internet manual - intermediate

written by: p.humayun khan

intermediate topics:

email email factoids features common to all email applications

email addresses "smileys" & "emoticons" address books distribution lists
configuring email applications abbreviations forwarding replying
receiving and sending carbon copy folders or mailboxes
attachments signature file

activities email activities other activities

saving information to your computer html pages text & graphics

social implications beginners

intermediate advanced

general information structure of the internet urls

references/links

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e-mail addresses

in order for you to receive electronic mail (e-mail), you need an e-mail address
(just like you need an address to receive letters in the regular postal system).
an e-mail address consists of two parts: the user id and the domain, which are
separated by the @ symbol. your user id is what you use to log on to your internet
service provider (isp). while some user id's resemble the person's actual name
(rob jones = robjones, rachel s. wong = rswong), others are not as obvious (marsha
thompson = mt295b). the domain is the name of the person's isp. suppose rob jones'
isp is "istar.ca" (this is the domain). when the user id and domain are arranged
to form an e-mail address, they look like this: robjones@istar.ca - this is the
complete e-mail address, and would be pronounced, "rob jones at i star dot c a".
note: no spaces are allowed in e-mail addresses. for example, "rob jones@istar.ca"
would not be a valid e-mail address. also, there is never more than one @ symbol
in an e-mail address.

for your information, all e-mail addresses currently must end with one of the
following:

.com .edu .gov .int .mil .net .org

or, a two-letter country code. for example, the country code for canada is ".ca",
and for germany is "de" (for deutschland).

configuring your e-mail application :

before you can receive or send any e-mail messages, you must also first configure
the e-mail application (program) on your computer. (in windows 95, follow the
following menus to get to where you can configure your internet connection: start
� settings � control panel � internet. then, you must also configure the actual e-
mail application you will use, whether it is netscape mail, eudora, pegasus, ms
internet mail, etc.) if you do not know all the information you need, contact your
isp (or your teacher, if you have e-mail through your school).

[the following information was found on the polaris internet guide site - see
reference list.]

"following is a brief description of all of the information required by most e-

mail applications:

pop account - your pop (post office protocol) account is simply your e-mail
address. your e-mail software must know your e-mail address in order to send and
receive e-mail.

real name - this is obviously your real name. more specifically, it is the name
that you want to appear in e-mail messages you send to others, either in
parenthesis beside your e-mail address, or by itself, depending on the recipient's
e-mail software.

smtp server - your smtp (simple mail transfer protocol) server is simply your
isp's e-mail server. it is often your provider's domain name with mail. or smtp.
before it (for example, netstar.com would be mail.netstar.com or
smtp.netstar.com). if you don't know your smtp server, contact your isp.

return address - this is the e-mail address that will be used as a return address
on all of your outgoing e-mail. with most applications, you can leave this blank
unless you would like all of your recipients' replies to be directed to an e-mail
address other than your own.

check for mail every x minutes - some e-mail software will automatically check for
new e-mail after a specified amount of time has passed. this is usually only used
if you leave your e-mail software running on your computer all of the time.

signature - if you have a signature (usually 2 or 3 lines of text that appear at

the bottom of your e-mail messages) text file, enter the location of that file
here. otherwise, you can leave it blank."
(see also "signature file" later in this manual)

receiving and sending e-mail :

if your e-mail application is correctly configured, then to receive e-mail all you
need to do is click on the correct icon (sometimes called "get mail") or select
the appropriate item on a pull-down menu. to send an e-mail message, you must
first make sure you have correctly entered the e-mail address (of the person to
whom you are sending the message) at the "to:" prompt. then simply click on the
"send" icon or select "send" on a pull-down menu.
note: in order to send or receive e-mail you will require a user id and password
from your isp. (see the description of internet service provider in this manual)

features common to all e-mail applications :

address books
an address book is, predictably, a record of e-mail addresses (that you have
entered). for each e-mail address you enter the following information: an alias
(nickname), the actual e-mail address (userid@domain), and the name of the person
or organisation whose e-mail address you are entering. the alias (nickname) is a
word (with no spaces - it does not have to be a real word) that you choose to
represent that person. for example, suppose you want to enter rob jones' e-mail
address (from earlier in this manual) into your address book. you might choose the
alias to be "rob", "robj", or "bubba" (it is your choice). his e-mail address is
"robjones@istar.ca", and his name is "rob jones" (no tricks here). the reason for
an alias is so that you can simply enter the alias into the "to:" prompt instead
of having to type in the whole e-mail address, which you might not have memorised.
the e-mail address recognises the alias (if you have entered it into the address
book) and knows to which e-mail address this message is supposed to go.

