1

By

E-books as tax-money-savers? You bet–in Texas, at least if you go by a news story about a Dallas-area school, where e-books are said to have replaced the paper kind completely. From the WISH TV Web site in Indianapolis:

It’s not just high-tech for the sake of it. Laptops will replace an armload of textbooks, making students’ loads lighter. News 8 found out about a school down in Texas that is trying to make the switch from heavy to high tech.

At Johnson Elementary School in Forney, just outside of Dallas, Texas, students have been reading “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” They’re trading in their hard covers for hard drives. Administrators at the school feel they’re ahead of a wave that was sure to come.

“It wasn’t a matter of if we were going to get electronic textbooks. It was a question of when we were going to get electronic textbooks,” said Mike Smith, Forney superintendent.

While kids at Forney are now testing laptops, next fall each fifth and sixth grader will be issued a PC. Their IBM Thinkpads are pre-loaded with Vital Source Technologies software that contains more than 2,000 books.

Folks at Vital Source say they can outfit each student with a laptop for under $1,000. The same textbooks would cost 13-hundred each. The real savings comes each following year.. When the only cost is a c-d-rom to upgrade the electronic text books…and the computer gets reused.

According to the article, e-books are already happening in some central Indiana schools. “This example from Texas is the first to toss the textbooks completely.”

Related: Board OKs Electronic Textbook Partnership with IBM & Vital Source (news release).

(Spotted via LISNews.)

 
1