Faced with a school district low in technological resources and a new and expanding online state assessment system, Osawatomie School District´s Gary French had to make a decision: add more high school computer labs to the existing overbooked three or go in a new direction.

After weighing the options, this small-town Kansas district superintendent decided to take the plunge and purchase more than 400 Gateway M275 Tablet PCs for high school faculty and students. (Tablets were chosen for their functionality -- the "inking" feature allows them to be used as digital notebooks as well as laptop computers.) The machines were distributed at the beginning of the 2005 school year, and the computer labs were closed down.