KYVL: Information Skills Tutorial, Unit 1: Tips and tricks to use the web better
Making the WWW work for you
Information Skills Tutorial
Unit 1: Web Basics
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Topic: Tips and tricks to use the web better

Lesson
Example


Lesson

Your web browser can remember these sometimes arcane addresses for you. These are called "bookmarks" or "favorites".

Netscape:To set a bookmark in Netscape, go up to the "bookmarks" menu and choose "add bookmark." Nothing will appear to happen, but if you go back up to the "bookmarks" menu, you will notice that the page you are on has been added to your bookmarks list, your personal list of places you would like to return to.

Internet Explorer: To set a favorite in IE, go up to the "favorites" menu, and chose "add to favorites". A dialog box will appear, asking if you want to be updated with the page changes or not. The default is "just add to favorites", that is probably what you will use most of the time.

The Web can bring you very up-to-date information (if the people maintaining the pages keep them up-to-date).

If you set a bookmark for the New York Times on the Web today, and go back to that site in 6 months, you will get the current day’s New York Times. When the authors at the other end update their information, it is instantly available to everyone on the Web. Unfortunately, not everyone updates their site as often as they should. Sometimes it is hard to tell if the site has been updated or not.

There are tools to help you find pages you might be interested in; they are called indexes or search engines.

There are many projects out there that are trying to provide pointers for people. Let’s take a look at one, Yahoo. There are many different indexes to the web, you might like Lycos or Excite or one of the other indexes.

There is no way to know everything that is out there is accurate information.

Help yourself: set bookmarks/favorites to remember good things
Help each other: let others know about good things
Use Indexes (like Yahoo)
Look at where the information is coming from ".edu" vs. ".org" vs. ".gov"

Example

Suppose you did a search, looking for speeches from the President, and found these sites:
a. http://www.whitehouse.gov
b. http://www.rnc.org
c. http://www.cnn.com
d. http://www.uark.edu

What would be the possible differences?
The .gov site is a government site, and might provide the full-text of speeches, but they might leave out any "unprepared" remarks.
The .org site is an organization of some kind. It could be pro-president or anti-president. In this case, it is the Republican National Committee.
The .com site is a commercial business. In this case, it is a news organization, but they can be biased as well.
The .edu site is an educational institution. You will see the widest diversity here, from novices who are expressing opinions based on limited knowledge, to experts putting today’s events into a greater perspective. It is not always easy to tell which is which.


Unit 1: 4 of 15


Last Updated: 04/18/2000
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