Would you rather carry around four textbooks or one tablet/laptop? I know I would prefer a device over all of the textbooks. So why doesn’t the school district eliminate some of that bulk and get rid of textbooks?  Not to mention, how much are textbooks really costing the district each year?

Well let’s say each textbook is $80 and there are 100 classrooms per school. You have to multiply that by four for each core subject that has a textbook. And finally multiply that by four high schools in the district, which adds up to around $128,000 dollars. That’s for one year and doesn’t include the middle or elementary schools.

Over ten years the district could potentially spend upwards of $1.3 million on textbooks. So would the district really benefit from bringing iPads or Chromebooks into the classroom?  iPads are generally $400-500 dollars and Chromebooks are around $279. The district could be spending $112,000-160,000 for the same amount of iPads or Chromebooks. This would be a one-time cost for several years. The cost would drastically increase if each student was issued one of these devices. It would potentially jump to over $600,000. There are several options to go with but overall I think the school could benefit from the use of tablets and other devices in the classroom. Students are more tech savvy this day in age so many may be better able to learn with the help of tablets in the classroom.

A large portion of students have back problems related to sports and carrying around a backpack full of textbooks can be strenuous. Who knows, it might be something worth mentioning at the next school board meeting.

In the meantime here is an article on how to save your back during the school year

http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Resources/Documents/Backpack_Safety.pdf