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The classroom has traditionally been a place of by-the-books learning: you sharpen your pencil, you write math formulas on a paper, you turn that paper in for a grade. In fact, the smell and feel of paper has been central to the learning experience for as long as schools have been established. Times are changing, however, and education is now feeling the pressure of widespread technological proliferation heralded by companies like Apple and Microsoft.

Apple recently announced its revolutionary iBooks 2 — which effectively opens iPads up to a realm of authorship and school distribution that has hitherto been unheard of. Soon students all over the globe will be taking classroom notes on tablets and reading school textbooks from the convenience of a thin piece of technology that weighs nothing compared to those heavy math and science tomes. But what about the paper textbooks? What happens to those? And better yet, where does the money come from to pay for all those expensive iPads — the schools? The teachers’ salaries?

This graphic breaks down the cost of classroom evolution. Is technology really the way to go?