Surfing the Web

Safe Surfing for Kids:

Day 1 – Introduction

The goal is to introduce the Internet and software applications that can be used to explore the web and email.

Topics Covered:

Understanding and organization of the World Wide Web

Introduction to internet terminology

Introduction to Netscape Communicator

locating web sites, URLS

hyperlinks

menu bars and toolbars

preferences

viewing HTML source

bookmarks (adding, removing)

plug-ins for Netscape (Shockwave, Real Player, Quick Time)

Demonstrations:
Check out these web sites:

www.shockwave.com

www.warnerbros.com

www.toysrus.com

www.ytv.com

www.foxkids.com

www.calgaryzoo.ab.ca

games.yahoo.com

www.starwars.com

www.exn.ca

Notes:
World Wide Web Organization
The Internet

The Internet is a computer network made up of thousands of networks world-wide. No one knows exactly how many computers are connected to the Internet. It is certain, however, that these numbers are in the millions and more are added every day.

No one is in charge of the Internet. There are organizations that work on technical aspects of the network, but no one group is in control. Internet traffic flows through routers that send data to different computers connected to the Internet.

TCP/IP is the protocol that is used for the Internet. A protocol is just a standard by which something is done. TCP/IP works by sending data in packets to computers connected to the Internet. If you are downloading a file or loading a web page, the files needed are split up into chunks and sent to you chunk by chunk.

Servers & Domains

domain name – specifies where a web page is located

URL – Uniform Resource Locator, tells you where you can find something on the Internet (basically a web page’s address)
a domain name points the browser to an IP address
an IP address is the number assigned to a computer that is connected to the Internet, each computer connected to the Internet has a different IP address or number
an IP address consists of four numbers, each separated by a period, each number can be between 0 and 255 (eg. 123.120.3.16)
web pages are located on a server computer that is connected to the Internet directly. Server computers are generally kept on (turned on) all the time so that the web pages on the server are always accessible.
when you specify a domain name you are actually specifying what server computer the web page you are looking for is located on

ie.www.ucalgary.ca is the URL where the University of Calgary’s web page is

ucalgary.ca is the domain name, and therefore we are looking for the web page on the server computer pointed to by ucalgary.ca

HTML Files

hypertext is a document containing words that connect to other documents, the connections are called links

web pages are just files like a Word document or Excel spreadsheet

web page filenames MUST end in .html or .htm

pictures displayed on a web page are usually either a jpeg (Joint Photographic Expert Group) image or a gif (Graphical Interchange Format) image

ie.

myWordFile.doc (doc means it is a Word document)

myExcelFile.xls (xls means it is an Excel spreadsheet)

myWebPage.html (html means it is a web page viewable in Netscape or Internet Explorer)

myWebPage.htm (means the same thing as html)

Directories

if you see a / (slash) in a URL this just means that a file or web page is located inside a directory on the server computer

ie.

www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~carman/

this URL says that my web page is on the CPSC server in a directory called carman.

Assignments:
E-Cards

Send an electronic card to your friend or teacher.

www.bluemountain.com

Day 2 – E-Mail & FTP

The goal is to develop and introduce more advanced techniques used for computer programming such as conditional statements.

Topics Covered:

Netscape Mail

sending, receiving, composing

adding entries to the address book

attachments

Free Email Accounts
signing up for free e-mail
FTP: File Transfer Protocol
downloading and uploading files

Demonstrations:
Sending an Email to My Mom

Send a simple email to my mom using Netscape Mail and add an attachment to it.

Hotmail

Go to Hotmail and sign-up for an e-mail account. Show how to send, receive emails in Hotmail and how to add attachments.

Downloading Files

Go to www.tucows.com and search for background pictures for the Windows desktop.

Assignments:
Send an Email

Send emails to your friends, teacher, or parents at home/work.

Sign-Up for a Hotmail E-Mail Address

Day 3 – Searching on the Web

The goal is to develop and introduce ways to find information on the web using various search engines.

Topics Covered:

Search Engines

spidering

boolean operations (And && , or || , not ! )

Copy, pasting material

Demonstrations:
Various Search Engines

www.yahoo.com

www.yahoo.ca

www.metacrawler.com

www.altavista.com

www.hotbot.com

www.infoseek.com

www.super-seek.com

Search for Jello

Copy and paste information found on the creation of Jello into a Word document for a mock report.

Assignments:
Short Report

Find a topic that you are interested in and copy and paste material out of it into a Word document. Remember to include information about where you found the material and who wrote it. Include about a page of material in Word.

Day 4 – Chatting

The goal is to understand netiquette for chat rooms and to learn different symbols used for

Topics Covered:

Chat abbreviations:

ttyl – talk to you later

lol – lauging out loud

rotfl – rolling on the floor laughing

brb – be right back

cya – see yeah

l8r – later

: )

; )

: p

Safe locations to chat

Demonstrations:
Chat Locations

chat.yahoo.com

www.excite.com/communities/chat/lite

www.icq.com/community/chat.html

Home Chatting Software

www.icq.com

www.firetalk.com

Assignments:
Chat

Talk to three people from different countries other than Canada.

Day 5 – Scavenger Hunt

The goal is to use all the tools from the previous classes to complete a scavenger hunt.

Topics Covered:

review of course material

Assignments:
Scavenger Hunt

Complete the Internet Scavenger Hunt as handed out in class. Results must be emailed to your teacher.