convention in their text messages, researchers found no evidence that this affected their understanding of written or spoken grammar at either point in time. For the primary school children, there was an association between punctuation errors in texts and spelling ability. Children who made fewer punctuation errors when texting tended to be better at spelling and quicker to process writing than those who made more errors in their texts.   For the undergraduate group, there was some evidence of a link between punctuation errors in texts and the spelling ability and grammatical understanding of participants. However, this link was weak and researchers concluded it was more likely related to the IQ score of students. The latest findings follow an earlier study led by Professor Wood that showed children’s use of text abbreviations can have a positive effect on literacy outcomes and may even enhance children’s understanding of conventional spelling.

However, within the mobile phone group, there was evidence that use of text abbreviations was positively related to gains in literacy skills. Moreover, after controlling for individual differences in IQ, and the children's performance at pre-test, textism usage was able to account for a significant amount of variance in post-test spelling scores. These results show that text messaging does not adversely affect the development of literacy skills within this age group, and that the children's use of textisms when text messaging is positively related to improvement in literacy skills, especially spelling.

According to new research the use of “textisms” can improve literacy among pupils by giving them extra exposure to word composition outside the school day, it was claimed.

However academics from Coventry University said there was “no evidence” that access to mobile phones harmed children’s literacy skills and could even have a positive impact on spelling.

According to the report, the association between spelling and text messaging may be explained by the highly phonetic nature of the abbreviations used by children and the alphabetic awareness required for successfully decoding the words. The report, funded by Becta, the government's education technology agency stated: “It is also possible that textism use adds value because of the indirect way in which mobile phone use may be increasing children’s exposure to print outside of school.” Prof Clare Wood, senior lecturer in the university’s psychology department, said: “We are now starting to see consistent evidence that children’s use of text message abbreviations has a positive impact on their spelling skills. “There is no evidence that children’s language play when using mobile phones is damaging literacy development.”

Since the mid-1990s, the percentage of publicschools connected to the Internet exploded from 35% to 100%.Public instructional classrooms with Internet access grew to 94%,up from 14% a decade earlier, and the ratio of students perInternet-connected instructional computer decreased from 12:1to 3.8:1 (Wells & Lewis, 2006). Outside of schools, more thantwo thirds of people in the United States have Internet connec-tions at home, more than half of which are broadband (Horrigan, Educational Researcher, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 246–259DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09336671© 2009 AERA. http://er.aera.net  Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What PathShould We Take Now?  Christine Greenhow, Beth Robelia, and Joan E. Hughes Learning, Teaching, andScholarship in a Digital AgeResearch Newsand Comment educational ReseaRcheR  246  by on June 17, 2009http://er.aera.netDownloaded from  (function() { var pageParams = {"origHeight": 1171, "origWidth": 902, "fonts": [4, 9, 8, 0, 7, 12, 6, 5], "pageNum": 2}; pageParams.containerElem = document.getElementById("outer_page_2"); pageParams.contentUrl = "http://html4.scribdassets.com/9qxvunnpogs3ko6/pages/2-470280afa2.jsonp"; pageParams.blur = false var page = docManager.addPage(pageParams); })();   May 2009 247 2008), and by 2014, it is estimated that 90% of all people in theUnited States will be online with dramatically faster, high-speednetworks (Fox, Anderson, & Rainie, 2005).

Web 2.0,” a term coined in 2004, characterizes a transitionfrom the predominantly read-only Web 1.0 into a “read-and-write” Web 2.0 (McManus, 2005, para. 1). Web 2.0 facilitates “participa-tory,” “collaborative,” and “distributed” practices within Web2.0–enabled formal and nonformal spheres of everyday activities(Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 38). Other terms used to charac-terize Web 2.0 include “relationship” technologies (Schrage, 2001,para. 6), “participatory media” (Bull et al., 2008, p. 106), and“social digital technologies” (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008, p. 1). Web 2.0 is both a platform on which innovative technologieshave been built and a space where users are as important as thecontent they upload and share with others