Free University Project

College Prep Online - 2002

Internet Guide

Updated Aug. 25, 2002

By Jack C. Star

This section is included to help those who are less familiar with the Internet and the World Wide Web. Everything you want to know about the Web is on the Web, generally free. It is part of the culture of the Web that still remains less tainted by commercialism.

This page includes links to Web Tutorials, Search Engine Basics, Email, Evaluating Web Sites, and HTML Basics.

Web Tutorials

There are any number of good sites that will help you understand the Internet and the World Wide Web. Each takes a different approach, and at some point you will want to explore more sites to help you maximize the effectiveness of your time online.

Following is a short guide that covers the basics. Depending upon the amount of time you are willing to devote, the material can be covered in from two to five study sessions. You will probably want to print out each tutorial and build your own self-indtruction manual. Set aside enough time at the end of each session to review what you have learned.

A Five Study Session Guide to the Internet

You'll probably want to print this page so you can follow the instructions as most of the information for these sessions comes from Learning the Net.

Session One

Go to the Learning the Net home page (link follows these instructions) and in the left hand frame of the page click on Getting Started
Read the page and (optionally) print it out for reference. (Print Frame)

The go to the left hand frame and click on World Wide Web From this point on you will go to other pages on the Learning the Net site by clicking on the titles located at the end of each file.

Read How the Web Works

Then read Web Browsers

Next read Anatomy of a Web Page

And finally read Understanding Web Addresses

Go there now by clicking on Learning the Net and use the BACK key to return to this page.

Now you can practice what you have learned.

You will go the Britannica Internet Guide. Choose a subject that interests you and explore some of the links. You can stop at any time; and that will be the end of this Study Session.

Click on Britannica Internet Guide

Study Session Two

You will go back to Learning the Net. Click on World Wide Web again then:

Read Bookmarks

Followed by Searching the Web

Then Web Chat

And finally Ten Top Tips

For a look at the not too distant future, click on Conferencing in the left hand frame.

That is the end of Study Session Two.

Study Session Three

You were introduced to Searching the Web in Study Session Two. Now you are ready to go into more detail. Choose one of the sites under Internet Search below and spend at least 45 minutes going through the tutorial and doing some practice searches.

Internet Search

Using search engines requires both skill and intuition.

Finding Information on the Internet
This excellent tutorial from the UC Berkeley Library introduces you to the Internet and WWW, teaches you how to analyze a topic, chose a search tool, and use a variety of search tools.

Bare Bones 101 a basic tutorial on searching the Web, from University of South Carolina, Breaufort, librarian Prof. Ellen Chamberlein.
Eighteen lessons, plus an optional "final", that ranges from general search procedures through an examination of each of the eight most popular search engines.

If you can't find what you are looking for with the search engine(s) you now use, check out the All in one search page or a metasearch engine like Dogpile

Links to a larger variety of search engines can be found here.

Optional Review Session It is frequently useful to see how someone else approaches the subject. If you still have some unanswered questions, or are unclear about certain topics, go to Internet 101 and do a quick review.

And/Or take a look at Beginners Central by Northern Webs, a multi-chapter tutorial.

Study Session Five Some people use the Internet almost entirely for email. Even if that is not your major goal, you will probably be sending and receiving an increasing amount of email so you should look at this A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood. It covers such topics as: context, format, page layout, intonation, gestures, status, and formality.

Optional Study Session Six

Evaluating Websites

There is an excellent page on this topic developed by the Cornell University library. Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools.

HTML Basics -- Building a Web Page

This section is included for those of you who are interested in learning more about building websites of your own. You can purchase inexpensive software to help you build a web page; and there are some sites online that will help you build a page. At some point, however, if you are serious about Web site construction you will want to know the basics of the HTML formatting code.

HTML is a simple (if cumbersome) mark-up language that shows a browser how to format the information in a file for the screen. You have to learn about 15 to 20 of these "tags" which you type into your word processing file. Here are a site that will show you how -- and the instruction is free.

Introduction to HTML by Ian Graham at the University of Toronto.

You can experiment building web pages by downloading the WEB Wizard. The program will then run on your computer. The Wizard asks you some questions and, based on your instructions, creates a web page.

TIP: The Wizard will save your page in a file called "Homepage.htm". You can rename this file and build other pages as long as you keep renaming "Homepage.htm".

Read the file you've created into your word processor (the file is in ASCII Text format) to see how the HTML tags are used. You can add more text to the file, if you choose. But be sure to Save As.. an ASCII Text file.

Good Luck!

Your questions and comments are encouraged and always welcome.

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