When I was in 8th grade, our language arts teacher had a PC and an electric typewriter in her room for student use. I remember several unique things about Mrs. Boston, but one of the most poignant memories is the interest we showed in that electric typewriter.
Each week, we took spelling tests. Each week, one student would get to use the computer, and one student would get to use the typewriter. The PC was somewhere between obsolete and vintage. It was old enough that many of the students had more powerful computers at home, but not so old as to be interesting based on its antiquation.
They typewriter, however, suffered no such ubiquity. Though surely a few of us had seen--and perhaps used--similar machines at home, they were not so common as to inure us to their charm. The machine would hum to life at the snap of its heavy switch, waiting eagerly for one of us test ourselves with abbreviate or voucher.
See, we didn't want to use a pencil and paper. We used those in every class. We wanted to use the computer, sure, but we yearned to use the typewriter.
Perhaps I should clarify that, as a nearly-thirty-year-old man, I realize I may have been one of the few actually yearning to use the typewriter, but we all seemed pretty excited about it.
As this year came to a close, I started thinking about next year. That led to thinking about what gets me interested in writing (and what did so when I was a teenager). Memories of Mrs. Boston's typewriter loomed large. I wondered how I might be able to elicit some of that same excitement in my students. We don't do spelling tests, but we do a sizable amount of writing.
This led, like most of my impulsive ideas, to several hours of research and reading.
That research led me to Ryan Adney's Classroom Typewriter Project Blog.
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