As California students return to school this month, 400 eighth graders from four districts — Long Beach, Riverside, Fresno, and San Francisco — will tote something different in their backpacks: an iPad. It’s part of a pilot program to see whether traditional algebra textbooks can be replaced by Apple’s popular device, according to The Hill’s Hillicon Valley blog.

The project was put together by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the educational publisher, and the state’s Department of Education. The students will receive an iPad that’s loaded with digital versions of their textbooks for the coming school year.

What else is inside? The students will have ready access to some 400 videos of experts who will walk them through the course material, and they can also consult a homework coach. The i-Pad can be used by students to take text or audio notes in class and to do assignments in real time that their teacher can track to see how well they’re doing. Students’ progress will be monitored closely and compared to the results of students using traditional books. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt expects to have some early results sometime in January. Somewhere, Steve Jobs is smiling.

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