Winona gets wired: technical difficulties in the home

WEST supported a grassroots initiative to install a fiber-optic network throughout the town of Winona, Minn., linking eight of the town's most prominent social institutions. In May 1995, Luminet, a local ISP, began offering service to residents , businesses, and other organizations. Within a year, about 10% of private citizens had Internet access, 2 and community organizations and businesses have embraced this new Web-based publication and communication medium. 3 In the fall of 1995, an educational initiative called The Virtual School (TVS) debuted, bringing online 210 families from a private high school. 4 TVS will eventually link 500 families whose children attend parochial schools in Winona. One goal of the TVS project is to facilitate communication between parents and school staff. Therefore , parents have a relatively strong motive to participate and overcome the technical hurdles of Internet use. U S WEST Advanced Technologies documented the experiences and attitudes of 50 TVS families (155 individuals) as they came online. We have used a variety of methods for data collection: interviews, participant observation, and online tracking and