distribution lists :

suppose you coach a hockey team of 20 players, each of whom has an e-mail address.
instead of calling each of them letting them know about practices and games, you
e-mail that information to them. however, in this case, it is quite tedious to
enter each player's e-mail address or alias. therefore, you can use a distribution
list.

basically, a distribution list is just an entry in the address book. however,

instead of just entering one alias, one e-mail address, and one name, you enter
one alias (for the whole distribution list), and the e-mail address and name for
each person you want to include in this list. in the example given, you might
enter "hockeyteam" as your alias, and then enter each player's e-mail address and
name.

once you have entered this information, every time you want to send a message to
the hockey team, all you need to enter at the "to:" prompt is the alias
"hockeyteam" (without the quotation marks). once you have entered your message and
you send it, each address (person) that you entered in the "hockeyteam"
distribution list will receive it.

forwarding

this feature allows you to send a message you have received from one person to
someone else. for example, suppose your friend deepa sends you a humorous e-mail
message. you think it is hilarious, and you want to send it to your friend john.
to do this, simply open the message to read it, and then either click on the
"forward" icon or select "forward" in a pull-down menu. then enter john's e-mail
address (or alias, if you have entered his e-mail address into the address book)
at the "to:" prompt. you have the option of writing your own message to go along
with the forwarded message but you do not have to. then just send the message like
you would normally do with a message you wrote, and john will receive it.

replying

this feature allows you to reply to a message you have received from someone.
suppose george sent you a message entitled "hello", and you want to reply to his
message. to do this, simply open george's message, and then select "reply", either
by clicking on an icon or from a pull-down menu. most e-mail applications will
then ask you whether you would like to include the message (george's message) in
your reply. (this is called "quoting".) if you want to include george's message in
your reply (for example, if he asked a question and you want to include that
question in your reply to remind george of what he wrote), indicate that by
clicking on "yes". in that case, his message will automatically be entered as your
message. (if you choose not to include george's message in your reply, then your
message is empty.) then you type in your reply to george's message.
note: if you use "reply", you will not need to enter the e-mail address at the
"to:" prompt - the address will automatically be there. also, the subject will
automatically be "re: hello" (in this example).

carbon copy (cc)

when you are writing/preparing a message to send away, below the "to:" prompt is
the "cc:" prompt. the cc stands for carbon copy (referring to the black carbon
sheet used to make copies of receipts, etc). if you want to send a copy of your e-
mail message to people in addition to the person to whom you are writing the e-
mail message, then you enter those people's e-mail addresses at the "cc:" prompt.
for example, suppose you are writing an e-mail message to a friend to let him/her
know when you will leave school (or work) to pick him/her up to go to a baseball
game. you also want to let your parents know when you will be leaving school/work
(they are very protective). to avoid writing another message to your parents, you
just add their e-mail address at the "cc:" prompt, and they will also receive a
copy of the e-mail message you send to your friend.

folders or mailboxes

on computers, all files are saved in folders (directories). this is also the case
for all e-mail messages that come to your computer. all messages that you receive
or send are stored in folders, sometimes called mailboxes. the messages that you
receive are always stored in the "inbox" folder, until you delete them or move
them elsewhere. the messages that you send are also stored in a folder, often
called "outbox". in addition to these two standard folders (mailboxes), you may
wish to create more folders in order to organise all the messages you receive or
send. for example, if you receive a lot of messages from one friend, you might
want to create a folder just for those messages.

all e-mail applications allow you to create new folders, but the exact way to do
that is not always the same for different applications. (see your e-mail
application's help files) it is also usually quite easy to switch from one folder
to another. (again, see your e-mail application's help files if it is not obvious
how to do so)

attachments

sometimes you may have created a file (for example, a wordperfect or lotus 1-2-3
file) that someone else might need or want. however, you cannot include this file
as part of your e-mail message because the format is different. what you can do
then is attach the file (as a separate part) to your message. in this case, the
file is called an attachment file. when you send your message, the attachment file
is also sent along with your e-mail message.

to attach a file to a message, some e-mail applications allow you to directly

enter the path and file name at the "attachment:" prompt (a couple of lines under
the "to:" prompt). for example, i would enter "c:\lotus\work\123\expenses.123" if
i wanted to attach that "expenses.123" file to my e-mail message. however, for
most e-mail applications you have to click on the "attachment" icon (or select
"attachment" from a pull-down menu) and browse to find the file that you want to
attach.

