A Moon Area High School literature class will be the first in the district to trade in their textbooks for e-readers.

Jeffrey Zollars, director of curriculum, said the district recently purchased 25 Barnes & Noble's Nook Color e-reader devices for a fall semester survey of British literature course.

The senior-level class will be a pilot program for e-readers in the district.

The devices were purchased at a retail cost of $249 per device; the district purchased devices with color capability so that they can be repurposed for other courses. Maria McGrosky will teach the course.

The survey of British literature class was selected because many of the works students will be studying are open-source documents -- readily available for free online.

"We're looking at an effective way to be able to deliver instruction using technology that's available today," Zollars said.

"We needed to provide a resource for the semester course, and what's interesting was with anthologies is they are heavy books and there's only so many stories you can fit. The e-readers allow for much more flexibility," he said.

Zollars said he will be able to download novels and short stories onto the devices at a cost sometimes as low as 99 cents per book and  centrally distribute the documents to students.

The district will disable some downloading capabilities on the devices to prevent students from downloading other materials. Students will be able to take the devices home as a part of the course.

Zollars said the course will be an experiment to see if students can stay engaged with books via an e-reader rather than a hard-copy textbook.

"There has been some research done that shows that engagement on the devices is great for shorter pieces but falls off for longer works, like novels," he said.

"So that's a challenge for this year -- to see the degree of student engagement and whether its negligible with a textbook."