Alabama Schools to be First in US to Get XO Laptop

CountryGeek passed us a link to a story in the Birmingham News, saying that schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop. The piece touches on a bit of the project's history, and seems to indicate the Birmingham school district is ready to make a serious commitment to these devices. "Langford has asked the City Council to approve $7 million for the laptops and a scholarship program that would give Birmingham students with a C average or above a scholarship to college or tech school of their choice. The City Council has not yet approved the funding. The rugged, waterproof computers will be distributed to students on April 15, Langford said, and children will be allowed to take them home. If a computer is lost, the school system can disable it, rendering it useless, Langford said. Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year."

Re:No they're not...

[scubamage]

Given the article I believe the statement was about the scholarship, not the purchase of the laptops.

Re:Alabama?

[Seakip18]

Puh lease. Alabama is hands and arms above, oh say, it's next door neighbor, Mississippi and Florida. There is a *reason* Fark has the Florida Tag.

Seriously though, you wanna see some of the worst parts of the country, go to the Delta areas of MS and some counties in AL. Poverty, STDs, teen pregnancy, HS graduation/college acceptance rates, life expectancies are among the worst in the nation. Do you think it's right to just ignore these areas for any sort of advancement?

The former Gov. of Mississippi, William Winter, put it best when endorsing the need for higher education in MS- "We can either compete with the other 49 states for jobs or we can do nothing and compete with China and Mexico."

Re:Alabama?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the Delta and this guy is right. The schools around here have a 15% percent literacy rate and poverty rates among children are well over 50%.

The real question is will XO laptops help turn that around?

Re:Waste of money

[KE1LR]

There are a ton of kids in Maine [maine.gov] who have spent the last few years proving this assumption -- that young kids don't learn anything useful on computers -- is wrong. Their program gave Powerbooks to all middle-school students and has produced remarkable results. It was recently renewed by the state legislature and is being expanded to additional grades with state $$, which is no small feat in a state under a lot of budget pressure. See link for published studies, etc. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Maine decided to go for OLPC's for the younger-then-middle-school set.

The primary problem in Maine's one-powerbook-per-child program has has come from backwards teachers like your Calc prof who won't adapt their teaching to the new technology.

Re:Alabama?

[lib3rtarian]

Well, you bet wrong. Newark is doing much better these days that it has historically, although it is still the car theft capital of the world. However, it is not rural, it is extremely diverse, and is a short train ride to NYC. It is also home to one of the finest institutions in the world (Rutgers).

Turner, not Down

[tepples]

It is also called Down's laptop, for you biological types out there.

You try to make a joke, but you fail it. Down syndrome is trisomy 21. "XO", or monosomy 23, is Turner syndrome [wikipedia.org]. Is Ted involved?

Re:Alabama?

[tfoss]

To be statistically blunt:

• 4th in tooth loss [statemaster.com]
• 7th in obesity. [statemaster.com]
• 3rd in gonorrhea rate. [statemaster.com]
• 6th in infant death rate. [statemaster.com]
• 45th in Gross State Product [statemaster.com]
• Last in Library visits per capita [statemaster.com]
• 3rd to last in % students above "basic" in grade 4 writing [statemaster.com]
• 1st in Diabetes. [statemaster.com]
• 5th in lynchings per capita. [statemaster.com]
• 46th in Bachelor's degree percentage [statemaster.com]
  
• 9th in Percent below poverty level [statemaster.com]
• 42nd in Income per capita [statemaster.com]
• 28th in Economic growth [statemaster.com]

Etc. etc. I have no doubt there are plenty of smart, healthy, wealthy, open-minded folks there; however the statistics tend to suggest that overall AL (like much of the deep south) has a pretty unhealthy, uneducated and poor population.

-Ted

Lynchings?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a worn out stereotype. statemaster.com defines the lynching statistic cited as Number of total people killed by lynching from 1882 to 1968. Per capita figures expressed per 1 million population.

Hardly relevant or timely but thanks for promoting the racist stereotype.

Re:Would you rather they take a cue from Californi

[bogjobber]

You need to look at the rates there genius, not the overall number. Of course California is going to be higher than all the others, they have more people! In rape, gonorrhea, suicides, AIDS cases, syphilis, HIV deaths, and new AIDS cases California ranks middle-of-the-pack to near the top when you look at the per capita rates. Other than motor vehicle theft (California has by far the most vehicles per capita so no surprise there) I couldn't find the other stats so I don't know. But if you're honestly arguing that the deep south doesn't have a problem with health and education, you're crazy. And for the record I don't live in California, and in general I really dislike California.

Birmingham's Mayor is a joke

[pelviselvis]

i highly recommend reading this article... an article on larry langford's past by our local alt weekly political writer [bhamweekly.com] langford bankrupted his last city he was mayor of... he wasn't even truly a resident of birmingham when he was running for mayor. he has two investigations looking into his previous actions right now... if i were olpc, i wouldn't have anything to do with this man. he has big visions and not much follow through, other than bankrupting whatever he touches. i hope this won't be an egg in their face when it fails. i would specifically read about his previous political computer endeavours with "computer help for kids." it's a company he was running with richard scrushy (his wiki entry [wikipedia.org]), the man in jail now for bribing our democratic governor and bankrupting healthsouth. there's some good info on it in that first article... it's why he's being investigated. and alabama isn't as bad as ya'll make it out to be... at least not the metropolitan areas. it is considered third world once you get down in the black belt in the western side of the state.

April 15th will be too late

[lynx_user_abroad]

The City Council has not yet approved the funding. The rugged, waterproof computers will be distributed to students on April 15, Langford said, and children will be allowed to take them home.

I'm planning to have XO's in the hands of every student at my school (Oak Hill Academy; central North Carolina) outfitted by the end of this year.

I might buy that Birmingham will be doing the first large scale public school deployment (Go Birmingham!!) in the U. S. but not the first U. S. students.