Comment by scythe

Although I do agree that the idea of making a dumb ereader that is specifically tailored to the educational environment sounds like a cool hacking project, there's a much simpler approach that basically solves 90% of the problems: just take the WiFi card out!

The problem here is not with electronic textbooks per se, but the pervasive adoption of networked applications for school assignments — which in turn is used to decrease grading time so that schools can shove more students onto a single teacher.