September 8, 2010

Bring your thumb drive on September 10.

Today we will learn about searching the Internet using an interactive tutorial at http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/

Why this project?  Internet Literacy is  an important part of  our modern world.  We are practicing reading strategies while gathering knowledge and skills for doing research online and off.


Internet and other computer vocabulary

Thanks to Oprah:  http://oprahgoesonline.blackhammer.com/glossary/glossary_pop.html

URL
Simply put, a Web page's address. In the alphabet soup that is Internet-ese, URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Just as every person on the Net has a unique e-mail address, every file and page on the Web has a unique URL. You can see the URL for the Web page you're on in that thin white horizontal box at the top of your browser. The first part of the URL (http) tells the browser it's looking for a Web page written (most likely) in HTML. The rest gives the name of the computer, then the directory that holds the page, and last but not least, the name of the file that makes up that particular Web page. (The file name typically ends with the .html or .htm suffix, which tells you and your computer it's an HTML file.) You can instantly swing over to any page on the Web by typing the page's URL into the white box and hitting the "Return" key.

Domain
The last two parts of an Internet address. Just as file extensions (such as .gif for GIF files) give some indication of what kind of file it is, the suffix at the end of an Internet site's domain name tells what kind of site it is. For example, .com means it's a commercial site, while other common ones include .edu, for educational institutions, .gov for government, .org for organizations and .org, for non-profit sites. For sites based outside the U.S., there are many others; .ca means the site originates in Canada, .au means the server's in Australia, while .uk means it comes from, well, you know.

Search engine
Your tireless cyber bloodhounds are your guides to the Web. The term search engine is usually used to include three different types of guides: true search engines, directories, and search agents. A "true" search engine uses a program (sometimes called a spider) to search the Internet for information and collate it in a database. A directory (Yahoo, for example) uses a database too, but the information in the database is researched by people, not programs. And an agent (Metacrawler) searches existing databases. There are also specialist directories and agents that search only shopping sites, for example.



Independent reading time (receive reading logs)  and individual testing


Filing into your folders -- time to decorate?