Parents Information Network (PIN) is
an independent organisation for parents who want to enter the
information age with their children. It gives support and advice to
parents about technology, so it is appropriate that PIN itself should
be exploring new technology in the form of the Internet. Jacquie
Disney and Maggie Holgate explain how PIN is going about it.
For PIN, a Web site is a way to reach a wider audience, both in terms
of parents, who make up the membership of the organisation, and in
terms of making wider contacts and reinforcing the organisation's
profile. By being on the Web we have a showcase for everyone who
visits our site. This means we can offer the full range of
information services provided by PIN and we can also draw attention
to issues which are of significance to parents and everyone
interested in the home computer market.
We are currently putting the finishing touches to the PIN Web site
and, alongside this, a PIN area on the online service AOL. This has
been a fairly demanding exercise. We have spent time working out
exactly what we want our online presence to achieve and we have
planned the material we are putting up very carefully. It seemed
important to us to provide mechanisms for online questions and
feedback as we feel an effective Web site needs to establish a sense
of community where people can receive support but also provide it. We
have put a lot of effort into getting these aspects right. In the
end, because we want what we do to be good, it has taken us a little
longer to get the Web site off the ground than we first
anticipated.
The Internet has also had an effect on the internal workings of our
organisation. PIN has a number of geographically dispersed, part-time
workers. Email and conferencing enable the whole team to keep in
close touch and work collaboratively. This does not mean we never
meet face-to-face but when we are all off doing different things in
different places, it certainly makes the process of communicating
quicker and easier.
PIN is an organisation expressly concerned with people who don't feel
particularly knowledgeable or confident about technology, so
conventional methods of communication will still remain very
important to us, but we hope that the Internet will enable us to
reach a new audience and open up a new dimension to our work. It's
still early days yet for PIN and the Internet but we are very
positive about its potential.
www.partnerships.org.uk/articles/pin1.html