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Laptops - the New Textbooks

Arizona?s Empire High School is on the cutting-edge of technology when it comes to a new approach in education. Calvin Baker, chief superintendent of the Vail School district, says that bringing lapatops into the classrooms does not mean that text books have been totally eradicated from the school campuses. He says, `There are no text books other than a couple on the shelf for teachers to use as resource. We still have a library - we are not anti-books. We have a library and we encourage students to use it, but the primary delivery of instruction materials is being done through the laptops.`

The school is like many other educational institutions that are embracing technologies, such as iPods and laptops, and entrusting students to use them appropriately. Empire High also ensures there are no hi-tech excuses for not doing homework. `The dog ate it` used to work in times past, but with a laptop as a textbook, there are a just a list of other excuses, such as `the hard drive crashed`.

However, providing every student with their own hi-tech resources like a laptop might seem risky. Baker thinks by allowing students to keep their music on the machines means they view technology slightly differently. He says, `That`s a very valuable part of their life, and that is where their collection is, and so they take pretty good care of it just because it is something that is personally important to them.`