[etni] PluggedIn: Students Set to Hit the Latest E-Books

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PluggedIn: Students Set to Hit the Latest E-Books 
Reuters - April 17, 2004 
 
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In Forney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb of Dallas, 10- and 
11-year-old schoolkids are set
to cross a technology divide to an area many adults won't venture into -- 
electronic books. 

Starting in August, more than 100 students in the fifth and sixth grades of the 
Forney Independent School
District will receive notebook computers that contain as many textbooks as the 
school can muster the rights
for, as well as thousands of classic works of art and literature. 

Instead of opening books, the children will log onto school-supplied laptops to 
access their math and science
textbooks or read American literary classics such as Mark Twain's "Adventures 
of Huckleberry Finn" or Stephen
Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" about the Civil War. 

"Our generation didn't learn to read on a computer screen, so most parents have 
an issue with that," said Mike
Smith, Superintendent of the Forney school district. But today's fifth and 
sixth graders don't see it the same
way. 

"They just operate differently than we do. They're digital kids," Smith said. 

Forney, one of the first schools to try to put the full curriculum of two 
grades onto computers, is part of a
growing group of educational institutions from middle schools to colleges such 
as Wake Forest University in
North Carolina, that are turning to digital versions of the reading materials 
they have used for decades. 

(To read the whole article, go to - www.etni.org.il/news/pluggedin.htm  or  
www.etni.org/news/pluggedin.htm )


The ETNI Team



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