Rockin' Robin

“Rockin’ Robin” was a golden oldie when I was in high school oh, so many years ago.

Friday morning I taught junior high vocal music. I popped in a performance CD of “Rockin’ Robin” and my mind went back to my high school days.

We didn’t sing “Rockin’ Robin” in choir, but the pep band often played it at games. In those not-so-far-off days, we had no CD player. Eight-track tapes, then cassette tapes, were in vogue when I sat where those kids were sitting. I don’t think we’d ever heard of performance tracks in those days.

How technology has changed.

Unlike technology, great music never dies.

A girl named Robin with flaming red hair was in the class ahead of me. As the students sang “Rockin’ Robin”, I could see her in my mind’s eye. When our band would play “Rockin’ Robin”, she’d get up and dance. She was our personal “Rockin’ Robin” and did she ever rock.

“Go, ‘Rockin’ Robin’, ‘cause we’re really gonna rock tonight!”

Carbon paper and typewriter erasers

I stood in for Ms. Math Teacher today, getting called in at the last minute. School starts at 7:50. I got the call at 7:15. I had been up since 5:30, but hadn't showered or eaten breakfast yet. Yep, I never know what I'm going to get.

She told me to show an episode of the TV show "Numb3rs", but we couldn't get it to work. iTunes insisted on a password that did not exist. Technology is wonderful, but only when it works!

Instead of watching a great TV show, I had study hall all day. Actual teaching was out of the question. I'm not at all qualified to teach math! As I told one student, "Math and I are not friends."

During one "class", a paraprofessional and I started discussing my previous post about technological changes in the classroom.

"Do you remember carbon paper?" she asked.

(It's the blue sheet in this picture. The artist has drawn or traced the image on the top sheet. The pen pressure transferred the ink on the carbon paper to the bottom sheet.)

"I hoarded every piece I got," I said. Carbon paper was relatively expensive and didn't last long.

When I was in high school and early in my college days, carbon paper was the main way to make copies of one's work. It was messy and inconvenient. Mistakes could be erased on the original, but they would still appear on the carbon copy as strikeovers. And if the carbon got too worn, pieces of the original would be missing.

Since the machines had no memory, mistakes could not simply be deleted and redone. Enter the typewriter eraser.

In theory, the typist could use the rubber wheel to erase the mistake and the brush to sweep away any crumbs of eraser material. My eraser hated me. It didn't erase the mistake; it erased the paper! Holey documents just don't tend to be acceptable.

Correction fluid (like Wite-Out or Liquid Paper) was also a mistake-covering option, but it had grave disadvantages as well. Theoretically, white correction fluid matched white paper. But white to one paper manufacturer isn't white to another. And the typist had to wait for the fluid to dry. If she got in a hurry, the ink from the typewriter ribbon would smear.

The fluid often began to dry out before the bottle was empty. Correction fluid that was laid on too thickly made an unsightly bump on the paper. So typists had to keep bottles of thinner on hand. To use the thinner, the typist put her thumb over the top of a pipette and remove it from the thinner bottle. Then she injected it into the opening of the fluid bottle and removed her thumb. Thinner theoretically flowed into the correction fluid and a few shakes would make the fluid reuseable. Note that I said "theoretically". Sometimes the thinner worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I had thinner on my desk instead of in the fluid bottle.

When erasable typing paper appeared on the market, I bought it. That paper was more expensive than regular typing paper, but the lack of aggravation was worth every penny. No more typewriter eraser, no more correction fluid. An ordinary eraser took care of typographical errors. Typos be gone! That paper had one drawback, though. Type tended to smear if handled immediately, but that was a minor issue compared to the alternative.

I was so delighted when memory typewriters appeared on the market and overjoyed when I finally got a computer that could erase mistakes before they ever ruined a piece of paper.

But more about that later.

New technology = distractions

Classrooms have certainly changed since I went to high school and even since I student taught.

I graduated in 1980. The school building housed not one computer. We learned to type on IBM Selectric typewriters. The roar of those motors and the chatter of the keys was audible well away from that classroom. We watched movies on reels.

I was ahead of my time. During study halls, I hid a tape recorder in a large notebook and ran an earpiece from it up my coat sleeve into my ear. The sound quality was horrible, but it was music!



I student taught at my alma mater in 1993, the final step before earning my second bachelor's degree. The typewriters had been replaced by computers. The first time I walked past the typing classroom, now the keyboarding room, I was shocked how quiet it was. Instead of that roar, only a light clicking sound came out of a classroom full of computers. I showed movies on a VCR. I once confiscated a Walkman. We'd seen cell phones on "Hart to Hart", but no one I knew had one.

Students passing notes were the main classroom distractions at both times.

This morning, my class went to an online German teaching site, Hennings' Haus. Typewriters were loud, but I never had found their sound to be annoying. One of the educational games on this web site featured a man searching for various destinations. His shoes squeaked on every step he took. Fingernails on the chalkboard, especially after 4 hours of it.

I circled the room continually looking for students who had sneaked over to YouTube. I wrote up half of one class for "YouTubing" and I probably missed more of them.

Friday I confiscated my first cell phone. I nearly confiscated a BlackBerry today.

All these toys distract both the students and the teacher.

Technology definitely has its downsides, but I still wouldn't want to be without it.