{"id":904,"date":"2006-08-09T12:28:28","date_gmt":"2006-08-09T12:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/reaching-students-real-time-via-im-but-what-about-text-messaging\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:05:02","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:05:02","slug":"reaching-students-real-time-via-im-but-what-about-text-messaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/reaching-students-real-time-via-im-but-what-about-text-messaging\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaching Students &#8220;Real Time&#8221; via IM, but what about Text Messaging?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nAccording to a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/07\/26\/technology\/thirdscreen0726.biz2\/index.htm\">article in Business 2.0<\/a>, e-mail use is dropping among teens in favor of real time <span>IM<\/span> and text messaging.  In my courses at <span>IU<\/span>, we share a lot of information via e-mail, but we also have weekly <span>discussions<\/span> via <span>IM<\/span>.  While we also use Breeze for the more &quot;formal&quot; classroom-like discussions, <span>IM<\/span> is a quick, free, easy and <span>efficient<\/span> way to share information in a <span>synchronous<\/span> manner.  Anyone with <span>Internet<\/span> access (either on a computer or mobile device) can join the chat.  Also, there are many free multi-protocal IM clients available (including two of my favorites: <a href=\"http:\/\/www13.meebo.com\/\">meebo<\/a> &#8211; web based &#8211; and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.download.com\/Trillian\/3000-2150_4-10047473.html\">Trillian<\/a> &#8211; Windows based desktop download) that allow you to combine your various IM IDs so that you aren&#39;t tied to a stand alone IM protocol.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWhile <span>texting<\/span> is also wildly popular <span>among<\/span> teens, it is a greater leap to see its regular use in an educational setting.  For one thing, it is more of a broadcast application for short messages vs a synchronous multi-person communication tool like <span>IM<\/span>.  Also, while most cell companies offer monthly plans for a set number of text messages, some people still pay a fee per text message received and sent.  In addition, there are greater privacy issues involved with sharing a cell phone number versus an <span>IM<\/span> ID which can be easily changed or discarded.  Over the years,  I have had a slew of <span>IM<\/span> IDs and I often create a new one for each new &quot;group&quot; that I join.  I would be far more hesitant to give out my cell phone number to a group in a class.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<!-- technorati tags begin --><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 10px; text-align: right\">\ntechnorati tags:<a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/meebo\">meebo<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/trillian\">trillian<\/a>, <a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/mlearning\">mlearning<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- technorati tags end --><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right; font-size: 8px\">\nBlogged with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flock.com\" target=\"_new\" title=\"Flock\">Flock<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to a recent article in Business 2.0, e-mail use is dropping among teens in favor of real time IM and text messaging. In my courses at IU, we share a lot of information via e-mail, but we also have weekly discussions via IM. While we also use Breeze for the more &quot;formal&quot; classroom-like discussions,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,189,191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-mlearning","category-mobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3175,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/3175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}