Textbooks dumped in favor of laptops

"No textbooks? No problem. A revolutionary new high school outside Tucson, Ariz., plans to do away with the bulky, hardcover tomes in favor of laptop computers, making it one of the first schools in the nation to abandon the use of traditional textbooks for the educational value of the internet."

"When the Vail School District's Empire High School opens its doors a year from now, all of its more than 600 students will receive Apple iBook notebooks equipped with a wireless card for anytime, anywhere web surfing and internet-based instruction on school grounds. What they won't receive, however, are textbooks. Though the school will have a traditional library and a number of books and novels on hand, teachers will not be provided with textbooks for each class, said Empire Principal Cindy Lee. Rather, the majority of what students need will be available online using their laptops, she said. . . . "