At top of screen, there is a <- or BACK
button
to help you get around. Click on Edit to Search
any
page: use Find.
Help with this and other Web sites
About this Help page: If you
have questions, suggestions, or help that you think should go here, please
email me.
This site is for all students. People who
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are working and do not have much time to meet with teachers
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have English problems
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are very shy (though it is part of your academic responsibility to ask
questions in class.)
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need a little more help
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are interested in more than what goes on in the classroom
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would like to be able to ask questions right when they think of them, at
home
This page is for people who are relatively new at
using computers and/or the Internet.
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Safety First
When you link outside your own machine, that is,
use the Internet for information, by clicking on a "Home page" or by sending
or receiving email, you need to watch out.
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Most important is not to get an infection (a "virus")that
could ruin all your work or the work on the machine you are using.
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The next, is to prevent others from getting a virus
because it could even sit waiting in your machine ready to get sent to
other people by hiding in email messages or document attachments, sound
and picture files.
The following sites have software available FREE for personal
computer use:
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http://www.zonealarm.com
has free software you can download. Go there and you should
not have to worry about virus problems.
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If are considering shopping online, go to http://zonelog.co.uk
to download the security monitor for the zonealarm firewall system.
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you need not worry if you use hotmail.com, so they
say, but never open an email that is a "stranger" to you.
Also, do not expect anyone to open a message from you if there is nothing
in the subject heading space, or if you are using a "creepy" handle (email
or chatroom name.)
~ courtesy bj, http://www.geocities.com/bvgftr2/bj.html
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About spam
or unsolicited email.
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By the way, some of your computers will not accept email from me because
they "think" videotron.ca is a spamming company. You will
have to edit your mail "preferences" to permit .ca
messages.
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About icq, chatrooms and so on: How can
you possible know for sure that the person you are "talking" with is actually
who or what they say they are?
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SEX & PORN INDUSTRY IS THE BIGGEST SOURCE OF 'NET INCOME
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Never give out your residential address unless someone
you know in person, can vouch for the new friend.
More about Viruses, Privacy and Security:
Any time you go online you have opened a two-way connection. Think
of leaving a telephone open in your room through which people can hear
everything. Now, think that they can send invisible elves to do damage
in your room.
This leaves you open to hackers who may or may not be mischievous
and others who may not even be aware that they are intruding.
Everyone must have a program to protect themselves. The most popular
ones are McAfee, and Norton (by Symantec.) Remember to keep them
up to date and install the latest "definitions."
Did your computer or diskettes get the 3-part
Matrix
'trojan horse'/worm/backdoor virus?
Read about it at http://www.leprechaun.com.au/
and get a free download of VirusBusters.
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TUCOWS
has free software of all types. Easy downloading, too.
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About using the Internet as a Resource:
Web sites are rarely considered first class resources,
for at least three reasons:
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Anyone
can have a web site. You really have no way of knowing who
is a true expert and who is an amateur, and who is 'just goofin' around;"
not to mention, who is up to making mischief.
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A page can change hundreds of times in one single day, so
what is there one minute can be gone or changed the next. (I should
know; I change some of my pages many times a day.)
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The quality of the writing is not usually very high. The
standards of writing are very low, indeed -- at least in English. One rule
I have found to be helpful is (and I also use it when evaluating student
work!) if the writer cannot use its and it's
correctly, their information is probably not reliable. I also look
to see if the sources for information are mentioned and also, if there
is a way to contact the writer.
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How is this for a shocking error? In a beautiful
web site called Tibet: Roof of the World which is linked at ThinkQuest:
"Sheep or Lama hide may be used as a
"carpet" for the sitting area. Mostly nomads use this type of housing,
because it is easily taken apart and easily moved." Did they
confuse a Buddhist guru, spelled LAMA, with the South American pack
animal, spelled LLAMA? Surely they do not skin religious teachers!
Or did they translate from Dutch to English using a weird dictionary that
confuses a llama with a yak? Or, did they do it on purpose for mischievous
reasons -- but ThinkQuest is designed to help beginners,
and is recommended by the American school system.
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A new style of writing is being developed for use with monitor
display. A video screen is a not a piece of paper, and people
do not read it in the same way. Also, if you print it out, there
is no guarantee it will appear on your paper the way it does on the screen
or
on my printed page.
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Mistakes easily occur during the process of making a web
site. It is a detailed, complex procedure and one slip can have
far-reaching consequences.
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On a site supposedly about good, efficient web design, Bobby.Org, one
of the 3 main organizational links on the cover page does not work, though
the site was dated the time of this writing.
Why bother using web sites, then? Well, web
sites are very useful for preliminary investigation; they serve as a sort
of map. Just remember that they are more often than not, like
a hand-drawn map.
