Did You Know

We have had 3 wonderful gentlemen donate machines to the Classroom Typewriter Project? Click on the link on the left side-bar. There you will see who donated what. It is a testament to the kindness of the typewriter community that we have so many wonderful machines to use in class.

Coming Soon

There is a nice SC Skyriter zooming its way on over. A few weeks age I got a pleasant email message from a pleasant fellow named George Petersen of Eugene who saw the bog and decided to send a typewriter. I mentioned that we are on October break until next Monday, but he said that he'll ship it to my home address. According to the tracking number, it should be here tomorrow. As soon as it gets here I'll take some pictures. From all that I gather it is a 4Y Skyriter. It was made during the early 60s in Britain. I am not familiar with these machines in detail, but from what I can see they look very compact. I am waiting with baited breath.

Typewriter Rules

1.    No paper, no type.
2.    Carry with both hands.
3.    On the desk!
4.    Press, don’t punch.
5.    Ask for help.
6.    Remember, this typewriter is 3 times older than you are.

As more kids get jazzed about the typewriters (three weeks and going strong) I felt that there needed to be some more clear ground rules on the typewriters. This is what I came up with. They're funny and true!

The Wheel of Fortune

As soon as the J5 had given out I got an email message from a gentleman called George Petersen saying that he would send me a Smith-Corona Skyriter that he recently bought. So, I assume that it is on its way and (as I gather) it is in good shape. It's going to take the place of the Adler and the SC-Silent with public speaker type that is duing duty as a temp.

Letting Go

The Adler J5 is the first victim of heavy use. The ribbon advancement mechanism is broken and no matter how much I jiggle, poke, and prod the ribbon won't more. I am sure that there is a reason why, but I am not gifted enough to fix it.

This leads me to my title "Letting Go." I am not lamenting the Adler J5. It wasn't my favorite or the favorite of the kids, but I have to get used to the idea that these are not meant to be museum pieces. They are to be used by people. Students will use them rougher than I would and all I can do is remind them to be gentle because they're old. When these machines were new, did people treat them gingerly or did they use them as tools? I imagine most were used as tools.

As a collector I see the value beyond their use as a tool. To me they are beautiful objects that sit on shelves and are to be admired. Yes, I like to use typewriters, but I use them gently with a great deal of respect. These typewriters are intended to be used by students and they might get broken. Things happen. I need to be at peace with that and be willing to let go.

P.S. I don't want anyone to think that my students are ham-fisted cretins who grunt like a neanderthal. They are, to a large extent, taking good care of the typewriters. These machines were designed to last. And lasting they are.

Overheard at a Typewriter

"I really want one of these."

Weekly Typewriter Inventory Analysis

I have broken the results from the inventory into more specific categories. I haven't posted the inventory questions. Here they are:

1. I feel that during the past week my spelling has improved.
2. I enjoy using the typewriter
3. I feel that my writing is improving.
4. I am a poor speller.
5. The computer is better to write on.
6. I feel that my writing has more meaning.
7. I would use a typewriter on school assignments.

To see the distribution look at this chart:

Apart from being slightly blurry (I don't know why) you can see some interesting trends. There is a general like of using the typewriter in class. As well as a general feeling that the use of the typewriter imparts a greater sense of importance to the student's writing.

There is an interesting tidbit: there is no clear benefit, as seen by the students in the project, in a typewriter over a computer when used for composition. This is a direct refutation of the assumption that all progress is good progress. Hmmmm.

Results of the Weekly Typewriter Inventory

Part of the Classroom Typewriter Project is getting children excited about typewriters and the creative process. That goal is measured trough the Weekly Typewriter Inventory. This survey is 7 simple statements that students mark the degree to which they agree.

Of all respondents I was able to come up with these interesting facts:

• 75% of students responded with "Strongly Agree" when asked if they enjoy using the typewriter in class. The remaining 25% agree with the statement. No participating students marked Neutral, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree.
• 50% of students responded with "Neutral" or "Strongly Disagree" when asked if a computer is better for composition than a typewriter.
• 63% of students responded that they feel their spelling has improved with the use of the typewriters. I did ask for a follow-up and some responded that an inability to easily correct mistakes has made them more deliberate in their spelling.

I want to wait for another inventory to see if the numbers hold fast, but there is a like of using the typewriters. The farther that I go into this project  the more I think that some students have preferential methods of writing and that the responses may be linked to personality and likes that an innate benefit of the typewriter.

