Oct. 27--TUPELO -- Good bye textbooks. Hello computers.

The Tupelo Public School District announced this afternoon an initiative to provide laptops for its teachers and sixth-- to 12th-grade students. It is part of a partnership between the district and Apple.

The announcement came during a ceremony at Bancorp South Arena that included all TPSD students and teachers from grades three to 12.

The laptops will be loaned to administrators, teachers and students, who will be allowed to take the computers home just as they do currently do with textbooks. The MacBook computers will be given out in phases.

All teachers and administrators in the district and all seniors at Tupelo High School will receive their computers before the end of this semester. The goal is that the teachers will have several months to get used to the Macs and to determine how to best use them as teaching tools.

In phase two, all sixth-- to 12th-grade students will receive a laptop at the beginning of the 2010-11 school year. Phases three and four include purchasing computer carts with laptops for use in kindergarten to fifth-grade classrooms and buying other technology, like Promethium Boards or SMART Boards that allow for student interaction in classrooms.

The total cost to the district will be roughly $5.2 million over four years, said TPSD superintendent Randy Shaver. Under the lease-to-purchase agreement, the district will pay Apple a four-year lease and will then purchase all of the equipment for $1 total.

The total cost also includes staff development work helping teachers find ways to best use the equipment.

The project will be largely paid for by money the district normally spends on textbooks and photocopies, Shaver said. Instead of providing textbooks for each of its students, the district will now just have a set of textbooks for each subject and classroom. Teachers creating handouts for students will now make those handouts into electronic documents, or PDFs, and email them to students.

Shaver said because the district is buying the computers in bulk, they will cost between $900 to $1,000 per student and will last for three or four years. Textbooks can cost as much as $80 to $280 per student for each of five or six subjects, Shaver said, and photocopies cost the district as much as $500,000 annually.

The money for the first phase will come from a roughly $1.5 million bond that the district has already borrowed.

The computers come with a new emphasis on using the classroom as a digital learning environment. For instance, students in a history class might be instructed to do their own research on a project using the Internet and to then show their mastery of the material by creating an iMovie about it.

"We are teaching collaboration and creativity and those are two of the most important skills business leaders want our students to master," Shaver said.

Shaver said research shows that teaching students this way and by using technology that students are familiar with increases their retention.

"My goal is for every student to become an independent lifelong learner," Shaver said.

Shaver said that traditional methods of lining students up in rows and asking them to memorize material in textbooks can stifle student growth.

The TPSD School Board approved the lease agreement with Apple Tuesday at its regular school board meeting.

Contact Chris Kieffer at (662) 678-1590 or at chris.kieffer@djournal.com.

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