6. How to use the Internet (once you're On-Line)

Using E-mail

E-mail is a quick and inexpensive means for people to communicate with each other. Unlike ordinary mail, you don't need a stamp, envelope, and letterbox to send your message. Instead, you write and send your message using the E-mail software, and it travels through the Internet network to the required destination in a matter of minutes. Your message will wait on the recipient's computer until they decide to read it. They may then reply immediately or leave it until a more suitable time to deal with.

If you have a modem and Internet connection, you will also need an E-mail software program which is used to write, send, receive, and organise your messages. The most popular E-mail software is Eudora or Pegasus Mail. This software is usually provided when you get an Internet account from a service provider.

E-mail address

First, you need the recipient's address in order to send your message. Every E-mail user has an E-mail address. A typical E-mail address consists of two parts separated by the @ (at) symbol e.g.:

To the left of the @ symbol is the username. The username is usually some derivative of the name of the person or institution. In this case, scmhuire denotes the real name Scoil Mhuire. The right of the @ symbol tells you the server which hosts the account, in this case iol refers to Ireland On-Line. The last part of the address .ie (dot i e) refers to the domain (country) in which the server is located. Each country has its own domain. American E-mail addresses give you an indication as to the nature of the location, e.g. edu for an educational institution, com for a commercial company, gov for a government institution. Think of the E-mail address as who@where.

An E-mail message

In general, there are three main parts to an E-mail message: the header, the message body, and the signature. The header contains information about the message, such as the date and time sent, the sender, the subject, and the recipient.

Date: Date and time that message was sent

To: E-mail address to which message was sent

From: E-mail address of the sender

Subject: What the message is about

CC: E-mail address if a "carbon copy" of the message has been sent to another person

When you are writing your message, the E-mail program will automatically fill in the "date" and "from" fields. You only have to enter the E-mail address of the person you are sending to, subject title, and the addresses to which you are sending a copy, if any.

The message body contains the main text of the message as it is typed on your keyboard. E-mail messages are generally written more informally than a standard letter. It is not necessary to include the address and date at the top of the message, this information is already in the header. Also, it is not necessary to begin with "Dear", you are more likely to see "Hi", "Hello", or simply a name at the start. Messages are usually written in a conversational tone. At the end of your message, you do not have to end with "Yours sincerely", its normal to see something like "Regards", or "Talk soon".

Your E-mail program allows you to automatically include a signature at the end of each message you send. This is usually three or four lines of text with your full name, name of school, postal address, phone number, etc.

Along with your basic E-mail message, you can attach other non-text files, in the same way as you might enclose a bill or cheque in an envelope with a letter. An attachment can be a picture, a large document, or even a piece of software. When you create your message, you use the Attach function and select the file you wish to send from your computer. Note: You should make sure that the recipient has compatible software.

Organising your mail

E-mail programs are designed to manage your mail. Each time you receive a new message, it is stored by the program until you decide to check for new mail. When you read the message, you can decide to reply straight away, leave the message in your In mailbox folder, or delete the message altogether. By default, the message will be left in the "In" mailbox. You can create mailboxes in which to store received E-mails under various headings, e.g. queries, keypals, subjects, administration, schools, etc. It won't be long before your mail begins to mount up. You should review your stored messages regularly, check that they have been dealt with, and delete any messages you no longer require (this may be difficult if you tend to hoard!). Likewise, each time you write and send an E-mail, a copy of this is stored in your "Out" mailbox. You should regularly delete these, or reset your E-mail program settings not to store sent mail.

You may find that there are certain E-mail addresses to which you regularly send mail. You can use your E-mail program to store these addresses. Each address is given a nickname or alias. When you want to send an E-mail to one of these addresses, you simply type the nickname in the "To" field and the program automatically inserts the full address for you. No more getting awkward E-mail addresses mixed up!

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is the most exciting aspect of the Internet. The World Wide Web is often referred to as the Web or the WWW. Since the invention of the WWW in the early 1990s the whole concept of the Internet and the Information Superhighway has taken off. The WWW resembles a library of electronic magazines that can be accessed using a computer, modem, and phone line. Not only do the pages of these magazines contain text and pictures, they can also contain audio and video clips. The WWW is the multimedia arm of the Internet. Prior to the WWW, the Internet was text based and not very exciting to the ordinary man in the street. The WWW is the main reason why there is so much hype about the Internet around today. Using the WWW is simplicity itself. Forget about making mistakes - you can't damage or lose any information on the Web.

