This document provides information on using the internet for learning. It discusses what the internet is, what it offers such as sharing information, communication, and e-learning. It outlines pros and cons such as freedom of publishing but also potential for misuse. It describes how to evaluate accuracy and find information using search engines, open educational resources, and collaboration tools like forums and blogs.

1. Using the Internet for Learning
09 & 17 April 2016

2. Outline of the session
 The Internet
◦ The Internet – the modern source for all
your needs
◦ Limitation and problems of the Internet
◦ Searching the WWW - Search Engines
 Open Educational Resources
 Collaboration and getting help

3. THE INTERNET

4. The Internet –
the modern source for all your needs
 What is the Internet –
◦ A global network of interconnected
computers that uses the standard
Internet protocol suite (TCP IP) to serve
billons of users world wide.

5. What the Internet offers?
 Sharing material
◦ World Wide Web: for sharing information in the form of
web pages
◦ File sharing – books, documents, pictures, Software, etc
◦ Audio & Video streaming
 Communication – e-mail, video/voice call, chatting
 Social interaction – facebook, twitter
 Collaboration – groups, forums
 E-learning
 E-commerce – shopping, banking, booking
 Controlling and Monitoring -

6. The Internet & the other mediums
 The Internet differs from other
mediums primarily in two things:
◦ Immediacy – Any once can access
information from anywhere and at any time
◦ Volume - The Internet offers instant access
to millions of material on countless topics.

7. Pros and Cons about the Internet
 The Internet is a self-
publishing medium,
anyone with the
necessary technical
skills can place
information on the Web
◦ Gives freedom for
publishing, but also a
nuisance if not used
unethically

8. Pros and Cons about the Internet
 It has grown into extreme proportion
◦ There is more possibility for an item you
wish to refer to be in the Internet, but
finding it needs skills.
 Availability of tools for every need
◦ More possibility to get distracted.

10. Evaluating the accuracy & reliability
 Who published the information
◦ A site maintained by a university or
government organization is probably
more reliable.
 Who wrote the information
◦ by a known expert in the field is likely to
be reliable.

11. Evaluating the accuracy & reliability
 The age of the material
◦ If you need current statistics, carefully
check the age of the material you’ve found.
 Why the material exists
◦ Many special interest groups have Web
pages. Think about whether they might
have some reason, other than pure
helpfulness, for posting information.

12. How to find what you want?
 Effective searching
 Knowing the right places
◦ Authorities
◦ University / Open educational resources
◦ Library collections
 Get help from reliable user group and
forums
 Use the available tools – Calendar,
Online forms, Online documents, Save
search histories

13. Accessing information from the web
 Directly using a URL
 Known by heart, from publications,
guessing
 Browsing from a known main page
 Search engines

14. Search engines
 Free web based text search engines
◦ Google : http://www.google.lk/
◦ Yahoo : http://www.yahoo.com/
◦ MSN : http://www.msn.com/
◦ AltaVista : http://www.altavista.com/
◦ Others : Web search engines
 Searching software, files & emails in Windows
◦ Copernic Search
 Natural Language search engines
◦ Google
◦ Ask Jeeves

15. More on searching
 Simple text search
 Weather, Dictionary, Calculations, Unit
conversions, Sports, Quick facts
 Google Advanced Search
 Google in Tamil
 Simple text search GoogleTamil
 Advanced search Google மேம்பட்ட மேடல்
 Searching in Tamil

16. Saving web pages for offline use
 Whole pages can be saved
 Part of the page; text, table, figure, etc.
 Whole web site can be saved using
software
 HTTrack
 Wget

17. Best Search engine for Your Need
 Noodletools – A little outdated, but, still
useful
◦ http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacie
s/information/5locate/adviceengine.html

18. Some more tips
 Tap into reputable sources
◦ Use .edu or .gov.
◦ Additionally, you can conduct a search for
only scholarly information.
 Subscribe to Feeds
◦ Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds is
new technology that allow subscribers an
immediate update when new information
is posted.
◦ Atom feeds

19. Some more tips
 Join or Create a Group
◦ A number of websites like Google, Yahoo and
MSN offer online groups where members can
share information.
 Understand and Use Boolean Logic or an
advanced search
◦ Boolean Logic uses the words “and”, “or” and
“not” to create relationships among search terms
and allow you to narrow your search.
 Use Synonyms, Alternate Spellings and
Related Topics
◦ For example, if you’re looking for information on
dogs, you may also want to search “puppies”,
“canines” and “pets”.

20. Some more tips
 Use Different Search Engines
 Choose a Browser That’s
Conducive to Research
◦ Some browsers allow you to add notes,
save groups of websites and have
integrated search engines that make web
research easier and faster.

21. OPEN EDUCATIONAL
RESOURCES

22. Open Educational Resources
• Champions the sharing of knowledge
worldwide to increase human intellectual
capacity.
 Can develop new resources selecting
mixing and editing existing OER
 List of OER –
◦ http://zaidlearn.blogspot.in/2008/09/101-
open-educational-resources.html
◦ OER on Wikipedia
101 Open Educational Resources

23. OER Commons

24. OCWC Search

25. Merlot

26. OpenStax CNX

27. Open textbooks for K12: Siyavula

28. Academic Earth

29. Mixed Media: Wikimedia

30. University of Minnesota:
Open academics textbook catalog

31. But, OER is not a degree awarding strategy.
Open Content: Full Courses

32. Open Content: Full Courses

33. Open Content: Library Collections

34. Open Content: Library Collections
•The Free Library
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/
•Perseus Digital Library
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/coll
ections
•Documents of Dutch East India
Company
http://databases.tanap.net/vocrecords/in
dex.cfm

35. Open Content:
Subject Area Collections

36. Open Content – Books
•Google Books Search
http://books.google.com/

37. Open Content –
Tamil book collections
 Noolaham Project –
www.noolaham.org
 Madurai Project -
http://www.projectmadurai.org/
 Noolthettam - http://noolthettam.com/

38. Open Content - Data repositories
 UCI Machine Learning Repository
http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets.h
tml
 Machine Learning Repository
http://mldata.org/

39. TOOLS FOR
COLLABORATION

40. Tools for collaboration
 User groups / Forums
 Blogs
 Chats
 Social media
 …

41. Forum
 An Internet forum, or message board,
is an online discussion site where people
can hold conversations in the form of
posted messages.
 They differ from chat rooms in that
messages are at least temporarily
archived.
 Also, depending on the access level of a
user or the forum set-up, a posted
message might need to be approved by
a moderator before it becomes visible.

42. Forum
 Forums have a specific set of jargon
associated with them; e.g. a single
conversation is called a "thread".
 Anyone can login and participate in the
conversation by posting their view.
 A discussion forum is hierarchical or
tree-like in structure: a forum can contain
a number of sub-forums, each of which
may have several topics.

43. Forum
 Depending on the forum's settings, users
can be anonymous or have to register
with the forum and then
subsequently log in in order to post
messages.
 On most forums, users do not have to
log in to read existing messages.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_foru
m

44. Forum
 http://tamilnanbargal.com/forum

45. Creating you own Forum
https://www.phpbb.com/

46. Blog
 Is a Web site, usually maintained by an
individual, with regular entries of
commentary, descriptions of events, or
other material such as graphics or video.
 Entries are commonly displayed in
reverse chronological order.
 "Blog" can also be used as a verb,
meaning to maintain or add content to a
blog.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

47. Blog -
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefi
eld

48. Popular Blogs
 http://dailytekk.com/2012/05/14/100-
useful-blogging-tools/
Popular Blogging Tools
https://www.blogger.com/
http://wordpress.com
http://www.edublogs.org