While it is true that the text is available online, it is not always available. There are issues with the host company, with weather knocking out internet service, with assignments not being saved before they are closed which results in the assignment having to be redone. The students were all required to purchase data keys so that they could copy the text onto them so if there were internet issues the text was still available, but the school issued datakeys dropped the text, or the datakeys were lost or damaged.

I am all for moving to digital text, but as SonomaLass said, if you don’t have the technology to support the move in your schools (which to me says you issue laptops to all the students) then you are causing more headaches than it is worth.

One other major issue I had with the digital text – Math especially, is that the answers were available on the website. Why bother learning your work, if the answers are there for you to copy?

I guess for me the biggest mistake was going digital with no paper backup. Sometimes you just need a book to read through; being online is distracting when you can open multiple windows and be chatting and emailing and game playing when you are supposed to be doing homework. And yeah – the school is supposed to have firewall and blocks up for those things, but I dare you to show me a teenager who can’t get around a firewall.