**** ETNI on the web http://www.etni.org.il http://www.etni.org **** 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 ##### To send a message to the ETNI list email: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ##### ##### Send queries and questions to: ask@xxxxxxxx #####