With Black Friday and Cyber Monday come and gone, new digital technology is not only topping many Christmas gift lists, it’s also front and center in the minds of educators aiming to take advantage of the new digital revolution to further students’ grasp of everything from history to home economics.

Throughout the region, schools are utilizing laptops, netbooks and e-readers to break down the boundaries of education, further students’ breadth and depth of knowledge and maybe even put a little more fun into the process of learning key essentials of a 21st-century education.

“We are absolutely pursuing digital delivery of content,” said Jeff Mao, learning technology director at the Maine Department of Education. “Converting to digital content is something that could not only save money but have learning benefits, as well.”

As tablet computers, such as the iPad, and e-readers are relatively new, schools and the state Department of Education are just now beginning to research how they can harness the technology for use in the classroom.

E-readers, portable and easy to read from, can provide instant access to thousands of textbooks and literary works, while tablet computers offer the power of a computer in a small package, plus added features like touch screens that can be used to enhance how information is presented and absorbed.

Local applications

The Cape Elizabeth School District is currently early in the process of trying to figure out how to use the burgeoning technology to help boost curriculum and augment education.

“We are just starting to dabble with the technology right now,” said Gary Lanoie, the district’s technology director. “The special education department has some iPads that they are testing out.”

The district, he said, has purchased two Apple iPad tablet computers per school for a total of six in the district. Educators think the iPads would help students with reading difficulties because the devices can read the story aloud and supplement the text with colors, graphics and in some cases videos, making for a more engaging experience for the reader.

Lanoie said until budget concerns improve, the district would probably not be allocating money to expand the technology, although money used for the purchase for books could be used to purchase e-readers.

There is interest elsewhere in the district to introduce the technology to the school system. Lanoie said the high school librarian and athletic director wrote a joint grant to get a number of iPads so athletes traveling on buses to away games could use the devices to study during the trip. The request, however, did not get granted.

Karen Abbott, Pond Cove Elementary School first-grade teacher and the 2010 Maine Technology Teacher of the Year, has ordered an iPad for her classroom, which she will incorporate into her instruction. The device will be paid for by some of the $1,000 Abbott received for winning the statewide teaching award.

“This is definitely a strong wave of the future,” Lanoie said. “Whether it will replace printed books, I don’t know, but with e-publications, you can link to resources on the web, so it doesn’t become just static text on the page.”

Andrew Wallace, technology director for the South Portland School Department, said e-readers bring the world of traditional books and electronic technology together into one.

“They are helpful for reluctant readers,” he said, “those kids who are interested in technology, but not books.”

South Portland, too, is slowly introducing the technology to students and staff in the schools. The district, Wallace said, recently bought Kindles for the elementary schools to test how they could be used in the classroom and has purchased an iPad for an elementary school student with vision problems, knowing the device is capable to zooming in on text and reading text back to the individual.

“It is an expensive substitution for books,” he said. “I am not sure it is viable yet, but it is certainly something we are experimenting with, but on a very limited basis.”

Wallace said because the Kindle and iPad are targeted to consumer markets, there is a lot of work and planning that needs to be done before the district introduce them across the school system.

Monique Culbertson, director of curriculum and development for Scarborough schools, said before the district invests in the technology, it would first try to predict where it is going and how it could be used.

“We are trying to look at the whole picture and predict what direction to take in the future,” Culbertson said. “The key piece is, is it going to engage readers better reading from a screen than from the printed format.”

In that regard, Culbertson said, she recently signed off on the purchase of Kobo reader. The device, which is Borders bookstore’s version of the Kindle, is being used to download books from the Maine Infonet Downloadable Library through the district’s membership to the Scarborough Public Library.

“If the [downloadable] library provides a nice, wide range of literary titles, that might be the avenue to look down,” Culbertson said.

Otherwise the school system will also look into the possibility of offering e-books in its libraries.

“We really need to look at that type of thing before we invest a significant amount of taxpayer dollars in it,” Culbertson said.

