Piedmont, Ala. High Tech Educational Mecca?

I've been somewhat skeptical about the promotion of technology as the solution to problems in education.
But we ought to keep an eye on Piedmont, Ala.
In a new piece for the PARCA Perspective, we profile Piedmont's MPower program which not only provides every student in grades 4-12 with a MacBook but also provides every student with high speed Internet at home at school and everywhere in Piedmont.
Apparently, Piedmont has its own utility company and it hung fiber optic cable all around town, thinking they'd need it someday. They hadn't found a use for it until the school system came up with and idea and a federal grant to get set up a system using that fiber optic cable as the backbone of a citywide Wi-Fi system, which students can use for free.
They are early on in the experiment. Switching from textbook-based instruction to the MacBook/Internet adventure has had its challenges.  But Piedmont is posting some impressive scores on various performance measures.