The move away from traditional text books in the class room

Hi all,

I'm not sure when it began but I believe we are experiencing the culmination of decades of incremental change.  It started out with introducing computers to children in the 80's when it was apparent that they were to be a significant part of everyone's future.  If I remember correctly it was an elective in high school to give you a taste of rudimentary computer programming.  This was effectively the education system dipping it's toes into a cool river.

Now we have the Apple ipad 2 completely taking the place of a traditional text book.  What an incredible turn of events.  Who in the world would ever have thought that some small, hand held electronic device weighing next to nothing would be able to replace six or seven books each weighing more than that little thing!?  Well, it has now happened and I'm a little conflicted about the whole thing.

First of all I absolutely love gadgets and I acknowledge the usability of these devices.  But...it just seems like you loose something when you can't flip through a book.  It also seems a little bit opulent for a school to get for all of it's students.  But I think the case can be made that it's actually cheaper but get a student an ipad 2 that can hold all of those books that each one costs money and most of the time either get damaged or lost and cost money to replace.  I'm sure time will tell.

Thank you for your time!