Oakley, Idaho (KMVT-TV) - Starting this year, sixth grade students over at Oakley Elementary are taking one step closer to the world of paperless classrooms.

This last May, Oakley sixth grade teachers Emily Barnes and Vicki Babbitt were the recipients of a $10,000 Centrylink Technology Grant.

With that grant the two teachers were able to purchase 22 brand new Apple iPads to be used in their classrooms.

The new iPads will be utilized by the students to help research projects, create presentations, and also create podcast where they can discuss everyday learning to an on–line audience.

And not to mention the unlimited number of learning based apps that the students are able to use on a day-to-day basis.

“With the iPads there’s several learning apps and a lot of them are free so we do math facts for math. There’s reading, where they can read to it and have it read back to them so they can hear their voice and hear how they are reading. The kids are just… they know exactly what to do with it, they come to school wanting to use that to learn.” Said sixth grade teacher Emily Barnes

Over the past year alone Centrylink has provided $110,000 directly to teachers in Idaho threw their technology grants, bringing that total to over $600,000 in past eight years.