Internet Basics - Slides

Internet Basics
Appleton Public Library
832-6173

What is the Internet?
An system of networks that connects computers around the world.
A network is two or more computers linked together by telephone, cables and other links.

What is the World Wide Web?
Collectively, all the stuff people have created and uploaded --- meaning, they’ve put the content on a Server that allows other computers to access that content.
“The complete set of documents residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP protocol, accessible to users via a simple point-and-click system.”

To Access the Web You Need:
a computer
a web browser
a connection to the Internet, usually provided by an ISP (Internet Service Provider)

Internet Browsers
Software used to locate and display web pages
(Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is widely used)

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer

Mozilla’s Firefox

Websites and Webpages
Website – web pages that reside at the same domain address
Web page-- individual file on a website; has a unique file name.
Homepage– the first page you see on a website

The address bar
URLs (web addresses)

Uniform Resource Locator
Every individual web page has a unique URL
Different web extensions: .com, .org, .gov, .edu…

Common Extensions
.com = commercial
.edu = educational institution
.org = nonprofit organization
.gov = government agency
.mil = military institution

Things to Remember:
The Internet is not controlled by a specific authority.
It is not well organized.

Exercise: Navigate to a Site
In the address bar, enter www.wisconsin.gov
Press “Enter” or click the “Go” button.
Repeat steps 1 & 2 using www.wisconsin.comand www.wisconsin.edu

How can you tell if something is a hyperlink?
Rollovers
Mouse pointer
Text style (different color / underlined)

Exercise:kinds of Hyperlinks
Enter the URL www.pbs.org
Somewhere in the site, find
a rollover
a hyperlinked image
hyperlinked text

Search Engines
A program that looks for specified keywords and returns a list of the webpages where the keywords were found.

Search Engines

Subject Indexes
A collection of websites organized by subject.
Useful because someone else is doing the work of evaluation.

Subject Index

Subject Index(cont…)

Subject Index (cont…)

THE END