Who puts the stuff in the magazines?

The people who create the pages on the WWW range from ordinary citizens to large multi-national corporations. The developers of the WWW constructed it in such a way that anyone, anywhere could create their own documents and place them on the WWW. These electronic magazines are known as Web Sites. Each Web site contains a front page, known as the home page, which informs people what they will find in the Web site. Today more and more schools who have an Internet connection are considering creating a school Web site to inform the world about the activities in their school.

In order to view a Web site on your computer you will need a special piece of software known as a Web browser to view the page complete with background colours and pictures, etc. There are a number of browser applications on the market, the best known being Netscape, NCSA Mosaic, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Web Concerns

There has been a lot of concern about objectionable material on the Internet. The Net is such a new medium that it will take time before proper classification can take place. By its nature, the Internet is difficult to control. New screening procedures are being developed and many Internet providers are looking at ways of providing sheltered access for children. There are many software packages available on the Internet which block out pornographic and other offensive material. While they are a help they do not guarantee protection from objectionable material and may lull the teacher into a false sense of security.

Ask yourself the question, would you make the TV and video recorder freely available in your school without any supervision over what was being shown? Teachers should look at the Internet in the same light. Remember, be vigilant!

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Objectionable Material

Preview sites you wish to use in your classroom.

Limit the amount of on-line access time for students.

You may consider creating a Web page containing only the links you want them to access or use one of the school resource sites.

Closely monitor or restrict the unsupervised use of search engines by students.

Use one of the Internet filters, such as CyberPatrol or Surf Watch. But be wary!

Formulate specific rules for Internet use with your students.

What does a page look like?

A Web site will always contain at least one page but may have more. There is no limit on the number of pages a Web site can have but larger sites cost more to maintain. In addition to containing graphics and text each Web page contains hypertext. What is hypertext? - you may ask. Text and images that are highlighted or underlined, or sometimes highlighted and underlined, are called hypertext links or hyperlinks or links. Clicking on them takes you to another place on the Web.

One way to explore the Web is to click on the hyperlinks that appeal to you. When you first go on-line you will find yourself clicking on hyperlinks and moving further and further away from the first page you accessed. Though you will yourself be amazed at the endless amount of information and resources on the Web, you may also find this "site hopping" a little frustrating as you are constantly jumping from one site to another. This type of journey is known as "surfing the Web".

How do you create a page?

Hypertext links are created using a computer language called HTML, HyperText Markup Language. To create the attractive pages you see on the Web, publishers use HTML to indicate where and what size the text should be, where pictures should go, and which hypertext links are available. Let's look at a simple Web page in two ways: with the actual HTML coding, and the document it produces on the Web.

HTML files are written as pure text files that contain "tags", < >, which inform the browser of how the text, pictures etc. are to appear on the Web. Each page contains a <Title>, which appears in the scroll bar at the top of the page. In the example below, the Title of the page is "The Irish Times" and the body of the page contains the text, graphics, and sound files. If you are interested in creating a school Web site you can learn about HTML on the Web or you can buy software that will insert the "tags" for you. There are two types of HTML Editors - some allow you to type your information as normal and will save the file as a HTML document complete with the "tags", while others provide you with the tags and only require you to type in your own information. But don't be put off by this - more and more companies are creating tools that eliminate the need to know HTML and allow more and more people to create home pages on the Web.

Locating pages on the Web

Now that it is becoming easier to create a Web site, more and more people are becoming publishers on the Web. So how do you find such pages? Well, each page on the Web has a unique global address known as a Uniform Resource Locator or URL. Just as individuals have unique E-mail addresses, Web pages have unique URLs. A URL has three parts: the protocol identifier, the domain or host name of the server, and the document's pathname.

protocol-identifier://hostname/document-pathname

On the Web, HTTP (or HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the protocol, or language, browsers use to talk to servers. All URLs for Web sites begin with http://. Most Web browsers can communicate using other protocols, such as Gopher and FTP. Such URLs begin with gopher:// or ftp://.

