Hello, welcome to the "index page" of my short course on using the Internet to teach. I hope you are able to get something new from this instruction, and I also hope you network amongst yourselves to help overcome any technical or other problems you may have setting up your instruction via the Internet.
We are very fortunate as educators to have this new technological vehicle at our disposal. But, like any technology, if we do not have a good purpose for its use, then it will never be effective.
In this very short course, you should be able to do the following:
1. Understand what a "home page" is and how you can use the school or other server to establish your own presence for your students.
2. Use the provided "template" of an education home page to create your own site utilizing "hypertext links".
3. Understand the use of the Internet for educational research and also understand the limitations of utilizing the Internet in and out of the classroom.
Now, to begin with, I want to teach you what "hypertext" is and how you can use it on your own home page. To do this, I will first connect you with a page on this server. Many people have written about the technology of the Internet and its use to educators. I have collected a few of these articles for your perusal. I use a program (as do my students) called the "Electric Library" to find these articles you are about to read.
When you are using hypertext in your documents, you must understand that "hypertext" is when the user (reader) clicks on this special text (usually underlined), and he/she will be sent to another page (either in the same directory or to another URL, or location on the Internet--which could be across the globe). Do this. Click on the following hypertext: E-Library (Note: You can get back to this page by clicking on the "back button" at the upper-left corner of the browser.)
Notice how you were immediately taken to the web site of the Electric Library! This is how you connect to the URL of your choice. Later, when you use the "template," you will see how you can use this hypertext linking to give your students connections to a variety of sources on the Net.
Next, I'll connect you to an article on the Grossmont server. Click on this hypertext:
See how you are transported to the article that I collected from my research at the E-Library? You can do this for your students as well. You can do the research and place the articles you want them to read in the directory of your "web site".
Now, I want you to see how this was done. You should be inside the Netscape 4.0 Browser. There is a "File" column at the top of this page. Click on the words "File" once with your left mouse button and a menu will pop up. Holding the left button down, move the mouse pointer down until the blue color covers the words "Edit Page." This page will be changed into an "editing" page. You must first "save" the page onto your 3.5" disk (the "A" drive).
Now, you can see how I established the "links" for the hypertext words on this page. Simply drag your cursor over the hypertext until it is shadowed, then release the button on your mouse. Next, go to the word "link" at the top of this page. Click on it once. This should bring up the menu where I typed in the URL address to take you where I wanted you to go. In the case of the E-Library address, you can see that the text is linked to: http://www.elibrary.com. This is the "address" of E-Library on the Internet. So, whenever you wish to create a "link" somewhere you think is beneficial to your students, you can do this to create hypertext. Next, if you do the same with the "editorial" hypertext, you can see that I linked the hypertext word "editorial" to the "html" formatted document on your disk called "editorial.html". Html stands for "hypertext mark-up language." This is the special coding that is created when you use programs such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer to create your pages (like this one you are now reading). You can also go here to learn how to use this software (online hypertext book).
If you want a quick online tutorial to create HTML, then click here!
The following links are to the articles on using the Internet in education that I collected from E-Library. I subscribe to this service at $8.95 per month, and I find it is a great asset to my classroom work. Students (or you) can also subscribe free for two weeks to see how it works.
1.School Counselors and the Internet
2. Some Myths About Using the Internet for Education
3. What Employers are Looking for Today
4. Example of an Online College
5. Educator's On-Ramp to Software
6. How Some Schools Can Use Technology
7. Students Who Use the Internet
Next, I want you to understand how you can set up your own pages on the Internet for all your students to access and use. We all can use what is known as "File Transfer Protocol" or FTP to "download" our html formatted pages so that we can have a presence on the Internet. The people in the local school computer lab can help you do this. I am simply going to tell you how it is done. If you want to do your own transfer of files, you can get the software you'll need (WFTP) at the following shareware location: http://tucows.iwebstudio.com/
Simply download the software to your hard drive and install it according to the instructions.
The "easy" way to do this is to create your pages first and then let Kats or someone in the computer facility put them on the server for you. If you are a person who likes to constantly work and "fine tune" your site (like me), then you will get your school server "ID and password" and be able to use the WFTP software to download the html files yourself! I can help you with this as well, but it takes more time than we have today.
