SMS becomes valuable tool

When mobile phones became popular with the general population, I never thought it would benefit the deaf...until the sms came by. For Sethsathien School’s deaf students, Short Messaging Service (SMS) has become the single-most efficient form of communication. Most Bangkok schools have banned the usage of cellphones in classrooms, while at the city's first school for the deaf, students are encouraged to bring their phones to classes where SMS text messages have become a valuable teaching tool. Teachers at Sethsathien School, which opened in 1953, have steadily incorporated the phones to help children's education and their efforts to communicate better with the outside world - and each other. Rungravee Ditchareon, an art teacher for four years at the school, says students are allowed to bring their cellphones because the technology can have an important effect on their lives. About 80% of the high school students, aged 15 to 18, bring their phones to school, she says.

Without mobile phones, we could not communicate unless we were standing right in front of each other. In the classroom, the mobile phones are less important, because we're standing face to face, and we can communicate in sign language. But outside the classroom, the phones facilitate other communication between teachers and students,

Rungravee said.
[Via News24]