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Vail, Arizona, high school ditches books, wires: The high school of 350 students will use laptops and electronic texts. The methodology of whether this works is based on the superintendent looking around at other schools, but apparently not viewing results like attendance, test results, and softer measures. Further, the article doesn’t touch on the problem with electronic texts, that they’re highly controlled for distribution and licensing and often have limited periods of use, such as a year or a school year. Conventional textbooks can last several years, be handed around, and even used by (gasp) more than one person at a time.
Until such a point that electronic textbooks have the same flexibility and usefulness—not just up-to-date-ness, when that’s even happening—as print textbooks, the value of this switch is not documented, not supported by research, and not wise.
Posted by Glennf at July 11, 2005 10:21 AM
Categories: Academia
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Textbooks are much cheaper and last much longer than notebook computers. The don't break as easily as notbook computers. Mine last two to three years.
What is Rick smoking?
Posted by: dhm at July 12, 2005 4:09 PM
As long as the laptops aren't lost, this seems to make more sense, despite some of the drawbacks.
Textbooks are very expensive to purchase updated versions (as is often needed for things like History or Science books which is a huge bonus and not to be overlooked), can become unusable because of damage, and can even allow teachers to use multiple textbooks for a single class (something you'll rarely see at the high school level).
Though this would never work for a school of 1000+ students, a school of 350 should have no problem managing the IT for this.
Posted by: Rick ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://wifinetnews.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 11, 2005 2:40 PM