Arizona high school trades textbooks for iBooks

Students this year at Empire High School in Arizona each received an iBook instead of a textbook, making the public School one of the first ever to shun printed textbooks. School officials believe the electronic materials will get all 340 students more engaged in learning, according to the report from The Associated Press. Two years ago roughly 600 school districts across the nation had pilot projects to provide laptops to each student, a figure that has probably doubled since that time according to Mark Schneiderman, director of federal education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association in Washington.

Students in 23 middle and high schools in the Henrico County school system near Richmond, Virginia will be using laptops for the fifth straight year. Interestingly those laptops used to be iBooks which are now being sold to county residents, bringing unexpected consequences.

Filed under: education