Statewide effort

Maine’s efforts in modernizing the classroom were recently heralded by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who singled out Maine’s technology initiatives at a recent national conference held in Washington, D.C., in early November.

While announcing the release of a national education technology plan entitled “Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology,” Duncan called for “applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement.”

In his remarks, Duncan highlighted Maine as an example of how technology is being used successfully to support continuous and lifelong learning.

Mao is vice chairman of the State Educational Technology Directors Association board of directors, which hosted the November conference. Mao envisions a future where technology plays an even bigger role in the school day.

“I think the idea of digital media replacing traditional textbooks is definitely part of the future,” Mao said. “There’s definitely movement in that direction.”

Mao said there are times when books are better, but with the outpouring of new e-readers that realistically mimic the pages of a book and more powerful handheld devices like netbooks, Mao acknowledged a “shift” toward more fully utilizing digital devices that students already have access to through former Gov. Angus King’s laptop initiative, begun in 2001. So far, laptop computers have been distributed to all seventh- and eighth-graders and half of Maine’s high school students.

Specifically, Mao sees digital textbooks as a logical next step, one that’s made more feasible by the introduction of new devices such as the iPad and Kindle.

“A few years ago, maybe it wouldn’t have worked so easily, but there is new technology that makes you go, ‘Wow, this can really work,'” Mao said.

An avid user of his own new iPad, on which he has already read several books, Mao sees that what once seemed far off is possible now and that a laptop or e-reader can help deliver engaging content in a way educators have only dreamed about.

Mao uses the example of the Battle of Gettysburg to illustrate the difference between traditional and digital textbooks. A paper textbook, he says, is limited in its presentation. There may be a few pictures, a few charts, a few perspectives on the battle.

But a digital device could offer that plus embedded links offering curious students an endless supply of Internet sites addressing facets of the battle. It would be the teacher’s or curriculum coordinator’s job to corral the infinite segues into a package presentable on the laptop.

“Here in Maine, we would want to have a special focus on Joshua Chamberlain’s role in the battle,” Mao said. “A textbook might give you a paragraph if you’re lucky, but online content would offer much more, perhaps a map of where Chamberlain was positioned with elevation, where the guns were, where the soldiers were arrayed, perhaps re-creations of the battle in audio, video, interactive live data, blogs. The content could be endless.”

Free content

And all that content could be free, Mao says, which in a cash-strapped budgeting environment could ease the transition for traditionalists.

Textbooks, Mao said, can cost $100 or more, and their content can quickly become outdated with new discoveries and advances, not to mention the abuse they can suffer from students. But online educational content, he said, is available sometimes for free. And even if the online content comes with a price, that cost would be primarily for access privileges to content that would grow and conform to mirror new advances, he said.

Mao has for the last year and a half been involved with a nationwide group that is scouring the Internet for digital media. He has discovered in that process that schools such as Rice University have a repository of open educational content available mostly for free.

“Yes, you can tap into free content and Maine is the most well-positioned of all the states because of MLTI (Maine’s Learning Technology Initiative) since our students already have the devices. It’s a just a matter of tapping into it,” Mao said.

In addition to the cost savings, Mao also touted the benefits of a single laptop or e-reader that could replace a cumbersome and downright heavy pile of books. One thin laptop or e-reader could replace pounds of paper in other words, which would not only be advantageous for the environment but for students’ backs, as well.

“The benefits of digital media can’t be overstated,” Mao said. “Right now, we’re buying textbooks, right, but what we are really buying is, yes, the intellectual property and the paper and the binding materials used to make that textbook.”

Digital textbooks is something the state is pursuing, not because it wants the latest gadgets like those on Christmas gift lists, but because it wants Maine students to succeed, Mao said.

Angela Faherty, Maine’s commissioner of education, agrees.

“The reason we have drawn so much attention is that our focus has never been about the technology and always about what the technology can do for student learning,” she said.

Reporter Michael Kelley contributed to this story.