Quebec’s Eastern Townships School Board has announced a program that will provide every student in its schools with an Apple iBook. The Board said that over the next three years it will acquire over 5,000 of the laptops under a partnership agreement with Apple Canada, and that it will be the first board-wide laptop initiative implemented in the country. The first stage of the Board’s three-year program will begin when school starts in September 2003, with the first deployment of 1,630 wireless iBooks to students in grades 5 and 6, as well as to level 5 students in its secondary schools. By the third year of the program, all Eastern Townships students, from the 3rd grade of elementary school to the 5th level of high school, will be given their own iBook to use during the school year. Along with the hardware and software, Apple will offer “both technical and curriculum integration training to ensure a smooth deployment of the technology within Quebec’s new pedagogical standards.”