Did I say "create pages"? Yes, now you will learn how to create your very own educator's site on the Internet! First, I want you to see a "template" I developed that you can use to get started. Click on the following hypertext to bring up the template in a browser window. After you have brought up this template, click on the "edit column" to see how you can put in your own features. You must first "save" the template to your 3.5" disk. Click here to see the educator's home page template. Please note how these hypertext links go nowhere. To create your own links, you must create them the same way I showed you earlier by clicking on the link column and typing in the address of where you want the user to go when he/she clicks on the text. You may substitute any html or URL address you want corresponding to the content of your class/lesson plan. You can also see what advantages there are to using hypertext pages in education on the Web by clicking here: advantages
To add a graphic to this template, you simply click on the graphic in the template twice and add a new one from your hard drive, Internet location, CD-ROM drive, or 3.5" disk. Try this now.
When you have developed your own page from your template, you must save the "table of contents" or "home page" with a special file name and extension. For home pages placed on a web server, the home page usually has an index page that is called something like: index.html or some other title.
This document page (index.html) will be the first page your student or user sees when he/she types your site's address into his/her web browser. It is important that you make this page attractive and that it serves the purpose of linking the reader to all those pages and sites that serve the purpose of your course of learning.
Finally, I have provided you with a set of pre-researched "addresses" or "bookmarks." These were gathered by me to assist you in your quest to publish and advertise the best possible site for your needs. You may access these by clicking here: bookmarks
You can visit these bookmarked sites at your leisure. I am certain you can find many more to add to this list. If you want to place my bookmarks in your web browser at home, then simply copy the file "bookmark.html" into the directory that contains your Netscape browser (usually: program files/netscape/program/). I hope you can use many of the suggestions and tutorials provided. The Internet succeeds because people work together to make it succeed!
If you become a writer who wants to publish on the Internet, then you should check-out my new book The Digital Scribe: A Writer's Guide to Electronic Media
Also, if you want to read an online edition of the book that inspired my text, then you can visit Colin Haynes's PAPERLESS PUBLISHING
Do your students need ideas or help with their research? This site is the best college writers' site on the Internet: http://www.roch.edu/dornweb/campus.htm
One of the most fascinating applications that I use for online Internet instruction is the new version of Asymetrix ToolBook II Instructor (5.01). You can load these newly created test "books" onto your site and the student can interact with them over the web. Students can answer quizzes, give essay responses, and all of this can be done using multimedia. In addition, you can keep track of their scores and have these emailed to your home. The student simply downloads a free Netscape plug-in to play ToolBooks called "Neuron". You can get one here:
http://www.asymetrix.com/products/toolbook2/neuron/dlneuron.html
If you want to see a demo of a business training application that I did called "Cross-Cultural Relations: Doing Business With Other Countries," you may download it here (be sure to install Neuron in your Netscape or Explorer Browser before playing this demo):
http://www.gcccd.cc.ca.us/~jmusgrav/demo/
If you don't have a copy of Winzip to unzip my demo, you can get it here:
I have donated a copy of CBT ToolBook software to the CALM lab. You can create books from the network, or, if you have the money, I would advise buying yourself a copy of the latest Instructor II. You can see more about this software here:
Finally, if you want to get into detail to develop your own classroom home page for your students, and do much more, then go to Global School Net's Tutorial.
This tutorial will teach you how to effectively use the Internet in your classroom.
You may also want to include an oline Newsgroup for your class. If so, a British Columbia University offers you a way to do this. You can check it out at: http://bscw.gmd.de/GettingStarted.html
This concludes my presentation. You may keep the disk I provided, to use on your own. I hope all of you create your own presence on the web and begin to use the Internet to teach in and outside of the classroom. As Jesse Jackson recently said about the role of the teacher in the coming century, "You can no longer be the sage on the stage. You must learn to be the guide on the side." To many instructors schooled in the old "lecture method," computers and the Internet may seem too complex and unworthy (see the Myths article) to fully implement in the classroom. However, to those of us who believe in the power of sharing information and the speed of well researched and well developed web pages and multimedia books, then the use of this Internet and its technology becomes a challenge to greatness rather than a hindrance. Personally, I have always wanted to guide my students to their greatest ability, and I see using the Internet as simply an additional tool that can help simplify my teaching task and make their lives easier as well.
Take care, and I'll see you in Cyberia!