The Internet, The Web, Browsers and Search Engines.
1 Learning Objectives
- In this lesson you will develop an understanding of the learning strand Network and Communications on your progress ladder, working towards yellow level.
Understanding and being able to explain:
- what world wide web is
- what the Internet is
- what a web browser is
- what a search engine is
2 Introduction
- Throughout this unit, you're going to occasionally make notes and answer questions.
- Use a text editor to record your progress as you go along.
Present It
- Create a new directory called
The-Internet
. - Create a new file and call it
Notes
. - Title your new document
How The Internet Works
- Under a subtitle (Introduction), try complete the following sentences without asking for help or looking up answers. Just answer according to what you currently know.
- I think that the Internet is….
- I think that the World Wide Web is…
- I think that a Web Browser is…
- I think that a Search Engine is…
Save It
- Save your work. Call it How-the-internet-works
3 The Internet
- Most people don't know what the Internet is or how it works, even though they use it every day.
- In reality, The Internet is a global network of computers, connected by fibre optic and copper cables or wireless and satellite signals.
- On it's own, the internet is nothing more than a lot of very expensive equipment.
Research It
- Use online resources to find out a little bit about what Fibre Optic cables are.
- Find out where the world's longest fibre optic cables can be found.
Present It
- Add into your notes your new understanding of what The Internet is.
- Add into your notes what Fibre Optic cables are.
- Try and find some images that illustrate your findings.
Save It
- Save your work
4 The World Wide Web (from now on just called the web)
- Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web back in 1989.
- To understand how the Web works, we're going to create a little web-page.
- Create a new directory somewhere in your directory. Call it
myWebsite
- Create a new directory somewhere in your directory. Call it
Try It:
- With this page open on your Firefox web browser, type ctrl+U, this is control and U all together.
- You will see something similar to this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head> <title>The Internet, The Web, Browsers and Search Engines.</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> <meta name="generator" content="Org-mode" /> <style type="text/css"> . . .
- Try ctrl+U on a different webpage, such as www.bbc.co.uk
- You should see something similar to the above output on your screen.
- Pay attention to the line starting with:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC ...
- The line tells the browser the webpage is a html document.
- All webpages are made of html documents
Research It
- Search online on
how to make a hyper link in a html document
- Add the line of code you find to your notes.
Key Points to Remember
- The world wide web is a collection of
html
documents, like those that you have seen. - They all link to each other using hyper links.
- The
html
documents are stored on different computers all over the world. - These computers are called Web Servers
Research It
- Try to find out the following information
- What was the worlds first web page?
- How many web pages currently make up the World Wide Web?
Present It
- Write up your findings. Be sure to include a description of what the web is.
Save It
- Save your work
5 Web Browsers
- A web browser is a piece of software that you have installed on your
computer
Research It
- For each of the browser icons shown below, find out the name of the browser and the company that makes it.
Present It
- Present your findings on different web browsers in your notes.
- Which of the web browsers is currently the most popular in the world?
Research It
- Find out what a web browser actually does?
- What are the major differences between the different web browsers?
Present It
- Add your findings to your notes.
Save It
- Don't forget to save your notes.
6 Search Engines
Research It
- Watch the following video about Google search. Most search engines like Bing, Duck Duck Go and Yahoo work in much the same way.
Present It
- Write up what you learned in your notes. You should be able to do it in a paragraph or two.
Save It
- Save your work.
7 Assess Your Understanding
- Try to assess your understanding by taking this quiz here
- If you have scored 80% or higher, well done.
- If you did not sore as high, can you re-read the notes to see what you have missed?
- Take a screenshot of your quiz result and add it to your notes
8 Present Your Notes
Badge It:
- To get your badge for this section, you're going to need to upload your notes you have been taking
- Silver: your notes show some basic understanding of the 4 concepts
- Gold: your notes show clear understanding of the 4 concepts
- Platinum: your notes show excellent understanding of the 4 concepts with appropriate examples and good English