Basic Internet Workshop Handout
Using common search engines
Google—my favorite: www.google.com
Northern Lights—another good one: www.northernlights.com
Yahoo—nice when you want lists: www.yahoo.com
Search Engines for Kids: http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm
SurfWax: www.surfwax.com
Tips: I almost always use key words and not natural sentences. Sometimes, being less specific is better than too specific.
Creating and organizing favorites
To add a bookmark to your favorites list, simply go to Favorities on the top pull-down menu and select Add to Favorites. You are then given a chance to change the default name of the stored link, which is sometimes a good idea—such as to shorten the name.
To use a typical bookmark/favorite, go to the Favorities on the top pull-down menu and scroll down to the favorite you want and click on it to load the page.
To Organize favorities, go to Favoriites on the top pull-down menu and select Organize Favorities. In that menu you can resort your favorities, create folders, and move favorities into the Links folder. The Links folder can be useful for common favorities, because you can add the Links toolbar to your top menu bars by going to View, Toolbars and then links. Once it appears on your toolbar you can stretch it out to see your links favorities and use them daily.
Using the History and auto-complete features
The History list can be an excellent way to find your way back to sites you visited days or weeks before. To see it, click on the History button on the toolbar (it looks like a sun dial), and then click through to the week and day you want to review the links from.
Auto-complete features include the list of URLs (or web addresses) that appears beneath the address window as you type in an address. Use your arrow key to go down the address you want, and then press return twice.
You can also create an Auto-fill profile for your name, address and phone number (etc.), so that such fields on web pages can be automatically filled. Go to Tools, Options and then the Content Tab and then My Profile to enter the information.
Saving entire web pages as a file
This is a great way to keep a particular page for future reference and citation purposes. On most web pages, you can simply go to the File pull down menu, and select “Save As.” Name the file and saved it where you want. All the images and text will be saved into one file that you can open later in Internet Explorer, but the links from the saved page won’t work until you are on the Internet again.
For those who are slow to do citations for web pages, it can be great to save the pages you take quotes from for future reference and documentation purposes. This can be a good skill to teach students as well—it’s the same as making a photocopy of an article in a library.
Correct MLA citations for materials from the web.
See www.mla.org for additional information, but here are the basics:
Landsburg, Steven E. "Who Shall Inherit the Earth?" Slate 1 May 1997. 1 Oct. 1999 < http://www.slate.com/Economics/97-05-01/ Economics.asp>.
Mitchell, Jason P. Letter. "PMLA Letter." 10 May 1997. 1 Nov. 1999 <http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~jmitchel/pmla.htm>.
In the two examples above, the author is listed first, followed by the title of the article or sub section of the web site, followed by the title of the siet, followed by the date first published, followed by the date actually viewed, followed by the URL in angle brackets.
If the page doesn’t have an author, start with the title of page or article. If the page doesn’t have a publication date, only show the date viewed.
All text and images from the web should be documented. I strongly recommend that PowerPoint slides have citations on the pages themselves where the materials appearl.
Copying and Pasting Text and Images from the web
This is very simple. For text, you can simply highlight (click and hold down the mouse key as you drag it over the text) and then copy:
1) right click and then select copy from the pop up menu.
2) Click on the copy button on the toolbar (the two little documents button)
3) Go to Edit on the top pull down menu and select copy
Then switch over to Word and paste the material into your document.
For pictures, it is just as simple. Move your mouse over the picture, right click, and then select copy from the pop up menu. Then switch to Word (or your destination) and paste the picture.
Note: in most case, a simple pasting of a picture into Word will place it as a piece of text, meaning that it will go in where your cursor is, and then be fairly difficult to move around, etc. To avoid this, place a text box into the document first (go to Insert on the pull down menu and then select Text Box. Once it is in the document, you can drag it around as a “floating:” object by dragging on the stripped lines of its perimeter. Paste your picture inside of the text box, and then you can drag it around and resize it to be what you want it to be.
By right clicking on the striped area of the text box, you can select “Format Text Box” to turn on and off the line that appears as part of the box. By going to the Layout tab in the Format Text Box window, you can also turn on text wrap to make text wrap around the image, as above.
The Question of Cookies
What are cookies?
Cookies are pieces of information generated by a Web server and stored in the user's computer, ready for future access. Cookies are embedded in the HTML information flowing back and forth between the user's computer and the servers. Cookies were implemented to allow user-side customization of Web information. For example, cookies are used to personalize Web search engines, to allow users to participate in WWW-wide contests (but only once!), and to store shopping lists of items a user has selected while browsing through a virtual shopping mall. (http://www.cookiecentral.com/content.phtml?area=2&id=1)
This issue with this is that cookies can “track” a fair amount of information about you as you use the interent and then upload it to a centralized server without your knowledge. This is mostly done by advertisers to see your overall internet use and interests, etc.
Normally, I don’t like to receive cookies, but in general they are a necessary evil. Many websites won’t work without them, including online stores and banking. You can disable them or ask for a “prompt” whenever they are sent by going to Tools on the pull-down menu and Internet Options and then click on the Security tab. Then click on the Custom Level button and scroll to Cookies. You can set to enable, disable or prompt.
Good web sites for educators.
Webquest Page: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html
K. Schrock Guide for Educators: http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/index.html
From Now On: The Educational Technology Journal (http://www.fno.org).
NWREL: Northwest Educational Technology Consortium (http://www.netc.org).
The Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov).
Apple Learning Interchange (http://ali.apple.com).
The Globe Program (http://www.globe.gov).
The Jason Project (http://www.jasonproject.org).
ProTeacher (http://www.proteacher.com)
Education World (http://www.educationworld.com)
ePals: http://www.epals.com
Keypals: http://www.keypals.com
Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections (IECC): http://www.teaching.com/iecc.
Kidlink: http://www.kidlink.org/english/index.html
EdTech: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~edweb/list.html
ISED-L: http://www.milton.edu/ISED-L
PNAISTech: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pnaistech
Good web sites for personal use.