signature file
in regular letters written on paper, at the end of each letter you write your
name, and sometimes other information (such as address, phone number, fax number,
a slogan, etc). you do the same with e-mail messages. however, it can be tedious
to always type your name and other information at the end of each message. to
avoid this, you can create a text file that contains all the information you would
like to include at the end of each e-mail message, and save this file to your
computer. this file is called a signature file. then if you have configured your
e-mail application to include that signature file with each e-mail message (see
the "configuring your e-mail application" section), it will always appear when you
create a new message.

smileys and emoticons :

writing a personal letter using nothing but a standard alpha-numeric keyboard is

an extremely difficult task. this is because people usually communicate using more
than just words. we convey emotions, facial expressions, and other subtle body
movements that help add "flavour" to our sentences. believe it or not, but this
can all be accomplished in the world of e-mail, as well. to aid the art of e-mail
communications, early internet users developed a system of characters using
different combinations of standard ascii characters that represent human emotions.
these characters are called smiley's, or emoticons (pronounced ee-mote-eh-cons). a
smiley is read by leaning your head down toward your left shoulder and looking at
the characters sideways, reading from left to right. for example, a simple happy
face is:

:-)

although you can use smiley's anywhere in your message, try not to over use these
characters -- too many can make your message hard to read. here are some common
smiley's:

emotions and comments: descriptives: symbolic:

:-) happy/funny 8-) wears glasses :- male
;-) winking/sarcastic :-# wears braces >- female
:-\ undecided :-? smokes a pipe |-o birth
:-( sad :-{ wears a moustache 8-# death
:-o oops!

remember, there is no "official" set of smiley's, so be creative! if you need

help, check out the unofficial smiley dictionary. in addition to smiley's and
emoticons, you can also add emotion to your actual e-mail text! for example, you
can shout on-line, or add _emphasis_ to a word, if you like. shouting is
accomplished simply by typing the part to be shouted in all caps. because typing
in all caps is considered shouting in the internet world, you need to be sure that
you don't leave your caps lock key on while typing e-mail messages, because
everyone will think that you're shouting at them. it's just not polite.

as previously mentioned, emphasis can also be placed on a word or group of words.

this is done by placing an underscore (the _ character - typed by "shifting" your
dash key on most keyboards) before and after the word or groups of words to be
emphasised. for example, "i'm _only_ 43 years old." in this example, the word,
"only," would be emphasised. if you were to say the example aloud, you would raise
the pitch of your voice slightly on the word, "only." although the "underscore-
emphasis" technique isn't used as often as the "all-caps-shouting" method, both
can be found quite frequently on the internet.
internet abbreviations:

some abbreviations commonly used in e-mail and other messages on the internet are
as follows:

btw - by the way

c-ya - see you later
faq - frequently asked questions
fwiw - for what it's worth
imho - in my humble opinion
lol - laughing out loud
otoh - on the other hand
rtfm - read the @%&!^ manual! (read the faq)
tia - thanks in advance

possible email activities

one possibility for using e-mail is to set up "e-mail buddies". this idea is
similar to pen pals but is electronic instead. it could be set up with another
class within the school, one in another city, or even one in another country. you
could also have the students e-mail you and have them carry out certain activities
(i.e. include attachments).

general information about the internet

structure of the internet :

in order to connect to the internet, your computer first connects to your isp (see
"internet service provider" earlier in this manual). your isp, in turn, is
connected to other computer servers which direct any information that your
computer sends or requests. for example, if you are browsing on the world wide
web, and click on a link to a website in germany, the server that holds that
website (in germany) sends information addressed to your computer (because your
isp sent your address to that website when you clicked on the link). this
information is passed from one server to the next in germany, until it comes to a
server in canada, where the information is directed eventually to your isp's
server, and then to your computer. another example would be if you have an e-mail
buddy in japan. when you send her/him an e-mail message, the domain tells your
isp's server which server to pass the message on to, so that it eventually arrives
at a server in japan, and the message is eventually sent to your e-mail buddy's
isp in japan. there s/he can access the message from her/his computer.

url

url stands for uniform resource locator. a url is an address on the world wide
web, telling your computer how to find a certain web site. an [fake] example of a
url is:
http://www.helloworld.com/messages/public/fred_and_wilma.htm
"http" stands for hypertext transport protocol. it tells the computer what
protocol to use when loading the website. "www.helloworld.com" is the domain of
the server that holds this website. "/messages/public" give the directory (folder)
specifications of the file to load, and "fred_and_wilma.htm" is the name of the
file that is loaded.