Could this just be a restatement of the research that Ben Wood and Frank N. Freeman did on typewriters in classrooms during the 1930s? We'll see. I think I'll do a separate post about that particular piece of research. It really is interesting.

UPDATE: I have further broken down the results which will be clarified in another post.

Picture of the Collection

Right now all the typewriters have ribbons and are ready to use. I have cleared off a shelf for them and they are displayed proudly. The shelf makes it easy to take them off for use and easy to put them away again. There is also a Smith-Corona that is on another shelf.

Fifth Hour Racket

Did you know that 7 typewriters going during a class period makes a good ammount of noise? Well, I am here to tell you (from first-hand experience) that it does.

Eric's Donation

Eric, a Valley resident, has donated three nice older typewriters to the cause. Two Royals (fun!) and a Smith-Corona. That brings the total number of typewriters in room 1131 to 7. That's not too bad. I'm going to unbox and get them ready for use.

Thanks Eric!

Nutty

A kind gentleman has heard of our project and is donating two more portables to the project. They should be here on Wednesday. I have been thinking that we might need a little gallery of our typewriters. Someone out there might like to see what we have.

On another note, teaching is an interesting profession. On a regular basis you can expect an administrator to come by your room to see how your lesson is going or do do an official observation. Depending on how long you have been a teacher the number of observations changes. Initially it is two a school year. For me, I am so far in it that the number of observations is one a year. Our district is a fan of the surprise observation.

Sometime during the year an administrator will come by with a decidedly scary form and start assessing your teaching. Do you have a standards addressed lesson? Are you employing into-through-and beyond teaching strategies? Are the students engaged? There are lots of education buzz-words. This year my evaluator is the principal and she came in on Friday to have a quick walk-through. Nothing unusual except there were 3 kids typing on typewriters.

She didn't say anything about it, but I know that in her mind she was thinking, "What the cuss is this about?" People have two reactions when I tell them about the project. One one hand there are supporters who think the idea is intriguing. On the other hand are people who think I am strange. That's alright. If anything it's fun to hear all the typewriters clacking.

Ribbons and Royals

I have designated Wednesday as the day we start typing journals full time. Right now, the typers will be using the machines on a rotating basis until we have enough to have one student per typewriter. I am waiting until Wednesday so I may have time to go to various office supply stores in the Valley in effort to stock up. I intend to buy some from Jay Respler, but time is of the essence and mailing order forms back and forth would be too much. I am going to call Mesa Typewriter Exchange and see if they happen to have any in stock. I imagine that they might be a bit more expensive, but I have been wanting to make my way over there for some time.

I have talked with Bill (proprietor) and he says that he has some pretty cool machines for sale. His prices are certainly dearer that what you could find on eBay or Craig's List, but the machines from his shop are restored by someone who knows what they are doing. I have heard tell of a pink Royal FP that needs a good home. Those who know me know that I have a weakness for Royal machines.

The conservative lines and heavy construction (McBee era and before) speak of a time when a business' bottom-line was less valuable than their market reputation. I know that Royal never set the world afire with Magic Margin (this blog's namesake) but they made respectable machines. I will say that they Royal Safari and the Quiet Deluxe (a Richard Polt gift) are the most popular machines in our classroom collection.

Pre-Test Results

Well, the results are in. I have created a handy chart to convey this information.

As you can see there is a nice curve that peaks in the D range. 11 students in the testing group earned a D or F. The remainder (9) earned either an A, B, or C. If you consider a D passing, then around 75% of the students passes the spelling test. For this project I am not going to consider D a passing grade. This makes the percent passing quite low. It would be around a 45% pass rate. That is a much more in keeping with the spirit of the project.

What does this mean? Well, looking a the actual tests, I can say that they were much better at choosing a correct word given two options. The tricky part is when they had to identify the correctly spelled word from a list of unrelated words. The total number of errors in the second part of the test is almost 57% higher than in Part 1.

Overall- they are below average spellers. The average percentage on the test was a 68. I would hope that the process of using the typewriter would raise that at least 5-10 percentage points.

As soon as I get the ribbons I need (three more) we will be able so start typing journals. I plan to get that started on Wednesday of next week.

We've Started!

I have just handed out the 14th spelling pre-assessment. The students are taking them at home an promising not to cheat. We'll see where their spelling is.

