Across the country the icon of school, the textbook, is being replaced by technology. If it cannot fit in your hand, then it is too big, too heavy, too old. According to a recent feature by ABC News, books are being replaced at schools across the country by ipods, e-books, and e-resources.

Some examples highlighted in the feature:

• Cushing Academy, a private school outside of Boston, is dismantling its school library entirely — giving away 20,000 books and replacing them with e-books and digital resources.


• In Monticello, Virginia, the local high school is utilizing iPod Touches as the main learning device for select classes.


• Empire High School in the Tucson area, gives students a laptop on the first day of school, instead of a pile of heavy textbooks. [See K-12 Computing Blueprint's coverage of Vail, AZ, and its Beyond Textbooks initiative.]


• The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia has launched a pilot programs in which students use Kindles and ebooks in place of print textbooks.

David Rose of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education is one of the educators quoted in the feature. "If we continue to prepare kids for their past, that's very expensive," he told ABC News, "Their future is largely going to be in new media. And textbooks are no longer preparing them for that future."

Source: ABC News, by Rachel Martin and Christine Brouwer Schools Dump Textbooks for iPods, Laptops — Teachers Say Students Learn Better from the Devices, Even Multitasking