saving information from the internet to your computer

i) saving html pages to the hard drive

to save an entire html page that you find while browsing on the world wide web,
just click on the "save" icon, or select "save" on a pull-down menu (usually the
"file" menu). then specify the folder (directory) where you wish to save that web
page, and specify the name you would like to give that file. finally, click on
"save" or "ok", and the web page will be saved at the location you specified.

if you later want to look at that web page, you do not need to browse on the world
wide web again. instead, in your web browser (netscape, ms internet explorer,
etc.) select "open" or "open file" and enter the directory specifications and file
name of the page you had earlier saved, and click "open" or "ok". the web page
will appear in the browser just as if you had loaded it from the world wide web.

ii) saving text and graphics from web pages

if you want to save some text from a web page, just highlight that text with the
mouse, then click on "copy" in the "edit" drop-down menu. you can then paste that
text to any word processor, such as wordperfect or ms word, and save the
information using the word processor.

if you want to save a graphic (picture) from a web page, point your mouse pointer
to the graphic and click your right mouse button. a menu will appear. click on the
appropriate menu item (e.g., in netscape: "save image as..."). specify the folder
and file name where you want to save the graphic, and click on "save" or "ok". the
graphic will then be saved as a file on your computer. to view the graphic, you
can either open it like you would an entire html web page (see above), or open the
graphic file using a graphics application.

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social implications of the internet:

beginner:
- many people "surf" for recreation instead of watching tv or other activities.
- people e-mail to communicate rather than calling (telephone) or writing snail-
mail.
- all different kinds of information are available at the click of a mouse button.
- the internet can be used as an educational tool.
- what is appropriate on-line behaviour (netiquette)?
- possible activity: have students conjecture about what the role of the internet
will be in some future year (2015?).

intermediate:
- business will be (and is being) done over the internet. instead of physically
going to stores or offices to purchase merchandise or services, or ordering
merchandise over the phone or through the postal system, people are, and will do
that over the internet.
- people use the internet for work, including researchers who research on the
internet.
- how secure is information on systems that have internet interface? included are
the following examples: transmission of banking and credit card information;
hackers breaking into servers on the net (e.g., hackers from israel and sudbury
who broke into fbi and nasa systems)
- the internet enables a sort of global community, instead of a local community.
- what happens to institutions like libraries, museums, or even work offices
(e.g., if people work at home over the internet)?
- viruses over the internet could potentially infect millions of computers if a
virus isn't caught in time.
- information overload - there is so much info on the internet, but with the huge
volumes, is it really such a good resource, or is there too much junk info?

advanced:
- the problem of plagiarism is quite prominent since information available over
the internet is accessible for anyone to download.
- how can copyright be enforced in an age where data is easily available over the
internet?
- teleconferencing is becoming more viable for business, schools, etc.
- what about "cyber relationships", which are a reality? is society losing the
personal touch because of the internet?
- the free speech debate - should there be censorship? is it even possible to
censor on the internet? (e.g. pornography, hate sights, instructions on how to
purchase or make weapons, etc.) who, if anyone, should monitor/regulate the
internet?
- there are many technical issues when it comes to the internet: slow speed due to
so many people getting on the internet; the internet is a huge system, but what if
it ever crashes? - can we continue to expand it at the current rate?
- what about gender issues? - computers are not only for boys, but why are males
more involved in computers and the internet that females? what can/should be done
about it, if anything?
- what about social inequity? wealthy students have access to good technology, but
often poor students do not. how can this inequity be dealt with?

other activities

* have the students try to represent the structure of the internet visually,
either using pencil and paper, or a drawing application on the computers.

* to teach about current issues involving the internet such as security, students
could be assigned projects. one possibility is to have students investigate
purchasing over the internet and how they would have to give a credit card number
and the dangers involved with this.

* in terms of monitoring the internet and investigating its dangers, students

could explore software applications that are out there such as cybernanny that are
intended to protect young people against the negative aspects of the internet.
students could explore school and business guidelines involving internet use and
then report back on some of the dangers of the internet and what is being done
about them.

* to try to determine where the internet is going, students could again use the
internet itself. they could go to various websites, and practice their e-mailing
skills to talk to various people around the world about which direction they think
the internet is headed in.