iPads replace traditional textbooks in four California school districts

With the new school year just starting, and under way for other students, the smell of freshly sharpened pencils and new paper fills the air.  Well for most schools this is the case, but students in four schools districts in California are instead smelling the scent of glass and aluminum.  That's right. These four lucky school districts are receiving iPads for their Algebra 1 classes.  Gone are those freshly sharpened pencils and notebooks of paper.

Fresnobee.com is reporting that Kings Canyon and Sequoia Middle school in the Fresno school district, along with schools in Long Beach, San Francisco, and Riverside school districts, will be receiving the iPad in lieu of traditional textbooks.  The purpose behind this is to see if the iPad can improve test scores where traditional teaching methods have failed.  An Algebra 1 app produced by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will be on the iPad and used as a teaching tool.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is also subsidizing the full cost of the iPad and the app.  This makes the barrier of entry non-existent for these schools who would have gone with the netbook route, or in some cases would have stuck with traditional textbooks.