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CLICK HERE TO CONTRIBUTE Close * DONATE * Subscribe to our FREE daily newsletters * Sign In Search for: [ ] Search * NEWS Open dropdown menu + Sentinel Metro + Sentinel State + Sentinel National + Sentinel Business + Your News + Obituaries * Sentinel OPINION * A-Town Magazine Open dropdown menu + Sentinel Magazine + Colorado Table + Your News * Sports Open dropdown menu + Sentinel Preps + Sentinel Pros and College * Special Coverage Open dropdown menu + Digital Print Replica + BEST OF AURORA + roost + Summer Things To Do * Sentinel Info Open dropdown menu + Aurora Sentinel donor and editorial policies + Sentinel leadership: The Aurora Sentinel Community Media Board of Directors and CEO + Pay for or Submit a Legal Notice + Pay for or Submit Advertising + Submit an Obituary + Letters to the Editor + Submit a News Tip + Post Your News + Subscriptions + Sentinel Staff Directory + Sentinel Careers Close Skip to content Sentinel Colorado Sentinel Colorado The source for greater Aurora, Colorado * DONATE * Subscribe to our FREE daily newsletters * Sign In Open Search Search for: [ ] Search Menu Sign In * NEWS Open dropdown menu + Sentinel Metro + Sentinel State + Sentinel National + Sentinel Business + Your News + Obituaries * Sentinel OPINION * A-Town Magazine Open dropdown menu + Sentinel Magazine + Colorado Table + Your News * Sports Open dropdown menu + Sentinel Preps + Sentinel Pros and College * Special Coverage Open dropdown menu + Digital Print Replica + BEST OF AURORA + roost + Summer Things To Do * Sentinel Info Open dropdown menu + Aurora Sentinel donor and editorial policies + Sentinel leadership: The Aurora Sentinel Community Media Board of Directors and CEO + Pay for or Submit a Legal Notice + Pay for or Submit Advertising + Submit an Obituary + Letters to the Editor + Submit a News Tip + Post Your News + Subscriptions + Sentinel Staff Directory + Sentinel Careers Posted in0 - No Apple Publish, 1gridMAGAZINE, A-Town Magazine, Sentinel Lifestyle, Tech Know, Uncategorized, z-other-galley A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons "What's the point of me reading it if it's already correct anyway, and you didn't write it yourself? Could you produce it without your computer?" said Phelps. [] by JOCELYN GECKER AP Education Writer March 31, 2026 Share this: * Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on X (Opens in new window) X * Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * More * * Share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor * Print (Opens in new window) Print * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * * [AP26080655513734]Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong, a sophomore at Cornell University, laughs with classmates while using a typewriter for a German writing assignment on Friday, March 20, 2026, in Ithaca, N.Y. The professor, Grit Matthias Phelps, brings out the typewriters once a semester for her students to use. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca) * [AP26080655529173]Students use typewriters to complete a writing assignment in German at Cornell University, Friday, March 20, 2026, in Ithaca, N.Y. Their professor, Grit Matthias Phelps, brings out the typewriters once each semester for students to disconnect from technology and connect with the assignment in a different way. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca) * [AP26080655560287]Marcello Popelka makes edits using a pencil after writing an assignment in German on a typewriter at Cornell University, Friday, March 20, 2026, in Ithaca, N.Y. The professor, Grit Matthias Phelps, brings out the typewriters once each semester for students to disconnect from technology and connect with the assignment in a different way. (AP Photo/Lauren Petracca) The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line. Sign up for our free newsletter to receive the latest news Sign up for our free newsletter to receive the latest news Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assistance. No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys. The exercise started in spring 2023 as Phelps grew frustrated with the reality that students were using generative AI and online translation platforms to churn out grammatically perfect assignments. "What's the point of me reading it if it's already correct anyway, and you didn't write it yourself? Could you produce it without your computer?" said Phelps. She wanted students to understand what writing, thinking and classrooms were like before everything turned digital. So, she found a few dozen old manual typewriters in thrift shops and online marketplaces, and created what her syllabus calls an "analog" assignment. It might be premature to say that typewriters are making a comeback beyond Cornell's campus. But the revival is part of a national trend toward old-school testing methods like in-class pen-and-paper exams and oral tests to prevent AI use for assignments on laptops. Typewriters bring 'old days' taste of doing one thing at a time Students arrived for class on a recent analog day to find typewriters at the desks, some with German and some with QWERTY keyboards. "I was so confused. I had no idea what was happening. I'd seen typewriters in movies, but they don't tell you how a typewriter works," said Catherine Mong, 19, a freshman in Phelps' Intro to German class. "I didn't know there was a whole science to using a typewriter." Like a rotary phone, the manual typewriter appears simple but is not intuitive to the smartphone generation. Phelps demonstrated how to feed the paper manually, striking the keys with force but not so hard the letters would smudge. She explained that the dinging bell signifies the end of a line and the need to manually return the carriage to start the next line. ("Oh," said one student, "that's why it's called 'return.'") "Everything slows down. It's like back in the old days when you really did one thing at a time. And there was joy in doing it," said Phelps, who brings in her two children, aged 7 and 9, to serve as "tech support" and ensure no one has their phones out. Students welcomed having fewer distractions The assignment carries lessons beyond simply how to use a typewriter, which is the whole point. "It dawned on me that the difference with typing on a typewriter is not just how you interact with the typewriter, but how you interact with the world around you," said computer science major Ratchaphon Lertdamrongwong, a sophomore, whose class had to write a critique of a German movie they'd watched. In the absence of screens, there are no notifications to distract you as you write. Without every answer readily available at his fingertips, he asked his classmates for help, which Phelps heartily encouraged. "While writing the essay, I had to talk a lot more, socialize a lot more, which I guess was normal back then," Lertdamrongwong said, referring to the typewriter era. "But it's drastically different from how we interact within the classroom in modern times. People are always on a laptop, always on the phone." Without a delete key and the ability to correct every mistake, he paused to think more intentionally about his writing. "This might sound bad, but I was forced to actually think about the problem on my own instead of delegating to AI or Google search," he said. Manual machines were a workout for pinky fingers Most students found their pinkies weren't strong enough to touch-type, so they typed more slowly, pecking at the keyboard with their index fingers. Mong, the freshman, faced the added challenge of a recently broken wrist, requiring her to use just one hand. The self-described perfectionist was initially frustrated with how messy her page looked with odd spacing between certain letters and misspellings. (Phelps told students to backspace and type 'X's over errors.) "This thing I handed in had pencil marks all over it and definitely did not look clean or finished. But it's part of the process of learning that you're going to make mistakes," said Mong, who found the assignment of typing a poem "fun and challenging." She embraced the odd spacing and played with the visual boundaries of the page to indent and fragment lines in the style of poet E.E. Cummings. It took several sheets of paper and many mistakes, all of which Mong saved. "I'm probably going to hang them on my wall," Mong said. "I'm kind of fascinated by typewriters. I told all my friends, I did a German test on a typewriter!" --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Related Join the Conversation 1 Comment 1. [1e1780b]Timmy says: April 1, 2026 at 10:37 am I remember trying to type an entire term paper perfectly. You get to the last line and make a mistake. Do you go ahead and use 'white out' to type over the mistake, or type the entire page over again so that it is perfect... When we first got a computer and WordPerfect where you could correct everything on the computer screen it really made it so much easier to print out the final product. This is good for students to use a typewriter. There should be more of this. 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