The iPad as Textbook: A Long Island School's 2010 Experiment

When students at Roslyn High School on Long Island returned to class in January 2011, some were carrying brand-new Apple iPads in their backpacks — given not by their parents, but by the school.

The district had handed out 47 iPads on December 20 to students and teachers in two humanities classes, as a pilot with an ambitious goal: eventually equipping all 1,100 students. At $750 apiece, the pilot alone cost the district over $35,000.

The iPads were meant to replace textbooks, let students correspond with teachers and turn in papers and homework digitally, and preserve a record of student work in digital portfolios. It was one of the earliest large-scale experiments in putting a tablet in every student's hands — the iPad itself had launched only eight months earlier.

Roslyn was hardly alone in the experiment, but it was ahead of the curve. The years that followed would see 1:1 device programs sweep American schools, with all the debates that came with them: did the devices improve learning, or just digitize distraction? Were districts buying hardware when they needed teacher training? The research answers, a decade later, remain mixed.

But in January 2011, the question was simpler and more exciting: could a single glass slab replace the backpack full of books? Roslyn's 47 students were among the first to find out.