Hawaii’s public schools are making the big leap into full adoption of the national Common Core standards in reading and math, which are more rigorous benchmarks of what students are learning at each stage than what are in place now. The question is: What tools will deliver the learning?

Conventional textbooks? Or digital equivalent in materials, via a laptop or tablet computer?

There’s no shortage of Department of Education staff who are excited about the promise of digital devices issued to each student, what’s called a "one to one" program.

"We want students to be able to use a variety of technologies flexibly," said Petra Schatz, an educational specialist in English language arts.

"For example, we might want them to take a position on nuclear energy in Grade 11 and write an argumentative piece for their congressman," she said. "Can they go to Google and quickly do the pros and cons on nuclear energy and take a position? That’s the kind of thing they might encounter on a high-stakes assessment: Make an argument and find resources, and do it quickly."

The trouble is one of equal access to the digital world. Poorer students often don’t have Internet service or any kind of computer at home and are at a disadvantage when they enter college or the workforce.

Exactly how to bridge this gap is unresolved. The state Board of Education has committed to an investment in the Common Core, said Don Horner, the board chairman. These have been adopted by most states, which means students here will benefit from the development of relevant instructional resources across the country.

"In that process we are asking the department to examine the option of technology," he said. "The opportunity of investing in curriculum is also an opportunity to invest in technology."

And the DOE is gearing up for such an investigation, as well as a debate over the public school budget. A request for $42 million to fund the Common Core initiative over the next two years has gone up to Gov. Neil Abercrombie in preparation for the biennium budget. The proposal specifies the goal of providing every public school student with a laptop or tablet, such as an iPad, by 2015, and the money also would cover teacher training and buying the digital texts and other materials.

Exactly what will be bought is still up for discussion, but the funding request is being sent along as a placeholder.

Amy Kunz, DOE assistant superintendent and chief financial officer, said that although nothing is set in stone, the cost estimates were based on the idea of equipping all high school students with laptops and all younger students with tablets.

The first allotment of $14.25 million is for fiscal year 2014, with $22.25 million coming the following year, Kunz said, with the plan that savings accrued with the DOE’s photovoltaic solar panels on schools will cover the remaining $6.25 million.

"I’m excited to make this a possibility," said the mother of two children attending Aikahi Elementary School. "It makes education equal for all of our students."

The digital approach makes financial sense, too, she said, because Common Core materials are still in the development phase and it’s easier, and cheaper, to update an e-book.

"Because we’re moving to the Common Core, the textbooks that we have in our schools are dated, and they don’t have any Common Core material in them," she added. "The last thing we want to do is buy a book that’s first edition."

The money is not for the outright purchase of the hardware but for a comprehensive leasing arrangement, including training and servicing agreements. To leverage its bargaining power, Hawaii is partnering with education departments in Maine and Vermont to contract for the best package price.

Jeff Mao, the learning technology policy director in Maine, said the request for proposals for vendors of digital devices and services went out last week, with bids due back Jan. 11 for the master price agreement. This would be more like a menu, Mao said, allowing the states to put together the combination that best serves their purposes.

Maine is an early adopter of the "one to one" program, which has been in place there in one form or another for more than a decade. And Mao is a true believer in the power of the technology to boost the learning potential in the classroom.

"This wasn’t about replacing teachers," he said. "It wasn’t about a silver bullet, but it was to give students new opportunities and empower teachers with new tools. … It’s not about technology; it’s about learning."

Classroom computing isn’t universally embraced and one-to-one programs can be controversial.

For example: The educational approach at Waldorf Schools in Hawaii and elsewhere rejects the notion of computers in teaching children younger than high school age, believing personal interactions with teachers and other students are more important at that stage.

This even became a referendum issue in the recent election cycle. In Idaho, voters rejected a proposal to require that students have mobile computing devices and online courses for high school graduation. And in New York, the Liverpool Central School District near Syracuse decided to phase out laptops after some bad experiences with students misusing them and with equipment breakdowns.

Mao acknowledges that such programs can be misunderstood, or misapplied, which makes it difficult to evaluate in studies. There are so many factors that affect educational success or failure, he said.

"It’s very much dependent on what you do with the technology," Mao said. "The mere existence of the program does not mean good things will happen. It might not be used well, in which case you don’t get much out of it. It may be used inappropriately, which means you’ll be in hot water.

"This takes working with your public, to help inform them about the realities of all this."

Personal laptops have been assigned to students in Hawaii schools for years. At ‘Iolani School, however, officials recently decided that iPads were their digital device of choice, said Tim Cottrell, headmaster. There’s a lower price point, making it almost a wash with the expensive hard-copy textbooks, he said, and there are far fewer technical problems with them.

Further, Cottrell said, the recent trend is for many educational applications to be tailored to the tablet platform, and the range of subjects available is much wider. Many businesses are already transitioning to "cloud computing," in which documents are stored on an external computer on the Net, he said, so the hard drive of a laptop — one of its advantages — is becoming obsolete.

"We are giving our kids an experience that’s quite contemporary with the marketplace," he said. "Now you see a lot of people pull out a tablet. And the availability of supplemental content is going through the roof. The iPad is a really easy portal to all of that information available on the Internet."

The tablet devices came along only in the past few years, Mao said, and Maine is looking increasingly in that direction as well.

Hawaii public schools haven’t been sitting completely on the sidelines through the digital revolution. Waianae and Nanakuli high schools got laptops through the New Tech High program, a facet of the DOE’s Race to the Top education reform grant program.

And some schools made the leap entirely on their own. This is the fourth year that Benjamin Parker Elementary School in Kaneohe has issued laptops or netbooks (a smaller, Internet-enabled device) to each student in grades 2 through 6, said Kathy Kahikina, the principal. The school acquired them and replaces them when they break down.

"I think it’s been positive for the kids because they can navigate the computer better," Kahikina said. The school found the money for the 200-plus computers, plus the in-house tech support.

Overall, it seems there is much more momentum for accelerating classroom computing in some form than for going "old school." Mao, for one, is never turning back.

"We’re 11 years in and, even if some of the nightmare scenarios happen, it’s not the end of the world, and everything’s a teachable moment," he said. "I’ve talked with a lot of teachers who say, ‘If you stop this program, I’m leaving teaching because I can’t imagine doing it another way.’"

MIXED MARKS IN OTHER STATES

Technology in education is a work in progress if ever there was one. If Hawaii finally implements some form of “one-to-one” program, with each student being issued a digital device, it would be only the most recent school district to become a such a laboratory.

Wikibooks, an open-content textbook site designed in the manner of the better-known Wikipedia, has a growing text that has compiled the experiences of a dozen one-to-one programs worldwide, so far (en.wikibooks.org/wiki/One-to-One_Laptop_Schools).

Here are some the pros and cons identified by a few of the players:

>> Maine: The Maine Learning Technology Initiative has made great progress in putting laptops in the hands of every student and teacher in the state. A private gift has enabled students in each school district to access the program through a wireless connection program, enhancing equity goals.

However, results measured through standardized test scores have been mixed.

>> New York City: A pilot project at a Harlem middle school noted increased sharing of ideas among students and better engagement of parents with the academic progress of their children. Largely technical problems were reported; the project used XO laptops, developed by a nonprofit dedicated to availability of lower-cost hardware for students.

>> South Carolina: A variety of pilots have been tried in this state, which also reported greater student interaction, as well as gains in academic achievement. However, the schools haven’t integrated them evenly in all subjects: They were used in science, social studies, math and music, but mostly for research.