Tostan’s "Community Empowerment Program" is an award-winning, three-year nonformal education program that provides community wide trainings to help villagers lead social change projects within their communities. As part of the CEP program, Tostan offers a 150-hour cellphone literacy course--called Mobile Phone for Literacy and Empowerment--in which participants in 20 villages received 16 lessons on how to use cell phones, build literacy and numeracy skills, and use text messaging as a means to practice and learn.

Cell phone use rose to a nearly universal level (98%), from 58% at the baseline. In addition, there was a drastic improvement across the reading ability of all participants--women, men, girls, and boys (65 percent compared to 8 percent before the program).

Girls and women participating in the program greatly improved literacy and numeracy skills. Before the program, nearly 42 percent of women and 44 percent of girls reported having no literacy or numeracy skills, compared to 21 percent and 17 percent, respectively, after. More than 30 percent of girls and women rated their skills as high after the program compared to only 12 percent of women and 8 percent of girls before.

But 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

The research, to be published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning next month, found evidence of a “significant contribution of textism use to the children’s spelling development during the study”.

This study, which took account of individual differences in IQ, found higher results in test scores recorded by children using mobile phones after 10 weeks compared with the start of the study.

Sending text messages - from the slang "wot" and "wanna", to the short cut "CU L8R"- may actually be improving, not damaging, young children's spelling skills, new research shows

Most text abbreviations were phonetically based, such as "wot" for "what" and combination texts, such as "C U L8r". Many children also used a form of youth code, a casual form of language such as "dat fing", "gonna" or "wanna".

Surprisingly, the children who were better at spelling and writing used the most "textisms"

Texting and “text speak” can be used to help build foundational reading skills (link is external) such as word recognition and phonological awareness. You can also use texting to generate discussions of formal and informal language (link is external) and writing for different tasks, audiences, and purposes (link is external), which are necessary skills for meeting college and career readiness standards in reading (link is external), writing (link is external), language (link is external), and speaking and listening (link is external). Although it may not seem like it, texting is writing, and students who text frequently are engaging in frequent writing (link is external). Therefore, it makes sense to harness all of that energy and use it as a way to help your students build their writing skills

Texting and “text speak” can be used to help build foundational reading skills (link is external) such as word recognition and phonological awareness.

A British study published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning found a positive correlation between texting and literacy, concluding that texting was “actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children.” In other words, contrary to what you might think when faced with “creative” usages such as ur for your, 2 for to, and w8 for wait, kids who text may be stronger readers and writers than those who don’t.

If you’re worried about grading a pile of The Catcher in the Rye essays written in text speak, fear not. In research conducted for a dissertation at the City University in London, graduate student Veenal Raval found that most students avoid text­isms in their schoolwork. “They are able to ‘code-switch’ the same way that I would...use slang when speaking to my friends and adopt a more formal means when talking to colleagues,” Raval told the Telegraph. In other words, students change how they spell according to the circumstances and the audience. They know to spell out the word tomorrow in a paper, but when making plans with friends, they go with tom.