A Texas District Goes Digital

The burgeoning Forney Independent School District (FISD), near suburban Dallas, is growing so fast it was caught short by 600 textbooks this year. Come the fall, things will be a little different at Johnson Elementary School.

In a first-in-the-nation pilot program, every fifth and sixth grader at Johnson will receive a $1,350 IBM ThinkPad computer loaded with digital versions of state-approved textbooks and more than 2,000 works of public-domain literature. While schools in Maine, Michigan, and other states have provided laptops to students, Forney is the first to transfer textbooks for an entire curriculum onto digital notebooks.

In addition to eight required textbooks—four for each grade level—the district-purchased laptops come with the Personal Portable Library by Vital Source, which contains 2,000 works, including novels, historical documents, and major speeches. "A real benefit is that the software makes the textbooks and resource materials interactive and searchable," says Bobby Milliorn, Johnson's principal. "Students can use keyword searches to find references and information in the 2,000 works."

Roger Geiger, Forney's technology director, says district librarians helped review the Portable Library to identify works that related to the curriculum, from Just So Stories, geared to fifth graders, to The Confessions of Nat Turner for social studies.

"This is an innovative solution to a textbook shortage," says Mike Smith, FISD's superintendent. Among the fastest growing districts in Texas, Forney is anticipating 20 to 25 percent more students. With textbook procurement based on the previous year's enrollment, Forney is at a distinct disadvantage. Moreover, says Smith, "hardcover textbooks are sometimes three or four years out of date when they arrive and their life span is being stretched up to eight years… and they don't physically last."

Digitized textbooks also reduce the load on young shoulders—student backpacks can weigh more than 30 pounds. Compare that to a seven-pound computer, says Geiger.

Students will receive their laptops in September, after attending a training session together with their parents. Their teachers, who will also get laptops, will be taught how to integrate digital tools in the classroom by instructors from IBM, Vital Source, and the district's technology staff. "We're not trying to provide a full electronic curriculum, we're just giving them an e-book," cautions Geiger. But he says he "hopes teachers will take the tool and run with it." If the pilot is successful, the program will be expanded to other grades and other district schools, says Geiger.

While the high cost of laptops has prevented them from being used in more schools, Geiger expects that hardware prices will be coming down in the next few years, making laptops a more attractive option for schools. As superintendent Smith says, "Electronic textbooks are not a matter of if. They're a matter of when."