Raising the Technology Bar in Arizona

Starting this fall, a high school in Arizona plans to exchange textbooks for laptops.

No more lugging around backpacks crammed full of dry textbooks. This fall a high school in Vail, Arizona will go wireless. The school will dispense with traditional textbooks, and students will carry laptops instead. Lessons will be taught using electronic and on-line articles.

Experts say Vail Unified School District’s choice to become an “e-school” is atypical. Switching to an all-wireless classroom is often prevented by cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints.

“The efforts are very sporadic,” said Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association. “A minority of communities are doing a good or very good job, but a large number are just not there on a number of levels.”

The transition to all-laptop learning environment deters teachers from working straight through an assigned textbook, the superintendent of Vail Unified School District, Calvin Baker said.

When a set of textbooks costs nearly $600, swapping books for laptops is expensive. The school district is purchasing laptops for $850 each, and students will receive the computers for the whole year.

Because of the groundbreaking nature of this switch over, Baker admits that no one knows how this decision will pan out.

“I’m sure there are going to be some adjustments. But we visited other schools using laptops. And at the schools with laptops, students were just more engaged than at non-laptop schools,” he said.