For incoming freshmen at western Connecticut’s suburban Brookfield High School, hefting a backpack weighed down with textbooks is about to give way to tapping out notes and flipping electronic pages on a glossy iPad tablet computer.
A few hours away, every student at Burlington High School near Boston also will start the year with new school-issued iPads, each loaded with electronic textbooks and other online resources in place of traditional bulky texts.
While iPads have rocketed to popularity on many college campuses since Apple Inc. introduced the device in spring 2010, many public secondary schools this fall will move away from textbooks in favor of the lightweight tablet computers.
Apple officials say they know of more than 600 districts that have launched one-to-one computing programs with the devices, in which at least one classroom of students is getting iPads for each student to use throughout the school day.
Nearly two-thirds of them have begun since July, according to Apple.
New programs are being announced on a regular basis, too. As recently as Aug. 31, Kentucky’s education commissioner and the superintendent of schools in Woodford County, Ky., said that Woodford County High will become the state’s first public high school to give each of its 1,250 students an iPad.
For more news about iPads in education, see:
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At Burlington High in suburban Boston, principal Patrick Larkin calls the $500 iPads a better long-term investment than textbooks, though he said the school still would use traditional texts in some courses if suitable electronic programs aren’t yet available.
“I don’t want to generalize, because I don’t want to insult people who are working hard to make those resources,” Larkin said of textbooks, “but they’re pretty much outdated the minute they’re printed and certainly by the time they’re delivered. The bottom line is that the iPads will give our kids a chance to use much more relevant materials.”
The trend has not been limited to wealthy suburban districts. New York City, Chicago, and many other urban districts also are buying large numbers of iPads.
The iPads generally cost districts between $500 and $600, depending on what accessories and service plans are purchased.
By comparison, Brookfield High in Connecticut estimates it spends at least that much yearly on every student’s textbooks, not including graphing calculators, dictionaries, and other accessories they can get on the iPads.
Educators say the sleek, flat tablet computers offer a variety of benefits.
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