Integration: Slowly but ... Surely?

High Schools have always been the slowest educational sector to adapt to cultural and technological changes. This, in my opinion, is because they are much less student driven then are universities, and are entirely under the control of parents and teachers. It is almost always up to the teachers, or the parents with the highest donation rates, to initiate change. These people are almost always older and are often less "in-tune" with the latest changes. In universities, students have a stronger voice, and therefor are greater components of technological and cultural change. The Hardin County High Schools, however, seems to be doing a fairly good job of embracing the emerging educational technology. They are integrating tablet PC and electronic whiteboards in order to 
"digitize" the student participation process. My observation would be that the school is making an admiral attempt at engaging students at a higher level, however, will eventually fail for a couple reasons.  First, if you are going to go digital, it needs 
to be all the way. There has to be digital textbooks, assignments, tests, quizzes, etc. When a student spends all of his class days in a technology rich environment, he is going to very pessimistic about having to go home and read sixty pages from a textbook. The same goes with a quizzes and tests. Students will begin to claim that they cannot concentrate when they are using a pen and paper. They have to take tests online, etc. This is just an observation, but it seems to me that technology could become a reliance and an excuse as opposed to a helpful aid.