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."

Comments

Re:Alabama?

[tfoss]

To be statistically blunt:

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

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