Exercise 1: Basic Internet Skills

This online exercise is designed to demonstrate and test basic internet skills and techniques. Most of these are very simple and some of you will be familiar with most of them. For others, many will be new. Once you have mastered these skills, navigating the world wide web and using the information found there will be much easier. Note: these directions assume that you are using Netscape as your browser.

Let's start with some simple procedures about moving around on the web. Internet addresses are known as URLs. Do you know what URL stands for? If so, type the answer here:
If not, click on Glossary of Internet terms and find the answer. You'll also find an explanation of the structure of a URL there. Use the back button to return to this page.

Sometimes hypertext links are configured to open a new window. You can switch back and forth between the new window and the old one (in this case, this page) by clicking on the buttons along the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. Keep this in mind as you proceed.

URLs are sometimes long and complicated, and if you need to copy one, it's always best to cut and paste it rather than type it out. Can you see the URL for this page? If not, click on View-->Show-->Location Toolbar. Now place your cursor anywhere on top of that URL and click once; the entire URL should be highlighted. Now click here to access a site with a very long URL. Follow the procedure above to highlight the URL, then right click and then click copy. Close that window to return to this page. Locate your cursor in the box below, then right click and then click paste to transfer the URL.
Note: You can use this same procedure to copy and paste a URL into a word-processing document or an email message.

Sometimes URLs change, or you are given a slightly incorrect one. You can often find the webpage you are looking for by consecutively deleting the filename or subdirectory furthest to the right in the URL. For example, suppose you want to access a list I created a while ago of all Rutgers-Camden courses that had an online component. I mistakenly tell you it is: http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/~wood/ccas/courses/techcourses.htm
Use the procedure above to find the list of courses, and when you do, copy and paste its correct URL into the box below:

The same kind of cut and past procedure can be used to copy text from a webpage. Sometimes you may want to save the webpage to your hard drive or a floppy disk, using the File-->Save As command. But suppose you just want to copy a sentence or a paragraph? Simply highlight the text, right click and click copy, and then switch to the file you want to place it in and paste it in by right clicking and then clicking paste. To practice this, go to a "Fact Sheet" on Corporations and the Globalization of Poverty and cut and paste the quote at the beginning from the UN Human Development Report into the box below:

Note: You could "take notes" by inserting chunks of text into a word-processor file; however, be sure to retain the URL for proper attribution later.

Sometimes you may want to search a webpage to see if it has information about something you are interested in. Suppose you've read "The Internet and Poverty" and remember that there is a figure in the report about what proportion of people in Africa have access to television. Click on Edit, then Find in Page, and search for the figure by typing in "television." (Hint: it will take a few clicks on "Find Next.") Enter the percent below.

Let's explore just a few of Netscape handier toolbar features at the top of your
screen. Suppose you want to return to a website you visited earlier. You can hit the back button a couple of times to return to it, but a quicker way is to click on Go. However, Go only includes a limited number of prior sites, and it does not include sites for which a new window was opened. Furthermore, its record of sites visited is erased each time you close the program. However, Netscape keeps a record of all the sites you have visited for a period of days, depending on how your preferences are configured. To see this, Click on Communicator, then History--> Tools--> History. Find the list of Rutgers-Camden courses you visited before. Access it once again by double clicking on its record in History. Copy and paste in the textbox below the name of the first course on that list.

One of a browser's most useful tools is bookmarking. You probably know how to bookmark sites--just click Bookmarks and then Add Bookmark. But it is also very handy to know how to set up folders and file bookmarks directly within it. Let's create one for this course. Click Bookmarks, then Edit Bookmarks. Then click on File, then New Folder. Change the name to Internet Course, then OK. Now let's bookmark this course within this folder. Click on the following URL:

Now click Bookmarks, then File Bookmarks, then Internet Course. To see if it is there, now click again on Bookmarks, but this time then move your cursor over Internet Course, then Sociology and the Internet Course homepage. Click below when you have successfully completed this task.

Sometimes when you bookmark a page, the page name is absent or vague. For example, click on the following URL and bookmark it: http://www.bbcc.ctc.edu/~joer/. Now check the bookmark: it says TCAS, which stands for Thinking Clearly About Science. In the future, however, you may not remember what TCAS stands for. To give this bookmark a new name, Click Bookmarks, Edit Bookmarks, highlight a bookmark and click Edit--> Bookmark Properties. Change TCAS to Thinking Clearly About Science by changing the name in the dialog box. Then click ok.

Suppose you want to send this web page to a friend. Click on File, then Send Page. An email dialog box will pop up. For this exercise, type in your own email address and click on send. When you receive the email it will include both the URL and the web page.

One other toolbar feature we will look at is the Address Book. Click on Communicator--> Address Book. This will open your address book, in which you may or may not have any names. Now open a piece of email from someone not in your address book. Click on their name and/or email address in the section at the top indicating from whom the message is from. This will create a new card to add to your address book. Modify it if necessary, then click OK. Now open your address book again and see if the name is there.

Plugins are programs that run in conjunction with your browser when you access certain types of files on the internet. In this last section you will examine the capabilities supported by four plugins: Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, Quicktime, and Shockwave. All of these plugins are available on all computers in the Rutgers labs; if you haven't already, you may want to download and install them on your computer at home, if you have one and if it has internet access. Note: in the labs you may need to use headphones if your computer does not have speakers.

Then click on Vital Statistics for the 1999 edition. Once Adobe Acrobat opens the files (this may take a minute), you will see Figure 2.1 on the racial/ethnic distribution of AIDS deaths. Which racial or ethnic group had the highest number of AIDS deaths in 1996 and 1997?

save time by dragging the slider two notches to the right
when the RealPlayer Window comes up
(you may have to click on it on the bottom toolbar)

Who is the professor from a major East Coast university talking with Marty Moss-Coane about the internet and college cheating? (You can move the slider forward a bit to skip over the news summary.)

Now let's view a video clip in RealPlayer. Go to Rutgers-Camden Music Professor Julianne Baird's website. Click on Audio/Video Selections, then TV Appearances. Click on Cable/DSL/T1 for the State of the Arts program. Who is the moderator of this interview with Julianne Baird?

click on one of the episodes to see more (although it's basically an advertisement for the series, not the series itself).
Were you able to see the animation?
Yes
No