| a | weaving
a virtual web:
practical approaches to new information technologies edited by
Sarah Rilling and Eniko Csomay Student Handout for the Centre for English Teacher
Training in Budapest
Preliminary steps to access and copy information from the Web
These tasks increase students' Web skills by helping them to: a)
access an address (URL) known to the user; b) search for specific information
without knowing the address and browse in general; and c) download information.
A) The first steps: accessing a given address in 4 steps Step 1: Look for an icon that says "Netscape." Step 2: Click on it twice. Step 3: You are now at the Magyar homepage in Budapest. Notice the navigation buttons at the top of the screen: Back, Forward, ... Images, ... Open ... Click on Open and type in the following URL address: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~ts7 Step 4: Once this site is loaded, you could go up and down the screen
as you can go up and down in a word processing program. That is, you need
to click on the little arrow on the right hand side, pointing downwards
or upwards, or by pushing the keys saying 'page down' or 'page up'. Congratulations.
You have navigated your way to a Web page where you know the URL.
B) Searching for specific information The basic tool you will use is the NET SEARCH button. Click on it. a) Browsing in general When you have a specific idea in mind that you would like to find out about, you can use this strategy. For instance, if you would like to browse around, seeking information about English Departments in Australia where English might be taught as a Second or Foreign Language, you can start with the section in the search site on Education, Higher Ed, Language, Australia, etc... You will arrive at a wide range of possibilities to achieve your goal. Another example is if you are interested in the latest books available published by Heinemann (you are particularly interested in one, but you know only the title of the book Changing Perspectives in Teacher Education....), you can browse around at the Heinemann site as you can in the library. First search for Heinemann, and then begin browsing. You can find out about your topic more efficiently through indexes (Yahoo) or via search engines (Magellan, Lycra). You can start searching via topic headings or via the search boxes.... b) Focused browsing When you would like to know about one, very specific topic, go to
one of the search engines and/or indexes (see above), and type in one,
two or even more keywords to this topic in the little box provided. For
example, you would like to know whether there is anything available on
the Web concerning the APA documentation style. Type that in and see where
to go from there. Or for instance, type in paraphrasing and see whether
the information that the search engine provides you is relevant to your
needs. Maybe it is! Follow links which seem promising.
Homework: 1. Find out about youth hostel accommodation in San Francisco. 2. Find the names of major state universities for a specific state. 4. Find the library holdings of a university library. Do they have a copy of a specific book that you are interested in? Can you access the book from Budapest? C. Copying Information from the WEBThere are 2 ways to copy pages from the Web: 1) File/Save or 2) highlight, copy and paste into a word-processing program. Don't forget to reference information properly taken from the Web. A guide to citing electronic sources can be found at <http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/mla.html>
|
