An Introduction to the Internet

Welcome to this short course!!

During the next few hours, you will be introduced to the Internet - what it is and how to make the most of it. There will be an opportunity to search for information and to practise sending emails.

These materials have been produced to accompany the course. You will be able to use them at home to reinforce the teaching you will receive at the College. You will also find additional material on the floppy disk, including a tutorial on building your own webpage. Not everyone wants a webpage, but it can feel like a logical next step once you become a confident surfer and computer user.

Introducing the Internet

The Internet is increasingly important to all our lives. Nobody owns or controls it and we can all be part of it. You will be using these materials instead of a book to learn about the origins of the Internet, to learn how to make the best use of the information it contains, and, if you choose to build your own web page, you will develop the skills necessary to participate in the Internet yourself.

When we think of the Internet, most of us think of the World Wide Web, the millions of documents linked to each other through hyperlinks. You will find you are frequently told to click on a link in these materials. These links, or hyperlinks as they are more properly known, are the bricks and mortar of the World Wide Web. They will generally appear as underlined text and you will notice your cursor changes to look like an open hand when you move over a hyperlink. Clicking on a hyperlink will take you to another web page or a different part of the web page you are currently looking at. You can always retrace your steps by clicking on the Back button on your browser toolbar.

The Internet is more than the Worldwide Web - in fact the Web is a relatively late addition, invented at the beginning of the 1990s. The Internet is a network of computers communicating data between themselves. It provides email facilities, carries over 40,000 newsgroups and provides facilities for transferring computer files and accessing remote computers.

Beginning to explore

By clicking on the links below you can learn about the origins of the Internet, explore different ways of accessing information, and even produce your own first web page.

  • Evaluating a webpage - when we first encounter the Worldwide Web we can be overawed by how much material it contains. This page suggests ways of assessing the material you are looking at.
  • Searching the Internet - most people approach the Internet because they want information - perhaps for school or college, or because they want to know more about an area they are visiting on holiday. How can you obtain information efficiently from the Internet.
  • Bookmarks or Favorites - how to mark a webpage so that you can return to it again.
  • Viewing web pages off-line - how to cache websites
  • Using email - how to set up a mail account using Outlook Express
  • The History of the Internet - this is a brief history of how the Internet came into being with some links to sites providing a more detailed background.
  • Your First Web Page - this link will take you to a tutorial describing how to build a simple web page without using HTML