Paperless Schools and Linux Notebooks for Every Kid

I was very interested in this piece from Computerworld U.K., titled "Can we give every school child in the U.K. a Linux notebook and still save money?" It provides a cost breakdown of what it would take to give every student a Linux notebook, compared to the costs schools in the U.K. currently face for software licenses, other technology fees, and printing and photocopying. According to the author of this story, the fees for printing and photocopying alone at schools are staggering--to the point where if electronic materials replaced much of the printed materials, there would be enough money to give each student a low-cost Linux notebook. Would this work in the U.S.?

According to the Computerworld U.K. piece, at a typical secondary school in England the number of paper sheets passing through faxes, photocopiers and printers comes to 4,450,000 per year. In the school that the author focused on, this came out to 8,000 copies per child, per year.

If this seems ridiculously overstated, I happen to have two kids in school, one entering high school and one in 5th grade. They are in school at least 200 days a year. On an average day, they bring home about 20 sheets of printed materials in their overstuffed backpacks. This already comes out to 4,000 sheets for each kid, per year, and that's just what they bring home. There are more printed materials in their classrooms each day, and many more generated from the central operations of their schools.

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