Today K. (one of my students) came by to get some makeup work. She brought her friend B. from another class period. K. saw the Royal Quiet Deluxe that Richard Polt sent and immediately asked if she could use it. After finishing her work, K. and B. spent about 15 minutes typing messages back and forth to each other. They seemed to be having fun. The entire time K. was saying, "I really want one." I guess there is hope for the future and it comes by way of the lowly typewriter.

CTP Pre-Test

As the pre-test is done and I will be handing it out, I thought it might be fun to let people see it. With the data I hope to create a baseline score; a picture of an average Alhambra student's spelling.

I am sure that you might be wondering why I have chosen spelling as the indicator over something like sentence structure or over-all performance increases. My concern was the ease in measurability and the nature of what I want to prove. Spelling is concrete and an important part of the writing process. I agree with some who say it's not the most important part, but it is a part. It's also a part with which my students struggle. Moreover, I wanted to have them do a self-assessment of their spelling ability and something with a clear delineation between right and wrong would make the self-assessment more accurate and easier to complete.

What I want to prove is that the typewriter is unlike the computer. I have a feeling that the typewriter's mystical, mythical, and mechanical nature will awaken something in the students. I hope that the typewriter can help make them want to write.

Regardless, here is the pre-test. You may begin.

Is the Adler J5 Junk?

I am hesitant to cast aspersions on any typewriter, but as I become more intimately familiar with the Adler J5 I cannot shake the feeling that this thing is a little junky. I'll definitely use it for the CTP, but I don't have high hopes for it's durability. Oh well, beggars cannot be choosers.

UPDATE I feel as If I have been to hard on this little grey soldier. He's a nice guy who's helping us out. Also, I have a tendency to anthropomorphise objects. Sorry.

The Pre-Assessment and Informational Meeting

I have finished the Spelling Pre-Assessment and have sent it over to the copy center. It should be done in a few days.

Monday after 7th hour is the informational meeting about the project. Students who are interested in participating for extra credit are to report to my room. When they arrive I'll go over a brief introduction and tell then what they will be doing with the typewriters. We'll see how interested some of them may be. I must start thinking of a series of interview questions about how students feel about their work. I want to come up with some basic idea (apart from the quantitative evidence provided by the self-evaluations) of how the typewriter impacts (a pun was intended) a students perception of his work.

I do need to find some basic care and feeding instructions about typewriters. I thought that I remember the US Army had some field manual about typewriter care that might be useful. I'll post to a couple of the groups to see if anyone has an idea.

It's Alive!!!

The Adler J-5 has been on the workbench (actually the counter in the laundry room) annoying my wife to no end. I finally worked up the gumption to attack some of the problems that made it unusable for the CTP (Classroom Typewriter Project). The Adler J-5 came from the Goodwill with some, what seemed, minor problems. The backspace didn't work, the carriage return lever was bent awkwardly down, and the platen was missing a knob.

The first problem; backspace.  I had looked at this briefly before I was distracted by other things. What I discovered was a missing spring on the escarpment mechanism. I didn't have any tiny springs but my wife does have those plastic no-pinch rubber bands. I took the smallest one she had and looped it around the spring post and the backspace bit and bob's-your-uncle.

Next, I had to disassemble the carriage decorative panels to get to the carriage return lever mount. Brute force and caution fixed that. Now it looks as it should.

Finally, the platen knob. The original is lost to the world of Goodwill. I am going to head down to Ace on Saturday and see if I can find a suitable replacement. It needs only to be usable. The aesthetics are inconsequential.

Another one ready for the classroom!

Saul Bellow

"When I sit at a typewriter, I open my heart."

Find out more about the Classroom Typewriter Project.

The Process

Right now I am aiming to have four manual typewriters. These will be assigned to four students each grade period (5 total). This means I will have a cohort of 20 students using a typewriter for their daily journaling activity.

To assess their basic skills in spelling, I have created a two-part 50 question assessment. Part I offers a sentence and a choice between two spellings of a word. The student will need to bubble in a letter corresponding to the correct answer. A choice between two words will most closely mirror a standard writing assignment. Every writer, when mulling over the spelling of a word, will try to imagine other options. This assessment will mirror the mental process of choosing between two options. Part two will be more de-contextualized. The student will need to choose the incorrectly spelled word from a list of words. The word sets offer no logical connection.

I will take the raw score and assign each student a spelling ability quotient. A similar test will be offered over the course of the semester to see how well the students are progressing.

