Alabama to buy Linux machines

[sofasurfer]

I didn't know where else to post this but I thought it was something we should all be happy about. Birmingham, Alabama may buy 15,000 Linux laptops for schools.

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2007/12/birmingham_city_schools_will_b.html

[Jive Turkey]

Its about time the schools in Alabama got some computers.:lolflag:

[ukripper]

They should rather hook kids on Desktops with edubuntu than on XOs in my opinion.

[fiddledd]

Well my Geography never was any good, but I thought Alabama was in America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Seems odd that the kids there are getting a Laptop designed for the poorest kids in the world. But then again I never understood the logic of giving (or is it selling?) starving kids in war torn countries a Laptop, unless they are allowed to sell it to buy food (always assuming their rulers don't sell them first to buy Military Hardware).

Sorry, I guess I'm just a cynical old man :)

[thenes]

I think its great. The only economical consern with running Linux has been that support cost more, but as pointed out in the Ubuntu-book, this is only a matter of supply and demand. Once the kids learn Linux, there will be more to meet the demand and the cost for Linux support will go down.

[armandh]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080515-former-security-director-blasts-olpc-suggests-new-strategy.html

read the above
crap hardware may spoil the linux experience

[linuxlizard]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080516/D90MMGNG2.html

Guess what? As of today, these laptops are now supporting the windows platform.

[Sef]

Moved to Community Cafe.

[aaaantoine]

Its about time the schools in Alabama got some computers.:lolflag:

Yeah, but they didn't even buy real PCs...

This says a thing or two about Alabama's education budget.

[linuxlizard]

Yeah, but they didn't even buy real PCs...

This says a thing or two about Alabama's education budget.

More like it says something about the guy who made the decision.

They could have purchased relatively inexpensive pcs in the $400 range and set up computer labs in each school with enough computers for 1 class at a time and it would have been money better spent and much cheaper, IMO.

My wife is an educator and has worked in a school where there was a laptop for each student and each teacher and felt it was an enormous waste of time and money. It was a constant distraction and expensive to maintain and did little to improve the GPA of the student body.

She now works in a school with students in a computer lab that students from each class attend twice per week and the lessons use the technology as a tool to reinforce what is being taught in their regular classrooms. It's a much better use of time, money, and helps education rather than distracts from it.

Technological Toys aren't going to fix the educational problem in America. Parents insisting their children study hard and get good grades is the solution.

[Lucho]

My brother lives in Birmingham; I'll have to ask him what he's
heard about this.


Well my Geography never was any good, but I thought Alabama was in America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Seems odd that the kids there are getting a Laptop designed for the poorest kids in the world. But then again I never understood the logic of giving (or is it selling?) starving kids in war torn countries a Laptop, unless they are allowed to sell it to buy food (always assuming their rulers don't sell them first to buy Military Hardware).
You've never been to Alabama; like Jive Turkey said,
it's about time the Alabama schools got some computers. Just
like any other wealthy country the US has some "less-wealthy
areas" :(.

More like it says something about the guy who made the decision.

Too true. I still remember the days of gov. Guy Hunt ( I graduated from the University of Alabama at Huntsville).
He was no friend of education.

[armandh]

More like it says something about the guy who made the decision.

Technological Toys aren't going to fix the educational problem in America. Parents insisting their children study hard and get good grades is the solution.

Amen
that and getting rid of incompetent teachers
without promoting them to administrators

[tdrusk]

Well my Geography never was any good, but I thought Alabama was in America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Seems odd that the kids there are getting a Laptop designed for the poorest kids in the world. But then again I never understood the logic of giving (or is it selling?) starving kids in war torn countries a Laptop, unless they are allowed to sell it to buy food (always assuming their rulers don't sell them first to buy Military Hardware).

Sorry, I guess I'm just a cynical old man :)
Alabama is comically known as being a less civilized place. If you know what a redneck is, Alabama is full of 'em.

[days_of_ruin]

The machines don't run Microsoft Office, Photoshop or any other standard Mac or Windows programs, instead using a free, open-source version of GNU/Linux, with a simplified graphical interface designed for children that is called Sugar, Lustig said.

Who wrote that article?"standard mac or windows progrmas",yeah right!
Open-source version of GNU/Linux?As opposed to what, closed source linux?

[myusername]

the mayor of birmingham is an idiot...he is trying to buld a football dome so the nfl will play there...he is spending billions of dollars and noone knows where the hell he is getting it from

[retrow]

If you know what a redneck is, Alabama is full of 'em.The ratio is much lower in Birmingham :)

Like many people have already expressed - money could have been spent much better by getting 'Real computers' loaded with Linux. XO will be thought of as something akin to leapfrogs (http://www.leapfrog.com/etc/medialib/leapfrog/leapster/lsls_20256.Par.47255.Image.350.jpg) in no time.

I reside in Birmingham, and I had no clue about this thing. If its not something related to football or religion, we hardly learn about it from local news.

[maniacmusician]

Giving each student their own laptop is absolutely a waste of money. There's no way that most of them are going to be productive. Just teaching a regular class can be hard enough without all that.

Also, it figures that Alabama would spend money on education only where it benefits an organization that has recently developed a more capitalist mindset. As far as user experience and monetary value among people with common sense, the OLPC is getting less and less popular each day. So, of course, why not pump some more money into the program? At least that way, it's exposed to a demographic that doesn't have a choice concerning whether they want to use it or not. Easiest consumer model ever.