McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education and the Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc. are named in a Wall Street Journal article as having plans to make electronic study guides. This is a first step toward electronic textbooks at school. I for one feel that this could be good for students and the environment if handled correctly.

We will see.

The only problem I see with the current deal is that it is for a single device. Hopefully this is just a first step. A very practical alternative might be a netbook because it can perform other functions as well as having a real keyboard. Another benefit is that a netbook costs a lot less than a fruit logo tablet. Making electronic textbooks more cost effective and attainable by more of the population would make it a very real possibility.

I feel that if the device were a netbook and students could potentially do real work on the device as well as read information, the schools could supply them to students instead of textbooks. However, they would be issued for the entire school career and parents would be responsible for replacement if lost, broken or stolen. As many textbooks run $40 or more, the cost is already close to a break even when calculated 1st through 12th grades.

See the related link for the article about the fruit logo device.