Class treats grandparents to phone- text lessons

By Anna Bowden
Can you understand this? A nu lern 2 txt cls tawt by teens attrctd 15 gr@ parents b2 skool lst nyt.
Here's the translation: A new learn-to-text class taught by teenagers attracted 15 grandparents back to school last night.
And it was the ultimate generational collision - the speed of the teenage mind versus the quizzical grandparent determined to grab their technological future with both thumbs.
The studious and bespectacled bunch were apprehensive about learning to navigate their cellphones and about being at the mercy of five teenage Tauranga Boys' College tutors.
But, armed with cellphone instruction manuals, notepads and pens, they were determined to learn how to send and receive text messages within the hour.
Eighty-year-old lilac-fleeced Maude Rowles wanted to be able to text her family. Mouth-pursed and eyes peering through gold-rimmed specs, she mused: "Oh, it's like a computer" early in the lesson.
But things soon turned awry.
"Oh what have I done? Oh hang on, I forgot the 'ok' ... I've got to practise this at home." A beep then sounds on her tutor Jared Tong's phone. "Oh, I've done it. Don't ask me how, though," she says.
Her salt-and-pepper haired text-mate, Louise McLellan, 63, said she wanted to be able to text while lying in bed in darkness - that would mean she had reached her desired level of ability.
And 67-year-old Helen Main wanted to get the text-lingo down.
The trio were among 15 senior students returning to the Adult Community Education classroom at Tauranga Boys' College last night.
Most had Nokia 2280 cellphones - dubbed "a good starter phone" by tutor 16-year-old Matthew Childs - and it was only 15 minutes before the sweet sound of beeping success rang out.
Adult Community Education co-ordinator Dean Crafar said the idea came from another school who ran a similar session and the class aimed to see students conquer the basics of text messaging.
"For the more mature generation it may be a bit of technology that they feel as though they can't handle and maybe it's a way of contacting grandkids that they haven't had before," Mr Crafar said. "It's instant, it's immediate, maybe young people don't write letters as much so they see it as a way of maintaining contact."
Tutored by expert teenagers, the "senior" students spent $10 to learn the art of text.
So did dey do it? u bet.