For incoming freshmen at western Connecticut's suburban Brookfield High School, lifting a backpack weighed down with textbooks is about to give way to tapping out notes and touching electronic pages on an iPad,  A few hours away, every student at Burlington High School near Boston.will also start the year with new school-issued iPads, each loaded with electronic textbooks and other online resources in place of traditional texts.Apple officials say they know of more than 600 districts that have launched what are called "one-to-one" programs. At Burlington High in suburban Boston, Principal Patrick Larkin says the  $500 iPads is better than textbooks in the long term, though he said the school will still use traditional texts in some courses if suitable electronic programs aren't yet available." Lark/n said of textbooks, "but But some experts warn that the districts need to ensure they can support the wireless infrastructure  , repairs and other costs that accompany a switch to such a tech-heavy approach. Mark Warschauer, an education and informatics professor said, "I think people will like it. I really don't know anybody in high school that wouldn't want to get an iPad," he said. "We're always using technology at home, then when you're at school it's textbooks.so it's a good way to put all of that together." Districts are varied in their policies on how they police students' use. And the nation's textbook publishing industry,  accounting for $ 5.5 billion in yearly sales to secondary schools, is taking notice of the trend with its own shift in a competitive race toward developing curriculum   specifically for iPads. Jay Diskey, executive director of the Association of American Publishers' schools division, said all of the major textbook publishers are moving toward electronic offerings, but at least in the short term, traditional bound textbooks are here to stay."I think one of the real key questions that will be answered over the next several years is what sort of things work best in print for students and what smt of things work best digitally, " What's the problem for iPads to be used in schools at present?
Some students wouldn't like to have iPads in schools. The iPads are too expensive for school students to buy. Most experts oppose the idea that iPads replace paper textbooks. The iPads may be unavailable for some traditional courses.