The purpose of this teacher research study was to discover what happens in the classroom when high school social studies students enrolled in world history classes are asked to use text messaging as part of the planned curriculum. Lave and Wenger's (1991) Situated Learning Theory was used in order to provide a framework for understanding how text messaging, used as an instructional tool, could reconfigure and reconstruct the organization of the classroom. This study found that text messaging has a positive place in the classroom fostering students' abilities and willingness to engage more fully and critically in classroom conversation by easing the completion and transmission of homework, allowing feedback, creating opportunities to think more critically and enhancing conversations in the classroom. Text messaging provided situated learning so that students were using the cell phone as a learning tool. They were adept and enthusiastic; therefore they were more inclined to take intellectual risks in the classroom. Emergent themes included ease of use, depth of conversation, meaningfulness of feedback, sense of challenge, and enhanced classroom conversation. The overarching theme was the fostering of intellectual risk-taking. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]