FAIRMONT, W.Va.– The Marion County Board of Education is currently working to make electronic textbooks available to all students. Under the proposed one-to-one initiative there would be one electronic device capable of holding textbooks and other resources for each student to use at school and at home.
Marion County Schools Chief Instructional Leader Randy Farley said as planning continues the county has been using a combination program. Hard copies and electronic copies are available to students.
“The companies, of course, provide a lot of other digital resources that accompany any textbook series. We’ve been purchasing the combination packages. Hopefully, we are covering all bases,” Farley said.
The goal of the one-to one program is to make the additional resources available to all students, and schools are being prepared to withstand the amount of devices being used.
Farley admitted that he has a split opinion when it comes to using solely electronic texts.
“People still need to have people skills, and I don’t know how you develop some of those things without having those face-to-face interactions as well.” he said.
Farley told WAJR that the combination program does not have a major impact on the board’s resources.
“It is just a little more expensive, but it’s not really astronomical to have both. So, we have stayed within our normal textbook budget,” Farley said.
Farley said the board is hopeful to move along with planning when they intend to, but said the timing of the program’s start depends on funding.
“We can’t do any of it without the funds. So, we see what kind of funds are available to us. Then we make decisions on how far we can go with each piece of this to get to the end result of being total one-to-one.” Farley says.
As for whether the hard copy textbooks will still be around? That is a decision yet to be made, and may involve getting the opinions of parents and teachers. Farley does think there is a difference in the student’s focus with the electronic resources.
“I believe that children these days are certainly a little more engaged when they can use the electronics,” Farley said.