What is the Internet?

 The Internet is a huge collection of computers all around the world that can “talk” to each other and share information.

Things you can do on the Internet include:

           Send emails and Instant messages
           Play games with someone on the other side of the world
           Shopping
           Search for information, music and films
           Chat with others

The World Wide Web is part of the Internet. The term refers to the collection of pages of information that you can access.

What’s on the screen?

 At the top of the screen is the browser. This allows you to navigate around the web. It has a box where you can enter the address or URL (Uniform Resource locator)  of the site you wish to see. You can click on the arrows on the toolbar to move forward and back between pages that you have viewed and the Home (house) button will return you to the browser home page.

There are no censors on the Internet. Anyone in the world - companies, governments, organisations and individuals can put material on there. You use a service provider to link you to these sites, but they don’t control what information or images are there. It’s up to individuals to make sure that they behave in a way that’s safe and appropriate.

Remember too that what you read online may not necessarily be true. If you are looking for information for a homework project, it is important to know that anyone can put information on the Internet. You only have their word they are experts on the subject they are writing about. 

Use the following guide to help you find quality information from reputable sources.

Web Addresses

Sometimes a lot of information can be gained about a site from its address.

 Web addresses nearly always follow the same format. You may have noticed that they start with the same http://www. This stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol for the World Wide Web and is a standard method for viewing web pages. You may occasionally come across some addresses that contain either http://www2. or the www. these are just different parts of the internet. 

The next part of the address contains the company name/site name, which is separated from first and last part of the address by a full stop. The ones listed below are some of the most common ones that you will see:

                    .gov Government site
                    .com A commercial company
                    .org A non-commercial organisation
                    .net A network
                    .ac Academic, such as a university or college
                    .biz Business sites
                    .tv TV related sites
                    .info Sites giving information about a product or company
                    .edu Educational sites from the US

Web addresses usually end with two letters to tell you the country where the company or site are based. American sites don’t have a county identifier and will end in .com .org

                    .uk                 UK
                    .ca                 Canada
                    .za                 South Africa
                    .au                 Australia
                    .nz                 New Zealand

Examples of addresses : 

North Ayrshire Council home page is http://www.north-ayrshire.gov.uk

BBC home page is http://www.bbc.co.uk

Microsoft is http://www.microsoft.com

Personal Webpages

 You may come across some pages on the internet that may look as if they originate in a university or company but are actually someone's personal webpage. The parent organisation (the university or company) have no control over what is on these and often they contain the person’s own thoughts and beliefs. It is best to avoid them.

 You can usually identify the addresses as they often contain many of the same elements as shown below. When you see something similar to /users/jsmith123/ or the ~ (tilde) it tells you that it is a personal homepage.

 Example 1

http://www.ayrshire.ac.uk/users/jsmith123/

http://www.example.com/~johnsmith/

Hyperlinks

Many sites and pages are linked using hyperlinks. These are often blue and underlined but could be any colour at all to match the design of the page. Pictures are also used as hyperlinks. When you move the cursor over them it turns from an arrow into a hand.   When you click on it, you are telling the computer to bring that new file to your screen. If you want to go back to the last page you were looking at, use the back button on the toolbar of your browser.

 Evaluating Websites

 Finding the right information on the Internet can be like finding a needle in a haystack as there are billions of pages out there. It is important to remember the following to help you get the best information for your homework.

• Stick to educational websites

• Avoid personal name sites and blogs

• Follow the simple rules of evaluation

Questions to Ask

There are some simple rules that you should be aware of when assessing Information that you find on the internet. These are:

1. Is it clear who has written the information?
2. Are the aims of the site clear?
3. Does the site achieve its aims?
4. Is the site relevant to me?
5. Can the information be checked?
6. When was the site produced?
7. Is the information biased in any way?
8. Does the site tell you about choices open to you?