Clearwater High replaces textbooks with Kindles

By JOSH GREEN,and NEIL JOHNSON  

CLEARWATER - The backpacks of more than 2,000 students at Clearwater High School are about to become much lighter.
In a pilot program for the Pinellas County school system, students started receiving Kindle e-book readers this morning that will replace a number of weighty textbooks and enable students to download other books used in class.
Junior Desmond King had his Kindle for all of 30 minutes but was already excited.
"It's an amazing piece of equipment," King said. "The coolest thing is you can download a book."
King predicted the devices will lead students to study more.
"You want to play with your Kindle," he said.
Jessica Barnes liked swapping the light Kindle for textbooks.
"I don't really have the strength to carry around five or six textbooks every day," she said.
The school ordered 2,200 Kindles, enough for the 2,160 students enrolled and spares for new students.
Each cost $177.60, a discount from the roughly $200 customers would pay, said John Just, assistant superintendent for management information systems for the Pinellas school system.
Also, a traditional English textbook costs $95 but the electric version can be downloaded on the Kindle for $80, he said.
Clearwater High Principal Keith Mastorides decided to buy the Kindles after staff members urged him to tap into more technology. The original idea was to buy a computer for each student but that proved too expensive.
Students will be responsible for lost or damaged Kindles, the same way they are for textbooks, he said.
"When we looked around, we found out the Kindle was the best option," Mastorides said.
The high-tech aspect of the Kindles is a huge lure for students.
"Kids love their technology. We wanted to tap into that," he said.
The tablet-size devices will have electronic versions of texts for math, English and supplemental science courses individually designed for each student's class load. Students can look at novels, take notes and highlight portions of texts they want to.
The device can also read the text aloud in a male or female voice.
Students can buy insurance for $20 to cover damage or loss of the Kindle. The insurance covers all except a $25 deductable of the $177 replacement cost the first time a student loses or damages one. A second time the deductable goes to $50.
The district, working with Amazon, can track each Kindle and shut it down if it's stolen or shows up at a pawn shop, or appears on e-Bay, Just said.
Part of the experiment is to see how many are lost or broken, he said. "We'll have to see how this plays out."
Textbooks aren't completely a thing of the past at the school, though; there are sets of textbooks available for back-up if needed.
Reporter Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731.