The second part of any URL is the server name. This usually begins with WWW and the server name. For instance to go to the Telecom Éireann home page you would type http://www.telecom.ie. The final part of the URL shows the country where the server is located, in this case Ireland.

If you find a URL in a magazine or on the television, how do you locate the Web site on the WWW? Having connected to the Internet, you go to the location box on your browser and simply type in the URL. Let's say you wanted to go to the Broadcom Classroom of the Future Home page, you would type in http://classroom.broadcom.ie as shown below.

Parts of a Web browser

After a while you will find that you visit certain pages over and over again. Instead of typing in the URL each time you can make a bookmark of these pages and build up your own set of stored URLs. Sometimes while surfing the Web you will find an interesting site and instead of writing down the URL, you can just make a bookmark. Lists of bookmarks can grow very easily so it is advisable to periodically delete those you don't use or at least categorise them under your own headings.

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Time Savers

Print out a Web page by using the print screen button.

Save the text of a Web page by using "Save as" under the File menu.

Turn off graphics if they are not required, text-only Web pages are quicker to download.

Save an image by holding down the mouse button on the image (right button in some cases).

Finding your way around the Web is quite easy using the buttons and tools provided on your browser. Many of the buttons allow you to move around the Web without typing in the URL. You can move between all the pages you visited during the current session by using the Forward and Backward buttons. If you want to go back to the first page you visited, this is usually the home page of your Internet provider, you select the Home button. The best way to use your browser is to explore the options it provides you with while on-line.

The source code or HTML that was used to write any page on the Web can be viewed by going to the "View Menu" and choosing "View Source". Sometimes you will locate a page that appeals to you and you can borrow the source code that created such a page by saving it to your computer and editing it for your own page. While on the subject of "borrowing" - the Web is the largest borrowing institution around today. You can "borrow" icons, pictures, logos, and sound files from the Web and download them to your own computer. It is good practice to ask the publisher's permission before "borrowing" original or personalised resources.

Though Web pages containing graphics are very interesting, they can also be frustrating. Pictures and graphics use up more memory than text and thus take longer to load onto the screen. Some sites are so big that you could go and make a cup of tea before they have downloaded. Besides being frustrating, such sites are increasing your phone bill substantially. Many of the better sites provide you with the option of viewing their Web site without graphics. However, if this option does not exist you can always turn off the images in the "Options Menu".

But what do you do if you don't know the URL or you are just browsing to see what exists on a particular subject? For this assignment, you use a special Web tool known as a search engine and there are many of these available.

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Using your browser

You can change the font and background colour settings on your browser.

Use "Bookmarks" or "Favourites" to keep track of frequently visited pages.

You can make any Web page your home page - this is usually pre-set at the ISP's home page.

URLs are case sensitive past the domain name, i.e. capitals do matter.

URLs never contain spaces.

If your browser cannot locate a page using a given URL, work backwards deleting the document pathnames, e.g. if http://ireland.iol.ie/ednet/resources.html doesn't work, then try http://ireland.iol.ie/ednet and so on.

Sites sometimes change their URLs. If all else fails then use a search engine to search for the site by it's title and/or subject.

Search engines

Computers are very good at storing large amounts of information and they also allow us, the users to locate and retrieve this information easily and quickly, if we know what the file is called and where it is stored. Imagine trying to locate a site on the WWW and you don't know the URL! Now we are dealing with thousands of networks containing millions upon millions of files. Don't despair, there are tools available to help you locate URLs if you just know the name of the site or are interested in a particular topic. These tools are called search engines and they can help you find what you are looking for.

There are a large number of search engines on the Web and you will find varying results depending on which one you use. Search engines have their own unique URL on the WWW, though you will find a list of the more common ones listed on the home pages of the main Internet Providers.

It is worth noting that when you choose a search engine, say for instance, Alta Vista, you are not scanning the WWW but the Alta Vista directory. And you might ask, how do Alta Vista update their directory? Some of the search engine directories are created by people who scan the WWW and compile lists complete with brief descriptions - Yahoo would be one such example. On the other hand, some sites also have "Web Robots" and these depend on software rather people to scan the WWW - Webcrawler being an example.

