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There will be no paper at Monday’s Onalaska Board of Education meeting, at least in theory. Board members and administrators will be equipped with computers as the board joins other bodies conducting their meetings electronically.

The public will be included. All materials for the meeting will be posted at www.onalaska.k12.wi.us/sboard by 4 p.m. Friday, and the Web site is accessible to anyone with Internet access.

Board members were introduced Monday to the Mac iBook computers they will use at meetings. The bright green and white laptops have been used, abused and used some more by scores of Pertzsch and Northern Hills elementary students, according to district technology director Kevin Capwell. He and his staff made the computers usable by scavenging parts from others.

Capwell led board members through an informal computer class showing them how to download files from the Web site and open them for use. “You have to quit the browser before opening them,” he warned. “The machines are not suited to running both a browser and Adobe Acrobat at the same time, so quit before opening Acrobat.”

Capwell also acquainted board members with the software features, including the “zoom” tool they may use to enlarge text on documents. “I know my eyes are no longer 20-20 so I set the zoom, one of my favorite tools, to 150 percent,” he said.

Files used for board meetings will be available online for two weeks, said board clerk Kathy Engh. There also will be some paper copies of documents available at meetings for members of the public.

Board meetings might also be made much more available. At Monday’s meeting, board members will discuss spending money to stream video and audio from board meetings on the Internet. That way, anyone with a computer and a broadband connection could follow meetings from anywhere in the world and at any convenient time. Board meetings are now available on Charter Cable channel 4 live, with numerous repeats.

Video streaming equipment could make other school events such as graduation, musical presentations and other programs available, Capwell said. “This would bring it to digital public,” he said. But he warned that distribution equipment would limit the number of people able to watch at any given time.