Saturday, November 04, 2006

Once Again, Texas Leads the Way

AP Wire | 11/04/2006 | Some Texas schools switching from textbooks to e-books: "DALLAS - If voters approve school bond packages in Lancaster and Forney, those districts will become the latest Texas schools to begin replacing traditional hardbound textbooks with electronic versions.

The Plano and Irving school districts have already introduced e-books into some of their classrooms, and the Midland school district is moving away from old-fashioned textbooks entirely, said Anita Givens of the Texas Education Agency.

'In some classrooms, teachers give students traditional textbooks to keep at home, and they use online books or other resources at school,' Givens said.

Forney schools are planning the most complete overhaul, with a school bond package that would provide $11.8 million for laptops for students. The plan is to have most students using only electronic textbooks within two years, school officials said.

If that happens, Forney would probably be the first school district in Texas to use e-books in every classroom from fifth grade on up, Givens said."

3 comments:

Mystery Dawg said...

Most textbook adoptions are for a 7 year period and cost school districts millions of dollars per subject. Each year a school distirct adopts a new subject; so one year its Language arts, then the nexy year math, etc. I like this idea because once you commit to a specific textbook your with them for the entire adoption. Possibly the cost of the e-books could be less and updated more easily as needed.

Unknown said...

And the backpacks would be a lot lighter.

Cap'n Bob said...

I can hear it now: "My dog crashed my homework."