"I don't know. Some homework is boring. Well, most of it is boring. I mean just to bring my grade up I have to spend at least two hours on my homework. Well, actually I spend at least three and a half hours because I get distracted by my music and start singing along.
"I spend about four or five hours on homework every night. I'm really slow at getting things. Sometimes I don't do my homework because I have sports, chores, or something that is actually important to do.
the homework machine chapter 3
"Homework is useless and a waste of time. What's the point of homework? It's just frustrating and annoying. I think it is unnecessary because it wastes most of your social life. It leaves you no time to play with your friends.
I've always liked doing homework, myself. Being enrolled in an online MLIS program, where school is almost entirely composed of homework, works really well for me. But I know from doing housework what it's like when you are faced with a task that feels like a total chore and you so wish you could do that task just once and not have to deal with it the next day and the next day and...
"Brenton's a dork, but he's a genius dork. I know he's gonna find a cure for cancer or win the Nobel prize of something when he grows up. If any kid could create a machine that would do your homework for you, Brenton is the kid.
But Brenton does open his mouth and the events that subsequently unfold cause the quartet to become unlikely friends. The technology aspect of the tale is thoroughly plausible: Scan in the homework assignment sheet. Have text recognition software that transforms the homework into a series of queries. If a particular answer is not available on the hard drive then have the computer automatically retrieve cross-checked solutions online. Have software that stores handwriting samples, thus permitting the computer to print out the completed homework in the handwriting of each of the four students.
I'm just dying to team up with a fifth or sixth grade teacher and set up THE HOMEWORK MACHINE as reader's theater. It's a thoroughly entertaining read that is guaranteed to get kids and adults debating the issues relating to homework.
Depending on the study guide provider (SparkNotes, Shmoop, etc.), the resources below will generally offer The Homework Machine chapter summaries, quotes, and analysis of themes, characters, and symbols.
George and Harold attempt to destroy homework by making sure it was never invented in the first place. However, their success doesn't come without a cost; their comic success no longer exists as well! While the two friends struggle on what to do, the miserable teachers get their hands on a copy and get inspired to give the kids homework by fusing into the Homework Hydra!
It's the end of another day at Jerome Horwitz, and the students are reading the latest Captain Underpants comic book instead of listening to Ms. Ribble's senseless yammering... everyone but George, Harold and Melvin. Melvin is worried that there's only one minute left before Ms. Ribble assigns them homework, while George and Harold are determined that they don't get homework so they can work on their new comic all night. However, as the last possible second comes, Melvin shouts to Ms. Ribble that she forgot to assign homework.
The next morning, George and Harold see that Ms. Ribble's grading their papers. However, when she gives George and Harold their reports, they got H's, which stand for "horrendous". George got a H due to his paper being 2,011 middle names long (to add to the 7,989 he typed before), while Harold's is just full of confetti, as a dog ate it. Ms. Ribble thinks the boys are talking back to her, and she promptly sends them to Mr. Krupp, who writes a new rule in the notebook: "Having hopes and dreams", and Mr. Krupp is excited, as this office visit puts them one office closer to being expelled. However, he is immediately distracted by a red light, just like Ms. Ribble, but after seeing George with the laser, he snatches it from him, and decides to triple their homework: 30,000 words on doorknobs.
George & Harold walk out of the school, struggling to carry their stacks of homework. However, when he hears Melvin deciding to stop wedgies from being invented by using his Time Toad 2000, George explains this to who he thinks is Harold, but it turns out that he was talking to Gooch, & explains this to the real Harold.
George and Harold decide to go to Melvin's house to steal his Time Toad 2000 with the old "Your refridgerator is running" prank call. Once they get inside, they find the room with the Time Toad inside and get in, time travelling back to the Egyptain times. When they get inside the pyramid school, they see that Melvinites was the one who caused the creation of homework. To stop it from happening, George and Harold go back a few minutes to trap Melvinites in the sarcophagus, and head to the Time Toad to see if their victory of stopping homework from being invented worked.
