ARLINGTON, Va. -- On a warm spring morning, two first-grade boys enter the computer lab at Jamestown Elementary, a traditional-looking red-brick neighborhood school that's educated generations of students.
The first-graders take a black cart, big enough that they both could fit in it, and push it down the hall to their classroom. It contains an Apple iPad for every student in their class.
This school is anything but old school.
Jamestown, part of the 21,000-student Arlington Public Schools, is on the leading edge of what many educators describe as the classroom edition of the digital revolution.
"Kids are not only able to access material but use a number of tools to construct learning in a completely different way from what they've seen before," said Camilla Gagliolo, instructional technology coordinator for Arlington Public Schools.
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While this revolution is far from complete amid concerns about its cost and effectiveness, schools and textbook publishers say it's opened up a new chapter in education, changing the way students interact with teachers and with one another.
"Teachers are having to rethink their classroom," said Becky Keith, a technology integration specialist at Woodford County Public Schools in Kentucky. "The teachers who are embracing it are having great success."
Teachers in digital classrooms have become learning coaches, moving around the room and giving students more one-on-one instruction. Educators who have embraced this approach said it better prepares students for the interactive environments they'll encounter in their college and professional lives.
From kindergarten through 12th grade, students in more than 2,000 school districts across the country are learning with electronic devices that until recently they were discouraged from using in class.
"I do not really use the textbook at all," said Jessica Basanta, who teaches Spanish at Woodford County High School in Versailles, Ky. "Sometimes I'll pull a few things from textbooks."
Woodford County is among hundreds of school districts across the country to buy into tablets as the future of classroom instruction. It purchased iPads for all 1,250 of its high school students last fall at a cost of $785,000. It plans to buy a new set for each incoming class and offer students the option of buying them at a steep discount when they graduate.
"We feel like we have a model in place to sustain this for many years to come," said Scott Hawkins, the district's superintendent.
But not every district can afford the money that Woodford spent on the iPads, cases and management software for one high school. Hawkins said it cost another $170,000 to build a wireless network, another important requirement beyond the outlay for the tablets themselves.
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And not every parent can afford to chip in. The parents of Archbishop McCarthy's approximately 1,500 students pay a $25 monthly technology fee on top of regular tuition, which runs about $10,000 a year.
Arlington Public Schools in Virginia allocates $360,000 a year over a four-year cycle to replace computers at its 37 schools. Frank Bellavia, a district spokesman, said principals at schools that are due for upgrades can decide whether they want tablets or laptops, or a mixture of both.
Schools also can receive state and federal funding for classroom technology, but the funds aren't unlimited.
"I would check my wallet if anyone said this is the solution and you have to do it tomorrow or your schools will fail," said Mark Warschauer, an education professor at the University of California, Irvine.
Warschauer said there is no evidence yet that such devices improve learning.
"I'm a big enthusiast of technology in education, but I'm very wary of notions of silver bullet or magic bullet or game changer," Warschauer said. "An iPad is a different way to deliver content. It has some advantages, and it has some disadvantages."
