Birmingham city schools will be the first in the nation to receive laptop computers designed for children in third-world countries under an agreement completed over the weekend, Mayor Larry Langford announced Monday.

Langford signed a purchase agreement for 15,000 laptops from One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit foundation whose goal is to provide every child in the world with access to technology.

"We live in a digital age, so it is important that all our children have equal access to technology and are able to integrate it into all aspects of their lives," Langford said. "We are proud that Birmingham is on its way to eliminating the so-called `digital divide' and to ensuring that our children have state-of-the-art tools for education."

Under the agreement, the city will buy 15,000 laptops for $200 each, Langford said. The $3 million deal will allow every child in grades one through eight in Birmingham city schools to receive a laptop, he said.

"Our students will have access to global thinking now," said Birmingham schools Superintendent Stan Mims. "It becomes a tipping point in the digital divide."

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.

Kids know how:



The machine, called the XO Laptop and dubbed the "$100 laptop," was designed by Nicholas Negroponte, the founding director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory. He set out to build a $100 laptop so every child in developing countries could have access to new channels of learning, said Jackie Lustig, spokeswoman for One Laptop Per Child.

The XO didn't make the target price and it sells for about $200, still far below the $500 price tag of most basic laptop computers in U.S. retail shops, Lustig said.

Langford said training for the computers will not be a problem, as they were designed for children to pick up on immediately.

"Get the computers, get them in the children's hands and get out of the way," he said. He brought back two demo computers from his weekend trip to Boston and said a 3-year-old went up to him at a restaurant and began teaching him to use the computer.

"Every child in this restaurant came up to me and within minutes, they were on Google surfing the Web," he said. Even though the computers are so easy to use, Langford said a consulting firm has offered to train students in all Birmingham schools.

Langford said he was asked to be the national spokesman for the program as other U.S. cities begin taking advantage of One Laptop Per Child.

Buy one, give one:



Last month only, the foundation opened sales to residents in the United States and Canada, who could buy the laptops for $399. Each purchase funded a second laptop that went to a needy child in a developing country.

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.

The laptop has a 500-megahertz processor and 256 megabytes of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) with 1 gigabyte of flash memory.

The laptops have Web browsers and their own Wi-Fi system, the ability to connect to the Internet wirelessly.

Some Birmingham schools already have wireless capabilities, said Claudia Williams, chief academic officer, and the system is about to begin a "major technology upgrade" with a portion of the $300 million it received from Jefferson County's one-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax increase.

"The upgrade will be no less than top-notch, and if these computers run on wireless, then that's what we'll have in our schools," she said.

The computer can be used to compose music and has programs designed to teach students all types of math, science, reading and social studies, Langford said. Each is on a "mesh network," meaning all the laptops can see each other, without any setup, even if there is no wireless connection nearby.

The mesh networking allows classmates and teachers to see what each class member is working on.

Langford said the computers are more than sufficient for Birmingham students' needs. "We're not trying to give these kids a computer that would launch a space shuttle."

E-mail: mleech@bhamnews.com