Ask Amicah Bitten about her home life, and what she likes to do outside of school, and the 9-year-old is cagey, doling out only small details: she reads the J.C. Penney catalog, she likes to swim sometimes, and she knows someone who does drugs, and she hates that.

But ask the Birmingham, Ala., girl about her computer, and Bitten opens up, smiling brightly and chatting easily as she taps the machine's tiny green keys and shows off what she can do and what's possible with this machine, a small and ultra-light laptop known as the XO.

Bitten was given the green-and-white computer, about the size of a hardcover book, as part of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative's first foray into the United States. Initially launched three years ago to bring technology to children in developing countries, the nonprofit partnered with Birmingham--at the behest of Mayor Larry Langford and the Birmingham City Council--for the first large-scale educational deployment of low-cost XO laptops in this country.

The pilot program, running from April 15 to Sept. 1, began with 1,000 of the group's $200 laptops for students in Glen Iris Elementary School's first through fifth grades. After some bureaucratic squabbles, the school board went on to approve the city's purchase of 14,000 more--funded by taxpayer dollars--with plans to eventually include all 15,000 students in the school system's first through eighth grades.

But concerns remain. Some critics wonder whether a computer initially designed for children in poor, rural parts of the world--and primarily using its own non-Windows operating system--is the right learning tool for students who eventually will seek to join the general computing population in the U.S. Others worry that teachers will have trouble getting up to speed. Still others are concerned that it could be difficult to track progress and achievement on machines that promote a constructivist approach to learning, which could pose a problem in today's educational climate of high-stakes testing and accountability.

So, as students like Bitten embark on a new school year spent with a new learning tool in their bookbags, education leaders are keeping a close eye on Birmingham to see if this program will work--and whether it will be worth duplicating in school districts across the U.S.

"There's enormous potential here," said Tracy Gray, managing director at the American Institutes for Research and head of its Center for Implementing Technology in Education. "There's also enormous pressure."

To hear Nicholas Negroponte talk about it, the idea of giving a laptop to every child is not extravagant--it's a matter of necessity.

In a speech at the 2006 annual Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) gathering of bright minds in California, the founder of OLPC and former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab called children our "most precious natural resource," best tapped if they're given a solid education and understand how to "learn learning."