DuSable High School Internet Project and its influence in connecting Chicago Public Schools to the Internet

Jean Baptiste Point DuSable High School is a public school in inner city Chicago with a 100% African American student population, over 90% of which live below the poverty limit. In 1995, in partnership with the University of Chicago they applied to NASA's IDEAS program for seed money to bring the Internet to the school via a dedicated T1 connection. We will present the detailed successes and failures of this project. While several aspects did not work out as well as expected, in the long term the project did provide important guidance for a more sucessful involvement in 12 additional public schools in the same social situation. In these more recent involvements we have been able to provide more consistent and continued support than was possible at DuSable High School.