The duo travel back to the present day, where they see that the kids are much happier. They are additionally in shock when they see that Melvin, due to the fact that homework hasn't been invented, has became a cool teenage dude. They then see that homework really hasn't been invented, & go sandboarding with Melvin in sand dunes. George & Harold decide to make a new comic to tell the people of their heroism. However, when they go to give all of the comics for everyone to read, it turns out that not only did they get rid of homework, they also got rid of comics. This horrifies George and Harold, and they faint. George and Harold retreat to their treehouse.
George and Harold are freaked out that their comics don't exist anymore, and unfortunately to them, George and Harold can only bring back comics if they bring back homework. However, they weren't alone in their misery; it turned out that the more happier the kids were, the more depressed the Teachers were; majorly Mr. Krupp. However, Ms. Ribble finds a copy of the comic, and discovers the word homework, she is shocked by this, and gets an evil idea.
Soon enough, after Ms. Ribble explains homework to the other teachers, they were drooling at the idea of homework. However, their combined weight while stomping gleefully causes them to fall through the floor, crash upon Ms. Anthrope, and her copier machine, and into a vat of cement. Soon, all five teaches fuse with the copier, shown off-screen. Meanwhile, George and Harold are worried about bringing back homework if they want to bring back comics. However, they hear a monster's rampage at the school, and make it there, realizing that it's Homework Hydra from their comic. They decide to go get Captain Underpants, while they tell Melvin to stay at the schoolyard and survive.
After getting a 3-D Hypno-Ring and Extra Strength Super Power Juice, Mr. Krupp was once again Captain Underpants, who is warned about the Homework Hydra. Captain Underpants then goes after it, but the violence is shown in Workbook-O-Rama. After failing, Captain Underpants tries to use wedgie power, but fails. The Hydra gets the upper hand, and Ms. Anthrope tosses Captain Underpants into Mr Meaner, who's face is a butt, causing the captain to get trapped in between. Eventually, George and Harold get an idea and make a teachers' lounge, but the hydra just smashes it. Then, Melvin shows up, revealing himself to be camoflauged with fake homework.
Soon, as Melvin shoots a red laser, George and Harold find out that teachers love red laser dots as much as homework, and plan to get a bunch of paper so they can pull it apart. Luckily, Melvin has a lot of lasers.
George, Harold and Melvin go distract the Hydra with lasers and point them at the middle of the hydra, the hydra goes to get all lasers, and it blows up ith toner, separating the teachers and the copier machine. However, Melvin decides to clean up the toner, but in his foolishness, he accidentally sprays George, Harold and Captain Underpants, who turns back into Mr. Krupp.
With the threat defeated, George and Harold are glared at by the classmates, as they were the ones who caused homework to happen. George and Harold then give homework to Melvin. However, with the return of homework meant the return of intelligent Melvin.
Back at the treehouse, George and Harold talk about how they're the jerks who caused homework, but are also the ones who saved comics. They happily high-five and we get a shot of "The Heroes That Saved Comics!", and the episode ends.
Anyway, the story unfolds with the professor heading out of town and trusting Danny to take care of his machine. Danny has been helping the professor for quite some time and was familiar with its operation, and the professor trusted him to use it in his absence. Danny is a bright kid, but one always looking for shortcuts. As the book opened he was trying to make a mechanical device to help him produce two copies of homework he would only have to write out once, so he and a friend could share the load. Naturally, soon his thoughts turned to getting the computer make short work of his homework too.
And then that night the professor returned, this time with important guests from Washington interested in potentially purchasing the machine for government use ? but dubious that it could do all that the professor had promised. So when it started printing out gibberish that evening, it was quite a serious problem. Fortunately, Danny realizes that the problem was that the thermostat had been hacked ? the bully had removed a bolt so it got stuck on a setting, which had made the switches too cold to operate properly. Once they warmed up everything worked fine again and everyone was impressed ? with the computer, and with Danny.
And when a sufficiently advanced neural net is forced to "learn" identification from tens of thousands of anal prints before being forced into full-time service doing more of the same, will we have any doubts about what led to the machine revolution? -toilet-anal-recognition/
If you can reframe the problem, you can get kids to learn. Programming the computer was entirely optional, the homework was entirely mandatory. The lessons (math problems, report on Peru) were learned, and the kids did not mind doing so, because they thought they could game the system. 2ff7e9595c