New Orleans initiates iBook program. (Notebook: usable education information from schools, business, research and professional organizations).

Administrators in New Orleans are banking on Apple iBooks to improve student performance in the district's most troubled schools. All 2,000 eighth grade students in the 11 learning academy middle schools in the New Orleans district will have daily access to iBooks in hopes that laptop use will have a positive impact on math and language test scores.

The district is leasing the 2,000 iBooks at a cost of $1.3 million per year. The deal includes a wireless network, instructional software, administrative software and professional training. The wireless network is especially important to the inner-city district. "Some of these schools are very old and rewiring is difficult," says Lonnie Luce, chief information officer. The wireless network allows students to use the computers in virtually any classroom or school location; the district does not plan to buy additional computer furniture as part of the program.

"These learning academies are our lowest performing schools," says Ollie Tyler, deputy superintendent and chief academic officer for New Orleans Public Schools. She believes the iBook program will motivate students and also help them pass the upcoming state-accountability tests administered through the Louisiana Educational Accountability Program.

"A laptop program like this does something radical for inner city schools," adds Luce. "Students are more apt to edit an assignment if they typing it in on a computer."

Only time will tell if he is correct. The program is starting well into the 2001-02 school year. Future eighth graders in the learning academy schools will have access from the start of each school year. The district's initial contract with Apple is slated to run for three years.

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