I wanted to get opinions because I have two problems with it. First, she is texting students without parental consent. I think the teacher should have involved the parents first and let them decide if it was appropriate for their children. Second, it seems that by doing this activity in class, she's separated those that "have" from those that "have not". Middle school has enough social divisions without this type of thing.
The haves and have-nots are separated a million different ways by technology-first school programs. This is only one of many. (Teachers in our middle school's gifted math program, for example, strongly suggested buying laptops and graphing calculators-- in a school with >70% free/reduced lunch). I'm not sure what the best option is, but I'm fairly sure this isn't it.
