Digital Future and Digging for Funds

A recent stop by the New York Times Learning Network turned up this.

For the past two years, I've been involved in the textbook adoption process for our school. Last year, we went through the steps, but the funding wasn't there. No books. I'm okay with that.

It makes sense to me to put the money (when we dig it out from between the couch cushions) elsewhere. And by elsewhere I don't mean into copies of the textbook on CDs or DVDs issued to the students at the beginning of each semester. How many flip cameras, GPSs for geocaching, laptops, and other materials could we have purchased with the money we were planning to spend on grammar textbooks?

The resources I need to teach my kids, and teach them well, are out there, and many of them are free. As for the shinies that are a little more costly... I'm going digging tomorrow.