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At This School, Kids Boot Up Textbooks -- Students, Teachers Try Laptop Learning

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 September 2005, 09:00 CDT

VAIL, Ariz. - Students at Empire High School started class this year with no textbooks - but it wasn't because of a funding crisis.

Instead, the school issued Apple iBooks laptops to each of its 340 students, becoming one of the first U.S. public schools to shun printed textbooks.

School officials believe the electronic materials will get students more engaged in learning. Empire High, which opened for the first time this year, was designed specifically to have a textbook- free environment.

"We've always been pretty aggressive in use of technology and we have a history of taking risks," said Calvin Baker, superintendent of the Vail Unified School District, which has 7,000 students outside of Tucson.

Schools typically overlay computers onto their instruction "like frosting on the cake," Baker said. "We decided that the real opportunity was to make the laptops the key ingredient of the cake. ... to truly change the way that schools operated."

Two years ago, about 600 school districts nationwide had pilot projects to provide laptops for each student - a figure that's likely doubled since then, said Mark Schneiderman, director of federal education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association in Washington.

But most still issue textbooks - for now.

"Because most schools are not starting from scratch ... most districts are using a blended approach now and will phase out their printed textbooks," he said.

Many publishers of traditional textbooks are offering digital formats to address the growing use of computers, and that provided some of the material for Empire High's curriculum.

Students get the materials over the school's wireless Internet network.

Students can turn in homework online. A Web program checks against Internet sources for plagiarized material and against the work of other students, Baker said. "If you copy from your buddy, it's going to get caught," he said.

Social studies teacher Jeremy Gypton said the transition was easier than expected. Gypton said he assigns readings based on Web sites, lists postings to news articles, uses online groups and message boards to keep the students connected on weekends and asks them to comment on each other's work.

Freshman Morgan Northcutt said the computer system has made it easier to do assignments.

"There's complications like hooking up with the Internet, but other than that it's been pretty easy," Morgan said.

Freshman Julian Tarazon said he doesn't miss lugging around a bag full of books .

"It was kind of hard at first, because you had to put things in folders," Julian said, referring, naturally, to virtual folders on his computer's desktop. "After a couple of days, you kind of get used to it."

The school isn't entirely paperless, however. It has a library, and students are often assigned outside reading.

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

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