After some basic instructions on how to use a typewriter, the student will be responsible for typing their journal on a daily basis. After they have completed the journal, I will ask the student to highlight any words that he or she feels might be spelled incorrectly. Then, I will grade the assignment and compare the number of misspelled words to the number of words that the student has self-identified as being suspect. This will create a ratio of spelling mistakes to self-identified errors.

In addition to the typewriters, I will choose 20 other students to function as a control group. They will complete the same assignment, however, they will not be using a typewriter.

I will hand each student the work back and offer then a chance to reflect on their performance.

This information will be recorded in a database program over the course of the school year. Major landmark data set evaluations will be conducted at the 3 and 6 week mark of each semester remaining in the year.

As the data set develops we will be able to see a spelling trend and whether that trend is linked to typewriter usage.

The Hypothesis

A student using a typewriter on a daily journaling activity will, over the course of a year, have a measurable increase in the ability to recognize spelling errors compared to a student who does not type the same journaling activity.

Next: The Process

Kinesthetics

As we get into the swing of things at school, I can imagine that there is going to be some resistance to typewriters in the classroom. I am sure that someone is going to make claims that computers are more efficient and better. I will have to direct them to Richard Polt's new blog Writing Ball.

For kinesthetic learners (an intelligence that is rarely played to in education today) typewriters will be a boon. There is tactile feedback with every key you press. Every time the printhead strikes the paper the satisfying "whack" is a public symbol of your commitment to the idea; your ideas. Everything you write is out there. Your mistakes become part of the document and process becomes more important than outcome.

Richard Wright

Royal Arrow

T. S. Eliot

My favorite poet!

The Classroom Typewriter Project

The name is not set in stone, but the idea is beginning to bloom! I posted this to the typewriter forum. It could be the start of something great:

I have an idea for a project that needs the assistance of the typewriter enthusiast community. I teach English at an inner-city high school in Phoenix Arizona. My school is filled with under-privileged students. Many of them have significant challenges at home and school is their only refuge. It can be difficult to get them to express their ideas in writing. They have ideas, but find the method of delivery a little too distracting. A computer is no longer a tool to do work. It is a task-avoidance machine with blinking lights and fancy graphics. Young minds are too easily led astray by the lurid glow of the internet, games, and talking paperclips. These kids need to focus on the process of writing. I want to give my students a chance to slow down and write; to be at home with their thoughts. You can help by donating a typewriter to my students.

Why a typewriter? The typewriter’s only purpose is to make your ideas and words neat and organized. No spell checker means that you need to be careful. Also, I have one on my classroom desk and I use it frequently. My students love it and ask to type on it. What better than saying, “Here’s your typewriter. Treat it well and write whatever you want.” Now that’s creativity!

To help me with this project, I need old portable or desktop manual typewriters; 32 of them to be precise. They can be any vintage or any brand. Hopefully they will have new or newer ribbons. The typewriters do not need to be in pristine condition. The only requirement is that the typewriter is mechanically sound. You can either donate or Long-Term-Lend your typewriter.

Donating: I have talked to the powers that be. You can donate old manual typewriters worth less than $300 directly to my classroom. After your donation, they will be barcoded and added to the checkout list. That means that I personally must return them to the library every year to be stored. They will not be left out and stolen (as if). They will be stored securely in the warehouse for the summer. In the fall I will check them out again and be responsible for their safekeeping.

If any typewriter you donate is worth more than that the school board will vote on the donation. After you donate a typewriter (of any value) the district will send you a letter of acceptance whereby you can deduct the donation on your taxes.

Long-Term-Lend: Lend us an old manual typewriter. We’ll keep it for as long as you want us to. When you want it back we’ll return it. Clean and ready to go. I’ll be honest; students are going to be using them. There is a chance that that old banger will be sent to the typewriter repair shop in the sky. At least it’ll get used.
We will be keeping a blog on the progress of the project and you will be able to meet the students, typewriters they use, and what they are writing. On my end I will be keeping track of grades and performance compared to my non-typewriter classes.

This boils down to your personal feelings on “technology” in school. Throwing computers at young people may seem like a good idea, but in the end it complicates something that is simple. They just need to write. Please help me make this project happen. I am excited about the prospect and the kids are too. I have personally committed to this project by donating a very respectable Hermes 3000. What do you have lying in closets or collecting dusts under guest beds? Contact me via email for more information or if you are willing to help.

Faulkner

William Faulkner at a Royal KHM