In Forney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb of Dallas, 10- and 11-year-old students are set to cross a technology divide to an area many adults won't venture into -- electronic books.
Starting in August, more than 100 students in the fifth and sixth grades of the Forney Independent School District will receive notebook computers that contain as many textbooks as the school can muster the rights for, as well as thousands of classic works of art and literature.
Instead of opening books, the children will log onto school-supplied laptops to access their math and science textbooks or read American literary classics such as Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" or Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" about the Civil War.
"Our generation didn't learn to read on a computer screen, so most parents have an issue with that," said Mike Smith, Superintendent of the Forney school district. But today's fifth and sixth graders don't see it the same way.
"They just operate differently than we do. They're digital kids," Smith said.
More turn to digital versions
Forney, one of the first schools to try to put the full curriculum of two grades onto computers, is part of a growing group of educational institutions from middle schools to colleges such as Wake Forest University in North Carolina, that are turning to digital versions of the reading materials they have used for decades.
They are taking a lesson from mistakes made in the early years of the Internet era, when talk was of e-books eventually replacing the printed word. That did not happen, as readers shied away from curling up with a computer.
But schools and students are still battling a host of issues such as copyright concerns, electronic textbook prices, program budgets and which books should be made available.
For elementary schools, digital textbooks may end up being less expensive because they are more enduring than the three-year replacement cycle of a print version.
In the latest sign of how fractured the market is, publisher Pearson Education is launching a service that will put about 300 textbooks on the Internet, charging students about 50 percent of the textbook list price.
"It's a great price," Pearson publishing executive Will Etheridge said.
Students will not be able to download an entire book, but they can print out sections of it, accessing it on the Internet for six months or a year via a password-protected system.
Pearson's price is lower than that of an electronic textbook, which at Wake Forest costs students about the same as a hard copy, and of a used textbook, typically discounted to about 75 percent of its original price.
"The cost is probably net more for the students because there is no electronic used book trade," said Jay Dominick, Chief Information Officer at Wake Forest. Because of that, he says, "students typically prefer to buy used books when they are available."
More than a pricing problem
Pricing is not the only issue keeping more students from going electronic.
"The hard part is getting rights to the content and figuring out the logistics," Dominick said.
As a result, schools are making the changes slowly, and looking elsewhere for help.
Hardware companies, including IBM, Apple and Dell are fighting for a piece of this growing education market.
IBM, for instance, recently signed an agreement in which it will preload onto computers designated for schools software made by a company called Vitalsource Technologies that contains thousands of plays, novels, short stories and works of art in the public domain.
Hewlett-Packard has been working since last fall with the Ocoee Middle School near Orlando, Florida, part of the SMART Schools Initiative, where teachers, students, and parents make use of the most recent technological advances to enhance learning and efficiency.
Seventh-graders use its Tablet PC, a type of portable computer that recognizes writing applied directly to its screen.
Through wireless access, students are able to tap into an online curriculum designed by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, part of Reed Elsevier, publisher of information for professional users. For instance, it has an online version of "Elements of Literature, Third Course," a selection of plays, short stories and non-fiction considered to be the premier textbook for English classes today.
One of the barriers to such a program is cost.
In Texas, The Forney district is spending about $1,000 per computer, plus about $500 per student for the wireless Internet system and maintenance. Smith said the program would be more viable at $500 per computer.
Forney, which will use the Vitalsource software, has also had one other issue -- deciding what, if any, works to delete from the pre-installed library.
Smith, who described Forney as a conservative community, said the books have not been an issue, but that some of the paintings installed on the program, by artists such as Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, are of nudes.
"We are in the process of going through and deleting things off that (software) that are not really appropriate for children. There are some issues there, but probably not any different than in a regular library," Smith said.