When looking for information you go to the search engine's home page and type the relevant terms into the search form. Once you are happy with the search terms, you instruct the search engine to search its directory and it returns a list of relevant resources. These resources usually appear in a list on the screen in blue type and underlined (Hypertext). The most relevant sites appear at the top of the list. You may visit these sites by clicking on the Hypertext results. Search engines can yield thousands of results to a query - so choose your search terms carefully.

Newsgroups

Both newsgroups and mailing lists are extensions of E-mail. In order to actively subscribe to both you need your own E-mail address. Newsgroups (also referred to as Usenet News) allow a message to be read and responded to by a large group of people. It is like posting a message on a bulletin board and waiting for someone to respond to it.

There are many different kinds of newsgroups on the Internet but only some are applicable to teachers. The most common educational ones can be found at http://k12.cnidr.org:90/usenets.html. Here you will find general bulletin boards on K-12 education or you can access more specific newsgroups dealing with specific subject issues. Note that K-12 is an American term that refers to educational resources for students aged 4 to Leaving Certificate age.

How could I use it? Well, if you were a secondary maths teacher who was looking for a good textbook to teach a particular topic, you could post your query to the maths newsgroup and wait until someone read your message and responded. You might ask how do they respond? There are two choices in responding - the person can respond to the entire group or just to you.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists (often called listservs) on the other hand, allow a group of people to exchange messages to one another on topics of common interest. People sign up to join the list and when someone writes a message and sends it to the mailing list everyone on the list receives a copy of the E-mail.

File Transfer Protocol

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a tool you can use to transfer a file from your computer to another computer on the Internet and vice versa. The Internet contains thousands of resources that people can retrieve and bring back to their own computers and FTP is one way of doing this. To get maximum benefit from FTP you need to have an account on both computers, your own and the computer that contains the resource you are retrieving, unless the computer is open to the public and allows anonymous FTP.

Today, most people access FTP sites on the WWW without even knowing it. For instance, you might locate a site on the Web that contains educational software and you decide to download a program - then you are probably using FTP.

On occasion you might have to use a separate FTP program if you want to download (retrieve) a number of files at once or if you upload (make available) files to the Internet.

Gopher

What is a gopher? Well, a gopher is a burrowing rodent found in North & Central America and it gave its name to an Internet tool which allows you to "burrow" down through a list of resources on the Internet. It also happens to be the mascot of the University of Minnesota who developed this tool. Before the arrival of the WWW, Gopher was the primary tool for organising and displaying resources on the Internet. Gopher requires information to be displayed in a menu format.

Today, just like FTP, most people access Gopher via the WWW. Some excellent educational sites are Gopher Sites and you can access these the same way you access any Web site. For example, if you want to visit the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), you would type in the address gopher://ericir.syr.edu in the Location window, as shown above.

Telnet

Telnet is a computer program that allows you to log on to a specific computer distant from your own computer and give it direct commands. Just a few years ago, before the arrival of the WWW and Gopher, Telnet was the most popular tool on the Internet. It is worth looking at the screen shots below which give you an idea of how the Net looked before the creation of the WWW. It was a text-only environment and one needed to have some idea of where and what one was looking for. Telnet is still a useful tool for educators as many excellent resources are housed at Telnet sites.

There are two types of sites we can Telnet to. The first are public sites where anyone can log in and access information. Such sites include on-line library catalogues, government agencies, and universities. You can use Telnet to connect to computers located at the University of Massachusetts and NASA. Once you log onto the computer you can search for a book, read NASA's Daily Press Release, or find educational resources. Addresses for these public sites are often published in Internet directories.

The second type of Telnet site requires users to have an account on the computer they are accessing. In order to do this you need a username and a password. Students "home" from university for the weekend would use Telnet to access their computer account in college, if they needed to complete some assignments for Monday morning.

Internet providers normally supply you with Telnet software when you join - the most common being NCSA Telnet. Don't panic if you did not receive it as it can be retrieved free of charge from the Internet.

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