Cybrarian Internet Research Session

Instructor: Diane Smith - Jumpstart Computer Mini-course

Boston Public School Tech Teams-July 19-23, 1999 to July 23, 1999

Bunker Hill Community College - D121B

Today's sessions...

• a close-up look at the Internet Explorer Browser
• practice navigating the World Wide Web
• useful terminology for working on the Internet
• URL's & hypertext links: using them and making them
• search tools & search strategies

Navigating for Results: Getting familiar with the differences among things like the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the Browser.

W3C -- If you're curious about the World Wide Web and you want to know more, the best place to begin is at The World Wide Web Consortium, at http://www.w3.org/

Advertising on the WWW -- Be careful where you click. At the top of many web pages and imbedded in some sites are all kinds of commercial come-on's that can take a lot of your time and PC power. There's nothing wrong with advertising on the WWW. As a matter of fact, it pays the bills on quite a few interesting and innovative projects. It can, however, be annoying when you're under deadline pressures with too much to do looming in front of you.

A few terms...

(from either Merriam-Webster OnLine! http://www.m-w.com/home.htm or PC Webopaedia --http://www.pcwebopaedia.com/ )

Browser -- a computer program providing access to sites on the World Wide Web.

Cursor -- a visual cue (as a flashing rectangle) on a video display that indicates position (as for data entry).

Digital -- of or relating to data in the form of numerical digits.

Field -- a particular area (as of a record in a database) in which the same type of information is regularly recorded.

Graphical Interface -- A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents.

Hypertext Link -- A special type of database system, invented by Ted Nelson in the 1960s, in which objects (text, pictures,music, programs, and so on) can be creatively linked to each other.

Internet -- an electronic communications network that connects computer networks

ISP -- Internet Service Provider, a company that provides access to the Internet.

Keyboard -- an assemblage of systematically arranged keys by which a machine or device is operated.

Login -- a username and password usually required before a computer system will allow you to execute programs.

Monitor -- a cathode-ray tube used for display (as of television pictures or computer information).

Mouse -- a small mobile manual device that controls movement of the cursor and selection of functions on a computer display.

Protocol -- a set of conventions governing the treatment and especially the formatting of data in an electronic communications system (such as http, ftp, telnet etc.).

URL -- the address of a computer or a document on the Internet that consists of a communications protocol followed by a colon and two slashes (as http://), the identifier of a computer (as www.m-w.com) and usually a path through a directory to a file -- called also uniform resource locator, universal resource locator.

World Wide Web -- a part of the Internet designed to allow easier navigation of the network through the use of graphical user interfaces and hypertext links between different addresses -- called also Web.