I teach high school history.

The problem

Once a year, my students sit down at a locked Chromebook and take an exam they can't wander away from, no questions asked. Every other week of the year, I spend my time arguing with those same kids about those same Chromebooks. What are they doing on them? Are they cheating? Watching YouTube videos? Listening to music? Then, during assessment, I'm constantly choosing between tools that try to guess whether a student cheated and tools that watch over their shoulder while they work, and often default to paper when nothing else works.

The good news is that the locked environment already exists, on the devices schools already own. It just gets pointed at the big standardized test a few times a year instead of at the assessments teachers give every week.

Why I built it rather than bought it

I wanted two things: a genuinely locked environment, and a tool that was actually built for assessment. Nothing I could find does both. Monitoring software watches students the whole time they work, and a determined kid can still get around it. A secure form builder was never meant for assessment, and it shows. That leaves a teacher choosing between surveillance and a survey.

And the work around it is scattered. You build in one place, grade in another, and hand feedback back through a third, so by the time it reaches a student a week later, they glance at the grade and don't learn anything from it. TypeWriter does the whole loop: build the assessment, give it in a locked environment, grade against the rubric you wrote, and return feedback while they still remember writing it.

Who is behind it

Me, mostly. TypeWriter is early and it's in pilot. Every decision in it was made by someone who has to give the assessment on Tuesday and return it graded by Friday.

It also means I answer my own email. If something is broken, or a feature would make your week easier, write to me and we'll work out the fix together.

I came to teaching late. I was a CPA for three years, where the details matter. Then I went into small business, where I ended up running a five-shop coffee operation and building every system it ran on, from hiring and payroll to inventory and brand. Nobody hands you software at that size. You build what you need and find out fast whether it works.

What I won't do with student work

No student names, emails, or contact details. Students sign in with a code from their teacher, and the roster that connects the code to a student is stored with the teacher, never in TypeWriter. Nothing is sent to an AI service, sold, or used to train a model. Grading here is done by a person.

Student work is still student data, and I treat it that way. The student privacy page covers what's stored and what isn't, and districts reviewing the service can request a completed schedule of data at any time.

Questions, or want to try it with your classes? hello@typewriter.education