Textbooks will be history in Keys

KEY WEST — The days of dog-eared textbooks with notes from students past scribbled in the margins and a list of previous stewards inside the front cover are coming to an end.

The Monroe County School District is heading toward a textbook-free school atmosphere, one in which students in sixth through 12th grades have a laptop computer they take home and use in school.

Superintendent Randy Acevedo was learning how to use his new Apple iBook laptop on Monday as part of the first phase of transition.

The goal, Acevedo said, is to ensure that all teachers and administrators are comfortable and capable with the technology before they are asked to use it to teach. The school district has budgeted $582,000 to be spent over the next three years for the teachers' laptops, he said.

But students will have to wait another two or so years before they can ditch the heavy textbooks. District officials still are researching the wireless and bookless trend to determine whether the computers should be given to students beginning in sixth grade or in ninth grade, Acevedo said.

"But it is absolutely the plan to eventually go textbook-free, and our schools are becoming equipped for wireless technology," Acevedo said.

All the new schools being built are already capable of providing wireless Internet service that does not require any phone lines or cables. Other schools will be retrofitted.

The district plans to lease between 4,000 and 5,000 iBooks from Apple Computers on a three-year program. The plan is expected to cost the district a total of about $4.6 million over three years, or $1.5 million every year.

Acevedo pointed out that the district will spend about $1.2 million on textbooks this year.

"It's really a pretty neat machine, and they're making them more durable for heavy use these days," he said.

Empire High School in Vail, Ariz., which just opened last month and was designed as a textbook-free school, has eliminated textbooks from its halls of learning.

When fully completed, the school will house 700 laptop-toting students. Right now, about 350 of them cluster in small groups throughout campus during study halls, comparing notes and visiting Web sites for reading assignments.

They also can turn in homework assignments over the Internet, and software programs are available that will check for plagiarism from a Web site.

"We wanted to re-imagine what high school could look like and get rid of textbooks," said Matt Federoff, Vail School District's director of technology. "We've done high school the same way for 100 years, and this does interesting things to the school culture."

Federoff said the students feel they are a part of something, and the fact that every student carries the same computer with the same software eliminates a "digital divide" that often separated students based on a family's economic status and ability to afford technology.

Empire High School also uses Apple iBooks, and each student is expected to keep the same computer throughout high school, Federoff said, adding that the school district has installed mandatory filters and firewalls to prevent students from accessing inappropriate sites or material from their school-issued computer.

Also, at the beginning of each school year, parents are asked to buy a $50 insurance policy from a company called SafeWare that insures against loss or breakage.

"In the three instances we've had so far this year of breakage, it has been the parents who have broken the computers," Federoff said. "But the dealings with the insurance company have been pretty painless."

Although impressed with the student and teacher response to the laptops, Federoff recommends a "clear-eyed skepticism" to school districts who want to provide students with laptops out of a sense of obligation. Those districts run the risk of having students carrying textbooks and laptops and employing teachers who are afraid to use the computer to teach.

He also pointed out that residents in the Vail School District have a choice of four high schools in the district. Those who were not comfortable with the textbook-free environment could attend a different, more traditional, high school.

He cautioned school district officials against foisting the computers onto students and teachers without outlining specific educational goals and providing extensive training on how to use the computers to improve education.

”Call me old fashioned if you will but I don't like this idea. Can't quite put my finger on the exact reason why. Interested in others opinions.”

1) It’s much easier to read a textbook than a laptop.
2) Not everything we will want to teach is available paperless.
3) What works in one US school district in Arizona will be more difficult and expensive to support in Monroe County where something like $800k median home prices force something like 33% teacher turnover.

Being one of the first to implement something this radical is going to have some false starts (mistakes) and be expensive to manage and support. Being strung out over a county of islands 100 miles apart doesn’t help.

But at least with our tax base multiplying every 3-4 years, and our “republican” commissioners unafraid to raise tax rates on top of that, we have the money. That’s about all I can think of (in Key Largo).

When I was in school, a favorite thing of the bullies (usually jocks at my school) to do was to come up behind some nerdy kid and "dump" their books by pushing them out from under their arms.
I wonder how many iBooks will fall victim to this juvenile prank.

P.S. I hope they strip all the games from them and don't allow installations of other apps.

I have been waiting for this for a long time. Textbooks are heavy, dreary, out-of-date, and generally worthless. The school will obviously have approve internet sites -- schools already have such lists of approved research sites.

What the internet provides is countless alternative approaches for any sublent, so that if any patricular presentation is boring or difficult, you can find the material presented another way.

Obviously there is a lot of crap to wade through, but life is like that.

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