Introduction to Internet ......
For future classes: Adult and Community Education School Office
Computer, Internet (Intro) M&W 10 1:00PM-3:00PM 02/21-03/07 Vero $29.00 Mitchell
Week 1: History of the web and how it works, What you need to get there, Getting around, Browser toolbars and controls.
Feedback: In a 20 computer classroom we have only 8 people! Of those, 3 are on AOL and 3 use Outlook Express. We're scheduled to do only one week of the five on email, and that will be in Outlook Express. We practiced 4 ways of "getting to" a web site. Typing in the whole address. Modifying the domain name of an address. Typing in just the domainname.com. And guessing by trying out a domain name like Walgreens.com and getting there! Already we can surf! Sites we visited are:
http://www.msn.com which then we set as our "home" page by clicking the Tools menu, "Internet Options" and then "Use Current".
Week 2: Search engines & Favorites
Monday 2/26/01: Using keywords "Used Car Prices" we ploughed through dogpile search results page by page. Eventually we got clear links to what we were looking for: the Kelly Blue Book ( http://www.kbb.com ) and Edmunds.com
We looked at the way Yahoo lists categories where you can find sites by subject. We also looked at the way Lycos shows "featured" links before they display search results. These are companies that have paid to show up first in appropriate searches.
Once we located a site we might want to return to we put it in Favorites. The simples way is to click the favorites menu and then "Add to Favorites" and then "OK". Creating folders for favorites is a bit more complicated:
Click "Add to Favorites", then click on the "Links" folder. Then click the "New Folder" button on the right. Type your name or a subject for collecting links i.e. Betty's Links, or Automotive, Stocks, Shopping etc. Click OK and the web site where you are is saved in an easily click-able list right on your browser usually to the right of the address line.
Week 3: Downloads & file management. Email Introduction: Sending a new message, Using the Address Book, Creating mail folders.
Wednesday, Feb 28th: Discussed Shareware and Freeware but the lab filters prevented us from accessing popular download sites: Tucows and Dowload.com. Instead we downloaded a Christmas card from this site, creating a download folder on the hard drive, creating a desktop shortcut to that folder, and then "executing" the file. We then deleted the animated card, leaving the download folder for our email attachment lesson next week.
In our beginning email lesson we also practiced modifying the Microsoft Outlook layout to show all the mail folders, to drag column width for messages, as well as sort messages by clicking column headings, i.e. "From, Subject and Received". When we send new messages we were reminded to always use the address book to avoid re-typing in email addresses and making mistakes.
Week 4: E-mail, attachments and inserting pictures. Address books and how to reply and forward messages. Copy & paste from the Internet. Download images and use them for wallpaper and email.
Monday, March 5th: This was fun. Practicing many of our new skills, we searched for a photography site, saved a photograph from the web into our download folder and then attached the photo to an email. In the process, we used our draft folder to keep incomplete mail until we were ready to send it. And we used the Internet photo for wallpaper.
Also, looking for intermediate or advanced classes, we went to the SeniorNet site. From there we browsed to the web site for the local learning center.
Week 5: Chat, Newsgroups, Lists and File management review.