City council approves $3.5 million to buy low-cost machines from the OLPC Foundation; deal still needs school board approval
Primary Topic Channel: One to one computing
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Birmingham’s city council has approved a $3.5 million plan to provide schoolchildren with 15,000 low-cost laptops produced by foundation, which aims to spread laptops to poor children in developing countries.
OLPC says the deal marks the first time a U.S. city has agreed to buy the machines, which also are headed to such countries as Peru, Mongolia, Rwanda, Thailand, Brazil, and Mexico.
Birmingham’s school board still must agree to the deal, and some members have reservations. They want more evidence that computers designed for the African bush or the mountains of South America would be a good fit for an American city.
Reviews of the foundation’s green-and-white “XO” laptops have been mixed, with praise for their simplicity, ruggedness, and low price but complaints that U.S. children might be turned off by the machines’ particular configuration. The user interface is built on the Linux operating system rather than the more familiar Windows.
In hopes of getting past such objections, the Birmingham city council on March 4 agreed to spend $3 million buying machines from Cambridge, Mass.-based OLPC and to give the city’s schools $500,000 to sort out technical issues. A laptop will be available for every child in grades one through eight under the plan.
Mayor Larry Langford, who pushed for bringing XOs to Birmingham and hopes to see them distributed by the fall, said the machines will give many inner-city children their first access to a computer.
About 80 percent of the school system’s 28,000 students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and the schools are dealing with declining enrollment and funding shortages. The board recently voted to close 16 of the city’s 65 schools.
Birmingham school board member Virginia S. Volker likes the idea of laptops for students. But she said Langford didn’t think through the plan before committing millions of tax dollars to pay for the machines.
Birmingham schools lack wireless networks needed to get the laptops online, she said, and the district doesn’t have enough technology workers to train teachers, much less students, to use the computers.
“Thinking of public money, I am very reluctant to make a commitment on this until we are sure we can afford it,” Volker said.
At a recent Birmingham schools technology committee meeting, both Joanne Stephens, director of instructional technology, and Darryl Burroughs, director of information technology, said the computers wouldn’t work with the district’s infrastructure without major modifications, the Birmingham News reported.
Stephens said she has a firm plan in place only for Glen Iris Elementary School, which would be used as a pilot for the laptop program. The school system is expected to receive 1,000 laptop computers April 15.
But the school board first must vote whether to accept the computers. School officials will meet March 11 to discuss the program further, and the board is set to vote March 25.
eSchool News first reported Birmingham’s interest in XO laptops Dec. 3, after a Langford associate had leaked word to the Birmingham News that a deal between the city and OLPC appeared to be imminent. But OLPC, which was in the midst of a “Buy One, Get One” campaign to sell the computers in the United States, would not comment at the time.
Links:
City of Birmingham
One Laptop Per Child Foundation
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Talking out their asses
From everything I've ever heard on the XO 'laptops', both the issues of 'no wireless' and 'no people trained in the laptops' are down right silly. Do they seriously think the rural schools in Africa or South America have wireless access points and internet access lying around? And the XO was designed so kids can just pick it up and in a few minutes figure out how they work without needing an adult to 'help'. I can assure you the XO's in developing nations don't come with hours of training in how adults can use an XO, why are we so 'in need' of trained staff for the XO here? Also I'll mention that more and more schools are using Linux powered machines for a variety of reasons, so running Linux is a non-issue. In fact the XO specifically modified their version of Linux they use to make things as easy as possible. As the director of technology for my school district I seriously looked at the XO's, but I couldn't find a way to contact them to try to work out a deal. Though currently do to greater availability we will likely go with Asus's EeePC micro-notebooks rather than the XO.
Posted By: pploss, 2008-03-11 7:11 AM
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Good for Kids, great for Board
The introduction of the XOs will not only be good for the kids, but it will turn the Board's school system upside down. That is just what this dysfunctional group needs. A really new perspective on education and a very hard time ignoring the changed environment (The 1950s - where they apparently had their opinions formed - have finally passed). @ pploss: http://laptopfoundation.org/en/participate/givemany.shtml If that doesn't help contact adam dot holt at laptop dot org. And reconsider the EeePC. Just imagine having a bunch of 6 year olds with pop tarts and cups of cocoa in front of XOs and EeePCs for some time. Which hardware do you suppose will have a higher average survival rate? I love the XO. I gave 2 and got 2. Now I am practicing XS server setups. Interview Walter Bender from OLPC. This might well broaden your view.
Posted By: ttown, 2008-03-18 4:38 PM