With the help of funding for schools affected by Hurricane Katrina and reward money for rising test scores, a Louisiana high school this fall will become one of the first in the state to dump textbooks in favor of laptop computers and an all-digital curriculum.

Students at Bolton High School, part of the Rapides Parish school system, won't be carrying around textbooks and paper notebooks, but instead will have laptop computers as part of the parish's first Digital Academy.

"This is on the cutting edge, not only for our parish but also the state," Bolton High School Principal Bill Higgins said. "This is the wave of the future."

Students in Bolton's gifted program, plus all 11th-graders and the majority of its seniors, won't be issued textbooks but will be given an Apple iMac computer on the first day of school. The students will be allowed to take the computers home.

"We are immersing the curriculum in technology," Higgins said.

Bolton High has two technology facilitators who are taking 30 of the laptop computers to various classes, giving students a taste of what they will experience next year.

Barbara Gourgues recently had the mobile lab and facilitators in her civics class. She said the students loved using the computers.

The school is using two grants and state reward money to pay for the new program. It received 160 laptop computers from the Virtue Foundation, which has helped schools affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and has given out 600 computers across the state, school officials said. A Louisiana High Tech grant, as well as money the school expects to receive because of growth in its school performance score, also will help fund the Digital Academy.

To prepare for the Digital Academy, Bolton High will become wireless so students can receive internet service as far out as the football field, Higgins said.