Typewriter Boy

The student who is moving away has stopped doing his work in several of his classes. My class and the English class are taking the biggest hit with failing grades. He has stopped using his blog to post his lessons and the connections to his project about typewriters because, he says, the laptops don't work. He has the latest technology at home and when he is in class all he talks about is when he can use the collection of old typewriters I have.  Since he has essentially done the same thing in English (not producing any evidence of learning), the English teacher and I have joined forces.

commons.wikimedia.org
Underwood manual

His project is about typewriters, and all his missed and late work can be done on the old typewriters. That way he gets caught up in English and can therefore transfer a much better grade to the new school. That way he gets data he can post first-hand observations about in his blog. He will end up writing a summarized research paper describing the differences between manual and electronic typing from first hand point of view for my class. That will give me something to grade for his elective grade.

etsy.com -- Smith Corona portable

His mom is thrilled; guidance is pleased; the English teacher is appeased; the student is excited. Today was his first attempt at re-typing an essay he wrote last week but never turned in. There were a lot of mistakes, and he had to retype it (which he initially balked at until I told him that's how people used to type -- there was no cut and paste, or backspacing to delete words/letters).

  

etsy.com    

So far, success. The Smith Corona Coronet Electric Portable was the first typewriter he used for a big assignment he never turned in. It is a clean typing machine that hummed as he typed. He made a lot of mistakes and was surprised when I expected him to redo his work to have fewer errors.

The next day he tried the Royal Alpa 2015. This was the generation of typewriter that was categorized as a word processor. It came right before the personal computer.