Section 2: Overview of the Internet

Activity

In this overview of the Internet we will learn a brief history of the Internet, a new vocabulary and look at the major tools of the Internet: the world wide web, email, telnet, FTP and Usenet.

Assignment

The first of these three assignments offers you a choice of readings.
  1. Learn a little background and history of Internet and pick up some new vocabulary! Choose one of the following two readings. Print and read the document of your choice AND mark (highlight) all the words that are new to you and look them up using one of the vocabulary resources linked below. Feel free to ask Paula to clarify anything you don't understand. Posting to the web board is a good approach for asking for clarification, since the other students can benefit from our exchange.

    Print and read Introduction to the Internet. This brief guide gives you a technical overview of what the Internet is and how it works.

    OR
    Print out and read Sterling's History of the Internet covers much of the same history and evolution of the Internet, but with a bit more human interaction!.

  2. Class Discussion Board
    You will be working in Section 2 of the Class Discussion Board.

    1. Post an original thread to the class discussion board. You may choose to discuss your experiences with the new vocabulary you are learning or you may choose one of tools to try from the list under Resources to report on.
    2. Respond to a post, in Section 2, from one of your classmates.

  3. Link Share
    Select two different resources to post and discuss on Link Share board. Choose any resource on this page, any site linked to any of these linked resources, or any relevant web site that you are already aware of. Be sure the links go in Section 2 and be sure the link works correctly. After you enter the link return to the link share board and click on the link to be sure it will correctly open the page you are citing.

    Tip: You must always begin the URL with http:// and it is usually most successful to actually visit that page and use your mouse the copy the URL directly from the browser location strip; then use your mouse to paste the URL into the link share board.

Resources

  • Beginners Central is a terrific introduction to the Internet in general and to the various tools of the Internet.

  • A Brief History of the Internet is an insightful overview of where the Internet came from.

  • Where is the Internet headed?

  • The class vocabulary list contains the most important concepts. Please study it carefully. Printing it is a good approach, then you can have it at hand when you run across these new concepts. Amaze and astound your friends and colleagues with your new command of Internet jargon!


Vocabulary

You may find all the words you need (from the Sterling article) in one of these vocabulary lists. But you might need to consult more then one. If you need any words defined that are NOT on the list, be sure to bring them to the class web board or feel free to write to Paula directly.

Tools of the Internet

Email
Email is the most important tool on the Internet.
  • ePals is a site that coordinates classrooms that want to take part in collaborative email projects.

  • There are dangers in communication for students as well as rewards. Consider this lesson on Ballad of an Email Terrorist

  • E-Mail Communication and Relationships is a long article from the Psychology of Cyberspace. You might want to bookmark this to come back to later. Or browse it, reading just those sections that interest you now.

    There are mores and rules of society for email as well as face to face exchanges. In face to face exchanges we follow rules and protocols of etiquette, in email we have Netiquette! Paula took this Workshop on Netiquette back in 1994 and it's as useful and relevant today as it was then!

  • And, finally, check out these Smiley Faces to liven up your emails!


Telnet
Telnet is one of the oldest tools of the Internet and is not in common use today. It's used to directly to, and log into, another computer connected to the Internet.This is useful for certain specialized types of accounts that run on computers using the UNIX operating system. In addition to a direct connection to a personal account, telnet can be used to connect some services. Notice how the construction of the telnet URL differs from the URL for a web page (the beginning of the URL is telnet:// instead of http://)

telnet://rainmaker.wunderground.com
National Weather Service information provided by Alden Electronics, Inc, updated each minute as reports come in over the data feed.

telnet://india.colorado.edu:13
This URL connects you to a very simple program. All this program does is tell you the exact time in the Mountain Time Zone. Then the connection is closed.

telnet://edmiston.org:8001
This telnet address is for the CORAL Reef, the talker site we will use for this class. You will usually access the Reef through the special web browser interface. But this approach shows you that this connection is fundamentally a telnet connection.

Your account was created in the in face-to-face meeting. Use the username and password that you created then.

A good first command is .map. To leave enter the .quit command. Remember, all commands begin with a dot.

telnet://locis.loc.gov
Visit the Library of Congress!


FTP: File Transfer Protocol
Another early tool on the Internet, FTP is used to transfer files. FTP was the first available method of document distribution. Today many people use the web for all document distribution, including non-hypertext materials. But FTP still has its uses. When a web becomes popular the web server can suffer a strain from responding from many hits (requests for web pages). FTP, being a lesser-used tool, can often be more responsive, faster, for downloading large files.

There are specialized FTP programs such as WS_FTP for Windows and Cute FTP for Macs. But a web browser can be used in FTP also.

Visit the FTP server at Matrix Magic and download something to read.

Download from the FTP Site

  1. Visit the Matrix Magic FTP Site at ftp://ftp.matrixmagic.com/fulton-net

  2. You'll see a list of files displayed in the browser. Netscape will treat this file listing as a list of hyperlinks that you can click to open. MSIE will treat the file listing as a window in My COmputer and you'll have to double click on the file name to open it.

  3. (A) If you choose an image:
    1. Click the Right (opposite) mouse button anywhere on the image.
    2. A little menu will pop up, select Save image As [Netscape] or Save Picture As [MSIE]
    3. Choose the folder on your hard drive to save the image in.

    (B) If you choose text

    1. Click the Browser's File menu [both Netscape and MSIE]
    2. Select Save As
    3. Choose the folder to save it in.


Usenet
Another early tool on the Internet was Usenet. These are discussion groups, similar to the class web board. Be careful with Usenet Newsgroups, they play a pretty rough game out there. If you want to participate you should study the reading on Netiquette carefully and grow a thick skin! But there are some interesting and valuable K12 discussions! There are a number of approaches to Usenet Newsgroups. The Netscape browser has a newsgroup reader built in. And there are stand- alone programs for reading newsgroups. Happily there's a web approach too. Google, famous for its search engine, now offers a web-based interface to Usenet newsgroups. You'll find a terrific overview of Usenet at Hypernews.

Visit the

  1. Google Groups
  2. In the search strip, enter k12
  3. At the top of the results page you'll see several k12 newsgroups listed that you visit. Further down the page will be a listing of individual postings that contain your search term.
  4. Visit one of the groups listed at the top of the page for your discussion. Tell us what you found and whether you found it useful.

Gopher
Gopher was the very first attempt at full text document delivery. Up to this point FTP was the only way to transfer and that method did not allow a person to view the file in advance of the transfer.With Gopher people could organize their documents in a better structure and actually display the contents. Visit this Introduction to Gopher. You will find some dead-end gopher tunnels linked here, but some are still accessible. No one uses Gopher anymore. It is included in this section just so that you will be aware of this historic tool, and so you'll be prepared if it's ever mentioned. Gopher has been replaced by the Web. but there are remnants around in the dusty corners of cyberspace.

 

The World Wide Web
The Web has replaced many of the tools listed above. The versatility of the web, with its ability to handle any media type, makes the Web the best tool we have today for sharing materials in cyberspace.



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