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"I can tell by the appearance of the site whether it is authoritative
or not." Really? Check out:
All this means that web information is not usually
considered authoritative.
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Sites with urls (addresses) ending in
.edu
are better because they are intended as educational.
If you do use them as references, be sure you know how
to cite them.
Be aware that it is silly to mention what you think is a page number
-- it may be on your set up, but not on someone else's.
Citing Web Sites:
There is a special way to list a web site in your Works Cited page.
There is another way when you cite one in your text (in the sentence,
after a paragraph, or by means of parenthetical citation.) See the
free green library sheet, the Little and Brown Handbook, or any
MLA site. (The style/method is different in social science which uses the
APA format.)
Newsgroups: Lizt's
list
This is a way to find out the latest topics people are talking about
in your favourite subject[s.]
They started way before chat rooms, and there are often archives a
FAQs you can read on your topic.
If the e-mailer does not appear, do you know what should
you do?
Browsers:
These are the programs (software) that we use to get around the Internet.
The two most common are Internet Explorer (Microsoft's Windows browser)
and Netscape Navigator - there are versions from 3 to 7 being used
today (if you do not need AOL online [and who does?] version 4.7 is actually
easier to use.) Netscape is the most efficient one because
it includes an email program and a simple way to create web sites, too.
It does not pretend that your computer is a televison set, either.
If you are confined to using Internet Explorer, be sure that
when you 'search' you are able to access the whole web and not just Canadian,
or American (or English [or francais] language) sites. Also
be sure that the u.r.l. or http://www. .... ... address is set up to be
revealed to you, so you can write it down for citing purposes.
Displays:
I use a 17" monitor and I write for that, but most commercial and school
machines only have a 14" set up. That is the reason you get lines
that look like this
when you access this site (and many others) at school.
You need to know that, when you are thinking of printing out a page; what
is supposed to be
double-spaced may not come out the correct way when you print
it. Instead the lines come out in an incomplete and irregular fashion.
Searching:
The absolutely best program to use (for information, not for chatting
or cute pictures) is Google. If you cannot find it in a list of
'engines' on your opening page, then just go to (that is, type in at the
place where these things appear at the top of the page) http://www.google.com
NB You will not get the same variety if you link to Google
from a HomePage. (You could put a direct link to the real Google
right on your "desktop.")
If a desired the link is "dead" or "404," see if there is a cached
copy that is preserved by Google and look at it. (Internal
links will not work in it, though.)
Bookmarks or Favorites: You can save a
page that you go to a lot in two different ways. But you may
need to reload once you get there, if it is part of a site that is updated
or changed regularly. This certainly applies to this site.
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1. Save it to a file you
have created yourself. [You decide if you want it all - structure,
images, etc.]
Under Edit, choose Select all,
then under Edit, again, select Copy.
Using the Composer option click on Communicator.
select under File, the word New
now under Edit select Paste.
Make any changes you would like, for instance fix the
lines so they are properly spaced, or change colours so you can see them
better.
If you are at home or can use a diskette, select File
and save the file or
just Print. (You can verify before printing
by choosing Print preview, first.)
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2. Bookmark: This
means your computer saves the http: address with or without
a copy of the page.
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Using Netscape, if you forget to Bookmark or
it is "missing," you can actually see where you visited in your latest
sessions.
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Go to Communicator in the menu, click on Tools
in there, and then click on History.
Links: Words that are highlighted by a different
colour or by underlining may be hot links. If you click on
these, you move somewhere else - usually to a different page either in
that same site, or outside into the Internet.
404: This is the name of the message that
you get when a link goes nowhere. If you like the site, tell
the owner about this or they will never find out. That is, using
Edit,
select (highlight) the link, Copy it and
Paste it into an email message. Do not forget to mention where
the link was found -- what page (url, please) and which paragraph.
The webmaster is the title of the one who takes
care of the site. It may or may not be the author of the pages.
This is the person who needs to know about 404s.
e-mailer: When you see the @ in a
highlighted phrase, it is probably a way to get an email form to appear.
You just click; it should appear, and then you fill in the blanks.
Do not forget the Subject space -
many
people will not even read a message if it is not filled in.
1. Contacting me: In the subject space,
write the course nickname and your section letter.
2. Begin with whatever the message is about: My
family, legal problem, research
proposal, or seminar.
One of the benefits
of email is that is an easy way to talk about difficult things.
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Selecting text: If
you click on something while sliding the mouse (or rolling your very superior
trackball) you can highlight it which acts as a way of selecting
it so that you can ... cut and move it (in your own documents,)
or copy and paste it.