Iowa school replaces workbooks with MacBooks

Such an initiative is much easier to pull off when your district only has a total of 630 students in it. The district I work at has 419 seniors in just one of its two high schools. I'm not saying what Van Meter Community School District was easy, but it would surely be much easier to do at a one-to-one school like Van Meter than at even a moderately sized district like ours.

At the High school im am attending for my senior year we are required to have an ipad, all books are digital and are "loaned" to us by the school. (they work from sept-june then delete themselves) The downside to this is you have to pay at least $500 for an iPad but the upside is that if you attend the school for all four years your total books cost is just the price of the iPad as opposed to the normal 300-400 dollar a year book cost....

Here in Mooresville, NC this has been happening for about 3 years already. Children from 4th -12th grade are issued MacBooks with backpacks. Most of their learning is distributed and performed on their MB. I thought I had a head start on technology, but to watch some of the video, audio, and graphic presentations my 4th grader made is truely awesome.

I lived in Van Meter until I was 5, the current owners of the house I grew up in painted it purple.

From what I know, and I could be wrong, Van Meter is part of the Des Moines' School District. I wonder if this isn't being treated as a pilot program for DSM schools which could be cool as my daughter starts HS in the fall.

Maine does this with middle schoolers already. I am a huge fan of macs, but I think schools would be much better off with Chromebooks. They are significantly cheaper in terms of initial cost and IT. Also, if a student needs a new computer or to use someone else's, their work is all their.

Using Google services also eliminates the need for purchasing MS Office. Schools should not be purchasing software when they just use the basic functionality that is available for free from many sources.