Jenny Williams flips through her Grade 11 American history book and laughs when she sees Bill Clinton identified as the country's most recent president.
"It ends around 1996 ... there's nothing here about Afghanistan or Obama," says the 16-year-old student at Etobicoke's Martingrove Collegiate.
Her History of a Free Nation textbook was printed in 1998 and is in serious need of revision.
Outdated textbooks are common at Toronto's public high schools and students are lucky to get their hands on them. Often, textbooks are unavailable because they've been signed out of a library by other students.
"Some students have to share textbooks and sometimes the information inside is outdated," says Williams, a student trustee at the Toronto District School Board. "Students learn a lot differently today than 10 or 20 years ago."
But there's good news for students who are tired of carrying heavy textbooks.
The TDSB is looking at moving to digital textbooks by 2015 in order to cut costs and to provide better information.
Trustee Michael Coteau has been championing the transition to digital textbooks for months and trustees recently unanimously voted in favour of a plan, which could save the board up to $100 million over a decade.
"We have textbooks that exist within our system and other systems ... science books, for example, (that) are outdated. We still have science books that call Pluto a planet," says Coteau. "So, with digital technology and digitization of materials, we could really put together a course curriculum that is flexible and has the ability to be changed instantly."
The school board spends $8 million per year on textbooks. Over a 10-year period, if half the books are digitized, it could save up to $50 million.
The TDSB is looking to education director Chris Spence to create a plan this month on how to increase access to digital course material in middle and secondary schools. The idea is to use classic texts where the copyright has expired.
"The motion itself really talks about staff putting together an approach, a strategy that takes into account there are lots of different types of technology out there," Coteau says. "We need to figure out a method of collecting information and material that's used in the classroom, digitizing it and having it flexible enough so different technologies can use that information."
However, Donna Quan, the TDSB's academic deputy director, cautioned that while schools will be equipped with wireless Internet by 2015, students will likely have to wait several more years before digital textbooks become reality.
"You have to remember that even though textbooks appear to be outdated, they still fall in line with the Ontario curriculum," Quan says. "They'd only be outdated if the Ontario education curriculum changes and that has not been the case."
California is already pursuing the introduction of high-tech textbooks.
In an effort to keep the cash-strapped state from diving deeper into the red, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced measures to stop buying textbooks and to provide students free digital copies.
The plan calls for California to develop digital open-source textbooks for high school math and science classes where students can sign them out for free at public schools across the state.
Nelson Education, one of the biggest educational textbook publishers in Toronto, already provides digital downloads for many of its titles.
"Only about 10% of the cost is actually paper, print and bind of the book," said Chris Besse, a senior vice-president with Nelson. "About 90% of the cost is developing the content, so there's not a lot of saving there. You have new costs putting it into digital form."
Schools in California and Minnesota have already introduced iPads for classroom e-learning.
In Toronto, Coteau says it's less about the digital textbook and more about the digitization of material and making it accessible.
"It's not about the replacement of the traditional book," he says. "If there's a PDF that's on a website, that can be e-mailed to someone, or it can be burned onto a CD-Rom and brought home. It can be put onto a USB stick, it can be uploaded to a Wiki and read on the Internet through an iPad or cellphone - anything you want."
Toronto private school Blyth Academy - with campuses in Yorkville, Thornhill and Lawrence Park - introduced Sony Digital Readers in 2009, which contain the textbooks, reference materials, course outlines and schedules students need for the school year.
The move will save Blyth students around $700 annually.
According to a report from the Ontario Public School Boards' Association, students currently "power down" at school because technology in the learning environment is as slow as being on dial-up while their lives outside of class revolve around high-speed technology, such as iPhones, iPads and laptops.
"Today's students are leaders in the use of technology and we know they want their learning experiences in school to reflect this," Colleen Schenk, president of OPSBA, said when the report was published in April.
"Students want to take the technology they use in their daily lives and integrate it with how they learn. They want their learning clearly connected to the world beyond the school."
As long as teachers keep up with the technology, digital textbooks are a great educational tool, says Salvatore Bancheri, a University of Toronto expert in technology in education.
"The actual process of reading will be changed," he says. "In textbooks, you read in a linear sense but online, it's more difficult. People tend to skim read online," he says.
Ken Coran, the president of the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers' Federation, says he's concerned about giving students equal access to whatever hardware is needed to read the textbooks, but aside from that, digitization is the way to go.
"It'd be a way to update textbooks, especially in the science field where there are always advancements," he says. "Not just outdated, depending on which school board, the textbooks may or may not be available. The Canadian market is a smaller market than the U.S."
The number of new textbooks each school receives varies on how much the province grants a school boards.
"It's up to the school board which courses or which textbooks would actually receive the most updated editions of the textbooks for the curriculum," Coran says. "Some have a normal (course) rotation, some base it on enrolment."
Premier Dalton McGuinty said in May that while phasing out text books may eventually happen in Ontario, they'll be around for years.
"I'm not comfortable (that) all kids have access to that in their homes right now," he told the Canadian Press. "Until we can be assured of that, I'd be very reluctant to move ahead."
Coteau says the province has a significant role to play in keeping up with technology and offering students digitized information.
"They have a responsibility and an obligation to work from a provincial level to bring this to the forefront, make this a reality" he says. "I think we could take at least $20 million and invest it in owning some of that material and making it accessible because if we create a standard math book in Toronto, we could share that throughout the province or even the world."